"I'm sorry, I'm just stressed," a friend often says to me. Apologizing for an internal struggle that only she is subject to. I ask what she's apologizing for, but she just repeats herself. No context is needed. Life is full of stress, which can make us feel that life itself is stressful.
Stress is a natural phenomenon. Certain, unapologetic, and inevitable.
Stress does not harm. Rather it helps us, or more accurately, it warns us. So why do we apologize when we react to stress?
Left unmanaged, stress becomes anxiety, manipulating and distorting our perception of the world around us.
We experience alternative ways of being, and label our surprise as "stress," demonizing difference; of appearing, seeming, behaving, or simply being different.
Influencing the reputations we have of others, and they have of us, anxiety dictates our preconceptions, and manipulates our behavior.
The need for, and benefits of togetherness seem to be increasingly overridden by the unsavory assumptions and expectations we make.
And we wonder: what's causing our social stress and anxiety, if not an abundance of threatening difference?
Quite the contrary; our similarities outweigh our differences. Difference isn't the threat causing our stress, but our assumption that difference presents a threat. Our assumption that danger and harm are inherent in difference, change, and "other." The presence of a potentially harmful situation presents stress. Our interactions with daily stresses help us to make predictions about future events. Unfortunately, when we believe the stress without evidence of an active threat, anxiety steps to the plate.
Put quite bluntly, anxiety is in our ignorance- our inability to consider beyond the negative preconceptions and expectations that our evolved and advanced human mind has developed to prepare us for harmful situations.
Interactions with difference are an absolute certainty. And our bodies react automatically when we experience the unexpected. When we feel surprise. We develop anxiety when we mislabel unexpected encounters with difference and surprise as unwelcome stress. But of course bad things do happen, and we do get hurt We've evolved to be this way, which is the most shocking factor of all. An intrinsically social species, with culture, impressive population density, and an exemplar cerebral capacity, our we are limited in our flexibility. Children, when they are free to play and take risks, are curious and accepting of difference, flexible, and open to change. Humans are incredible. We communicate in thousands of verbal (not to mention nonverbal) languages, eat foods that would kill our ancestors and closest relatives, We construct things that are imaginary and intangible. We have the power of pensive thought; we have ideas, create concepts, and consider alternative possibilities. We explore both the heavens and the depths of the ocean. We bring people back from the dead. And yet, we're afraid of both our own reflection and the stranger walking toward us. Assuming we know something we can never truly be sure of. We cannot hear another's thoughts. And while this terrifies us, it gives me gratitude. If we were able to, could we understand another's thoughts? Would we try?
And how could we be sure our interpretation was fair or true?How could we be sure that our thoughts weren’t leading us astray, tainted by our misconceptions and prejudices?
How can we ever know that what we believe is what we ought to believe, and not simply another thought with curb appeal?
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