Stress as a myth

Stress as a myth

Stress is one of the enemies, which everyone has to deal with. From a scientific point of view it doesn’t exist.
What’s interesting, barely one hundred years ago, this concept of stress occurred only in metallurgy. So what is
stress? If we can’t define stress, how we can face it? I’m going to introduce five myths, which occurred from 
unawareness of this issue.

1.       Stress is a defensive reaction of the body

Myth. Hans Style defined stress as ‘non-specific reaction of the body to the demands placed on it’. He also

divided stress into two parts: eustress (positive – e.g. joy of meeting someone you like) and distress 

(negative – e.g. fear caused by the car's horn). His division was the closest to the reality, because each reactions

like fear, dread, aggression, we’re throwing into one bag - naming ‘stress’.

Generalization of the concept of stress can be harmful.

https://www.drlam.com/blog/neuroendometabolic-symptoms-of-stress/

2.       You can measure the level of stress

Everyone feels completely different in the same situation. As an example we can use a divorce. For some  

people it can be a traumatic situation. For years after divorce they can’t get to grips. Other ones just feel free 

after their divorce. In sum, we can’t directly measure the level of stress. Only we ourselves can define how

much stress we have in life.

https://wellbeingcoaches.com/are-you-too-stressed-quiz/ 

3.       Stress is harmful to health

In the USA, there was carried out research about stress for eight years. About 30,000 American adults took

part in the study. Two questions were asked to them: ‘How much stress have you experienced over the past

year?’ and ‘Do you think that stress is harmful to your health?. The study was based on the data on deaths 

of the examined people. In people who declared that stress accompanies them every day and it also harms 

their health, the probability of death was higher by as much as 43 percent. The risk of death in people who

 declared presence of stress in their lives, but didn’t consider it harmful, was the lowest of all the examined

 people. The risk of death was even smaller than in the people who declared that they don’t have so much

 stress in their lives. 

The research lasted eight years. During this time, 182,000 Americans died prematurely – the cause wasn’t 

the stress itself, but belief that it is harmful. It’s more than 20,000 deaths per year. Belief in the harmfulness

of stress was on 15th place in the most common causes of death in the USA. As you can see from the  

above facts - belief in stress kills.



https://www.insidesource.com/blog/the-way-you-perceive-stress-could-save-your-life/

4.       We live in times that expose us to more stress than ever before

Nonsense. In ancient times, everyone had to fight for survival with predatory animals, infections and also
 themselves. In the 19th century, death of a mother and child, during childbirth was the norm. In addition,

 many children didn’t live to their adulthood. Moreover, our great-grandparents and grandparents took part 

in the 1st and 2nd World War. Everyday, they lived in fear for their own life and loved ones.

Nowadays, we ourselves impose the pace of our lives. It’s true that this is conditioned by the variety and the 

amount of things that surround us. But still it is our choice. Consumerism becomes a consequence of trying 

to relieve stress.




https://www.compoundingexpert.com/compounding-treatment-for-stress/

5.       The most basic way to deal with stress is the reaction ‘fight or flight’

That was a thought for many years – until the results of the research by a psychologist prof. Shelley Taylor from 

the University of California in Los Angeles. Her research showed that the ‘fight or flight’ reaction is the 

characteristic of males, but it’s quite different infemales. A female response to  stress is rather a reaction of

‘tend and befriend’.

Abuse of strategy ‘fight or flight’ was caused by a  trivial reason. Most of the researchers dealing with 

psychophysiology of stress were men. What’s more, even in animal studies they used to (or still do) 

rather males. This is partly due to the fact that females may give birth to a new generation of research objects.












http://michiganjournal.org/2013/02/19/asking-the-hard-questions-is-it-possible-to-run-away-from-our-problems/

https://www.focus.pl/artykul/5-mitow-na-temat-stresu?page=3





1. What kind of situations are the most stressful for you? 

2. During work,
school or everyday life stress accompanies you all the time. How do you deal
with it?

3. Answer two
question from the research:  ‘How much
stress have you experienced over the past year?’ and ‘Do you think that stress
is harmful to your health?’