Stress & General Adaptation Syndrome

(I guess this means I am not going to be 5'8", brunette, 36-24-34 and have the intellectual depth of Jessica Simpson anytime soon, huh? - Barbara)

By Dr. Edward F. Group III, DC, ND, DACBN

Stress is everywhere. From taking a test to dealing with the loss of a loved one, stress is impossible to avoid. It can be acute, such as the stress that occurs in the face of immediate danger, or it can be chronic when a person is dealing with a long-term stressful situation.

The Three Stages of Stress

An endocrinologist named Dr. Hans Selye outlined a three stage model of the body's response to stress. He called his model the General Adaptation Syndrome. Understanding these three stages will give you a better idea as to the symptoms that occur with stress and how to manage them.

General Adaptation Syndrome:
1. Alarm
2. Resistance or Adaptation
3. Exhaustion

TO READ THE REST ON THE SYMPTOMS OF STRESS CLICK HERE


Why It's Frustrating Having a Brain
from: chabad.org

Having a brain means that you not only know how things are, but you also understand how things ought to be. Which means that you're constantly being made aware that things are not as they ought to be.

Human beings (most of whom have brains) deal with this frustration in a variety of ways. Some become "academics," which means that they concentrate on the way things ought to be and make believe that that's the way things are. Those who for some reason (usually job-related) are compelled to deal with the way things are, try not to think about the way things ought to be. Since neither approach can be maintained 100% of the time, human beings enjoy a higher stress level than cows, for example.

This has led humans to invent all sorts of salves and balms for stress, on the one hand, and all sorts of devices to do away with (or at least numb) the brain, on the other. Which is a shame, since it's great having a brain, and it's healthy to experience stress.

That's the lesson implicit in the "superfluous" chapters of Vayak'hel and Pekudei.

The Lubavitcher Rebbe explains that the Torah wants to emphasize that there will always be two versions of G-d's home on earth: the ideal version, as G-d envisions it and describes it to Moses, and the real version, as it is actually built in and out of our physical lives.

Does this means that G-d is making allowances? That His vision can be compromised by "the way things are" down here? But both versions are exactly the same in the Torah's account! In other words, we are empowered -- and expected -- to recreate the divine ideal in its entirety, down to every last peg, clasp and carrying pole, within the material world.

Recreate -- not duplicate. G-d does not want us to transform physical matter into substanceless spirit; He wants us to make the physical world hospitable to His presence.

Being human means never ceasing the effort to translate the ideal into the real. Not that we can eliminate the gap between matter and spirit. We can do better: we can make our lives a physical version of the divine vision. Human life is an attempt to achieve the impossible -- an attempt that fails, and in failing, achieves something even greater.

If you're experiencing stress, you're doing something right.