prompt: why do people stress so much

I love this question! I remember I once watched this video on SikhNet by this guy called Guruka Singh. The video was made in 2007, but I still like to visit it from time to time. I don’t actually care much about the details of what he’s saying – he says something like “God is rotating the Earth”, and he talks about anchoring yourself in your breath, about meditation being like putting a deposit in a bank (which is interestingly similar to what Marcus Aurelius said in A Meditation), being grounded.

What I really enjoy about people like Guruka Singh, Alan Watts, Elliott Hulse, and Jon Kabat-Zinn, and the other people in my list of favorite people – is not so much any specific thing they say, but how they say it. They are therapeutic beings. They demonstrate, by being who they are, that it’s possible to live your life in a way that’s full of smiles and laughter and good humor – even when you go through difficulties and pain in life, even when things seem crazy and insurmountable.

But okay – why do people stress so much? I could start with myself. Why do I stress as much as I do?

I think I’ve gotten a lot better at stressing less over time. I think I’m much less stressed now than I was a couple of years ago. When was I most stressed in my life? I think it was probably when I was 17. I was carrying a heavier burden at 25, but at 17 I was a lot weaker and stupider, so the smaller burden felt even more overwhelming. And so I stressed. It felt like I didn’t have an alternative. I remember that at 17 I did have a general sort of posture of “I’m a happy-go-lucky, easy-going chill dude” – but on retrospect that was clearly a front. My body language was stressed. My gut was stressed. I didn’t have much appetite. I wasn’t getting much sleep.

Where did I learn to be so stressed? I think I learned some of it from my family, I think I learned a lot of it from school. There’s a bit in “The Body Keeps The Score“, which is a book about trauma, that describes how trauma is a full body experience. I think the same is true for stress, too. Stress is a full body experience. You feel in your stomach, in your shoulders… I definitely have been so stressed in the past that I basically stressed myself into some muscle pains. Stress-induced muscle pain is a real thing!

And I think… for me it came from constantly getting singled out as a kid, constantly being scolded for doing things wrong, for not doing things. I think Alan Watts has this bit about how people furrow their brows when they’re making a show of thinking, and then it becomes sort of encoded, and then they furrow their brows whenever they think, whether they realize they’re doing it or not. And his theory, I think, if I recall correctly, is that basically it’s a signalling mechanism. We’re stressing to show each other that we’re making an effort.

And you know… when you juxtapose this with The Courage To Be Disliked and it’s thesis that All Problems Are Interpersonal Problems (I agree with this one), I think the reality of it is clear… we stress as a way to communicate with other people.

I know that sounds crazy but I think it’s true. It’s not the WHOLE truth, of course. Some stress is just… there. I know it’s been observed in monkeys that simply being a low-status member of the group is stressful enough to affect their immune systems and fertility. And there are similar things for humans – humans who are stressfully trying to conceive struggle to conceive, and it’s a fairly common thing that when people stop trying stressfully and decide to adopt instead, they successfully conceive after. That hardly seems like a clever strategy of any kind. So what’s going on?

So I think there are some fundamental realities that are hard to escape. Like, I absolutely believe that there’s such a thing as “the stress of being a racial minority”. I think it’s particularly clear in the case of black americans who have to worry that law enforcement officers might literally kill them. Getting pulled over by a cop is a much more stressful experience for a black person than a white one. And there are all sorts of other stressors like that for people who are poor, and so on. And those are really societal ills that we should fix.

But I don’t think that’s what OP was asking about when they asked “why do people stress so much”. I’m guessing that buried in that question is, “why do people stress about things that they don’t have to stress about”? And I think the surprisingly simple answer is, “because at some level, they believe that they have to be stressed”. Looking back on my own career, I was more stressed than I had to be, and me being needlessly stressed was actually inhibiting my own performance at work. But at the time I didn’t feel like I had a lot of power or control over how I was feeling. I just got stressed.

I think things like breathing exercises etc help somewhat – they’re maybe 20% of the “solution”. Another solid 20% would be having a more rigorous process, better project management, facing things that you’re afraid of. Anticipating stress in advance, planning for it, rehearsing it, working through it. Another 20% – and this is the fifth that I think might actually be weighted heavier, maybe it’s actually 40-50% – would be beliefs. What is the story in your head, the deep down story about what stress means? About how you should react when something happens? I think I have this impulsive habit at stressing over any message anybody sends me, at phone calls, because at some level I’m used to the idea of bad things happening if I don’t stress. Bad things still happen if I do stress, but… at least I stressed? 😂 It often sounds ridiculous when you bring it into awareness. But I think in a primitive, child-like, monkey-mind sorta way, there’s a logic to it. That being stressed is a way of performing to yourself and to others – physiologically, subconsciously – that you’re really fucking trying, goddamnit. You’re not just some free-rider!

“To put it still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.” – Alan Watts

I think we have to learn to be okay with bad outcomes. We have to learn to breathe, practice breathing, practice laughing and letting go. I think “stress is holding your breath” is a pretty decent metaphor / analogy. Stress is tensing your muscles. Chronic stress in particular is an overreaction to some stimuli. And the world wants us stressed, I think. Deciding not to be stressed is a sort of rebellious act. And why be happy when you could be normal? 😂