The standard modern view on why stress is so bad for our health is that it builds up levels of cortisol and other stress hormones, which prepare us to act explosively in a fight or flight response, the doing of which uses up the stress hormones... a bit like a spring coiling up then releasing. But because in our modern lives we don't do the running away or fighting we don't use up the cortisol and it just simmers away in us.
I don't think it makes much sense to compare our modern concept of stress to very different times in the development of our society. Wild animals are in constant threat of being killed but I wouldn't think it makes sense to imagine them as stressed. They just live in the moment in a very different way to us.
Maybe 'stone-age' isn't far enough in the past to be different enough to modern life in that way. Even if that is the case, humans are very adaptable, the way a modern city dweller feels if they get attacked isn't necessarily the same way someone would feel who has experienced it many times.
I've had my own very small experience related to this. Just over a year ago I gave up my bricks and mortar home in the city and moved into a caravan. It was a wreck and I had to completely rebuild the interior and re-do the electrics and plumbing myself. I learned that my walls and windows provide no security - you could break into my home with your bare hands, with a hammer or axe it would be very easy. I carried a lot of fear in my head at first. In bed I'd be worrying that there'd be a gas explosion or fire because of something I'd done wrong. Once I found a couple of massive surly travellers eyeing up my solar panels, thinking I wasn't around. I had to go out and show that I was around and confident and not a target. I've met all kinds of people and not grown up sheltered at all but these two carried a real heavy, violent air - for a good week or two I was expecting them to turn up in the night to try to rob me, it was very hard to get that thought out of my head, and then to sleep in basically an unprotected tin can with plastic windows. Now I stay on a farm hundreds of miles away from any friends or family, there's no contract or notion of stability, if I fell out with the farmer I might have to leave immediately. I don't drive and at times haven't had enough money to pay to be towed somewhere else (work has been tricky... especially in winter when I'm trying to keep my laptop alive by solar, I've limited mobile data and it's 0-5C indoors), so a few cross words and I could basically be instantly homeless. Shops are an hour walk away, once I put a foot wrong on a track which nobody (not even locals) walks along and instantly sunk up to my waist in thick, sucking sinking mud and genuinely felt I might die there. LOL.
The point I'm ramblingly trying to get around to making is that after a while, it just wasn't sustainable to carry on feeling stressed and edgy. Or my tolerance went up, or something. Life just feels a lot more reactive than it used to, I want to say more real. Although I do have stresses and worries sometimes I don't walk around feeling permanently stressed or scared, actually I love it - it was the best move I ever made in my life, I feel a vitality which I didn't have before.
I've learned that the kind of stresses I have now are somehow easier to bear than the kind I used to have in my old life. I'd somehow rather fight off an intruder in the night than try to navigate a Kafka-esque phone menu system and be condescended to by a passive-agressive CSR. Cold is a feeling I can distract myself away from by writing some code or mending something, whereas receiving a bill with big red capital letters on it could negatively affect my state of mind for several days. When I'm standing over a pit emptying my reeking toilet I just compare it (favourably) to talking to a letting agent.
>after a while, it just wasn't sustainable to carry on feeling stressed and edgy. Or my tolerance went up, or something. Life just feels a lot more reactive than it used to, I want to say more real. Although I do have stresses and worries sometimes I don't walk around feeling permanently stressed or scared, actually I love it - it was the best move I ever made in my life, I feel a vitality which I didn't have before.
Thank you for writing this. I think the constant stress “field” we live in has to do less with real immediate threats and more with a lot of artificial but constant pressures, reminders and triggers.
I somehow don’t think worrying about being attacked by an animal which is not here right now is the same as a boss putting the screws in you on an hourly basis, the ad industry telling you you’re ugly 250 times a day, the constant reminder that getting sick equals bankruptcy and death, and the daily news feed reminding you that the world is going to hell and you’re the only one not having amazing fun.
I don't think it makes much sense to compare our modern concept of stress to very different times in the development of our society. Wild animals are in constant threat of being killed but I wouldn't think it makes sense to imagine them as stressed. They just live in the moment in a very different way to us.
Maybe 'stone-age' isn't far enough in the past to be different enough to modern life in that way. Even if that is the case, humans are very adaptable, the way a modern city dweller feels if they get attacked isn't necessarily the same way someone would feel who has experienced it many times.
I've had my own very small experience related to this. Just over a year ago I gave up my bricks and mortar home in the city and moved into a caravan. It was a wreck and I had to completely rebuild the interior and re-do the electrics and plumbing myself. I learned that my walls and windows provide no security - you could break into my home with your bare hands, with a hammer or axe it would be very easy. I carried a lot of fear in my head at first. In bed I'd be worrying that there'd be a gas explosion or fire because of something I'd done wrong. Once I found a couple of massive surly travellers eyeing up my solar panels, thinking I wasn't around. I had to go out and show that I was around and confident and not a target. I've met all kinds of people and not grown up sheltered at all but these two carried a real heavy, violent air - for a good week or two I was expecting them to turn up in the night to try to rob me, it was very hard to get that thought out of my head, and then to sleep in basically an unprotected tin can with plastic windows. Now I stay on a farm hundreds of miles away from any friends or family, there's no contract or notion of stability, if I fell out with the farmer I might have to leave immediately. I don't drive and at times haven't had enough money to pay to be towed somewhere else (work has been tricky... especially in winter when I'm trying to keep my laptop alive by solar, I've limited mobile data and it's 0-5C indoors), so a few cross words and I could basically be instantly homeless. Shops are an hour walk away, once I put a foot wrong on a track which nobody (not even locals) walks along and instantly sunk up to my waist in thick, sucking sinking mud and genuinely felt I might die there. LOL.
The point I'm ramblingly trying to get around to making is that after a while, it just wasn't sustainable to carry on feeling stressed and edgy. Or my tolerance went up, or something. Life just feels a lot more reactive than it used to, I want to say more real. Although I do have stresses and worries sometimes I don't walk around feeling permanently stressed or scared, actually I love it - it was the best move I ever made in my life, I feel a vitality which I didn't have before.
I've learned that the kind of stresses I have now are somehow easier to bear than the kind I used to have in my old life. I'd somehow rather fight off an intruder in the night than try to navigate a Kafka-esque phone menu system and be condescended to by a passive-agressive CSR. Cold is a feeling I can distract myself away from by writing some code or mending something, whereas receiving a bill with big red capital letters on it could negatively affect my state of mind for several days. When I'm standing over a pit emptying my reeking toilet I just compare it (favourably) to talking to a letting agent.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/understanding...