How Stress Affects Us?

Stress affects all aspects of our entire personality. Though we have given below the affects separately, they affect all the dimensions for the dimensions are not compartmentalized but integrated. The physical stress affect us mentally and vice versa.

Physical Stress
Physical stress causes fatigue and ageing. In the normal process when cells are destroyed, newer ones take its place. However, when the body is stressed continuously, as is the case with modern man, the cells, over a period of time, loose their capacity to reproduce causing fatigue and ageing.

In the words of Dr. Hans Selye, on ageing, “…when replaceable cells are constantly stressed by excessive toxins, improper nutrition and overwork, they use the reproductive potential decades earlier than intended. Irreplaceable cells such as nerve fibres, which cannot further reproduce, simply cease functioning and die in the face of constant stress abuse.”

Also when a body is physically stressed due to overwork there is production of lactate in the body due to energy debt. This is harmful to the body. However, on returning to normal conditions the lactate is broken using oxygen.

Mental Stress
The mind is a storehouse of various experiences registered in our Consciousness throughout our life. Just as in the case of computer information is stored in bits and bytes, information is stored in the mind in the form of archetypes. Archetypes are patterns, in which the stress energy from the various experiences get stored. Every experience takes in a little bit of the praana and gets stored as patterns. These patterns cause compulsions and make human beings to react in a particular fashion in situations and ensure that further energy gets locked up as stress energy. This is a various circle and destroys the quality of human lives.

Stress causes depression, loss of memory, incoherent thoughts and lack of bliss. A stressed person also tends to spread stress and negatives around his environment destroying the delicate fabric of peace and harmony in the community. It also makes us recourse to addictions like alcohol, drugs, smoking and other hosts of stimulants and intoxicants. Neuroscientists have recently discovered that the emotional circuit is faster in response than the thinking brain circuit. A signal reaching the thalamus is sent to the visual cortex for assessment and appropriate response. However, a signal is also sent to the amygdala, which is the emotional storehouse, for a quicker response. The time of the emotional circuit is lesser than the time of the cortical circuit. This makes us vulnerable to our emotions. Stress tends to weaken the nerves, cloud the thinking and make people servile to the powerful emotions that may coerce people to the world of crimes. Stress causes excessive depression that can lead people to hallucinations and suicides.

Mental stress causes psychosomatic diseases as the stress in the psychic phase slowly percolates down to psychosomatic phase and then on to the somatic phase and finally to the organic phase. It has been seen that a number of diseases like cancer, diabetes, neural disorders, etc. originate at the level of the mind. The part of the body gets affected will depend on the origin of the stress and the constitutional weakness of that part of the physical body.

Spiritual Stress
As Noumenon, we are immutable, deathless, birthless, bliss and absolute peace but due to a shift in the focus the immutability component along with absolute peace vanishes and there is a fear for survival. At the level of Consciousness (when individualized) there is bliss but there is still a small lurking fear for survival and there is a chance to further degrade into the state of ignorance by identifying with the ego from which other forms of stress are experienced.