On StressI heard an interesting article on Fresh Air tonight about stress, in which host Terry Gross interviewed Robert Sapolsky about his book Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. The most interesting point he made is that in a sense, our bodies are obsolete technology. The kind of stress our bodies are geared to handle is the short-term, fighting-or-running-for-our-lives type of stress. When we're running from a lion (or something), our body shuts down all non-essential functions, like digestion and reproduction, to save energy for survival. And it does this even today, when we have stress that has nothing to do with that sort of survival, which is why stress can cause digestion problems (including ulcers) and have other physical ramifications.As readers of any length of time of this journal know, I've been under some moderate long-term stress myself, and I can see now that I've been having some of these problems. My appetite has been erratic, and although I'm quite capable of eating regular meals, especially when I'm doing so with other people, when I'm at home by myself lately I just have little snacks, and occasionally force myself to have a real meal - usually soup - without a whole lot of enthusiasm. I was a little disappointed in Sapolsky's discussion of how to alleviate stress, since he basically said that certain techniques - meditation, exercise, whatever - succeed with different people, and that what works well for one person may not work at all, or may even increase stress, for another person. He said a lot of it is psychological, what one associates with stress vs. calmness. The reason I found this disappointing is that most of my stress lately comes from thinking too much and worrying too much, and the best solution to that for me seems to be to occupy my mind some other way, such as watching TV or hanging out with friends. Jogging doesn't really help because I can easily spend half my jogging time thinking about my worries. (I mean, what else is there to think about? I try not to think about jogging because I'm less inclined to push myself farther when I'm doing so.) The problem with this, though, is that I keep feeling like I'm just distracting myself from the problems; it feels counter productive to me. Not that I've been doing a whole lot that's productive to solve them, lately.
Thinking about this put me in mind of the following panel from Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic series (specifically, the volume
(Art by Michael Zulli.) This philosophy is one of those things that I'd like to take to heart, but find a really hard time doing so. I really wish I could just worry less and figure that everything (or, at least, most of the important things) will work out. But, that seems not to be who I am.
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