Us and Stress
Who are you when you are upset or when there is a great weight upon your shoulders? Is stress more likely to bring out our true personality, or distort the expression of our personality? This is the question we shall explore. Does God call us to overextend our strengths or simply develop them? We are made for peace, our hearts are finite and though sometimes we are tempted to be too concerned about something, we must remind ourselves why we act and whom ultimately it serves. No less stress and labor can be equivocal terms.
Distress is “the negative stress response, often involving negative affect and physiological reactivity: a type of stress that results from being overwhelmed by demands, losses, or perceived threats.”[1] Distress is more likely to bring out our will to survive, whether on the physical level or the psychological level. Distress would amplify such effects over other aspects of our personality and thus who we are in that moment is distorted not just who we seem to be. Distress, thus, regresses our conscious reason and does not allow the emotional freedom of perceived safety. Psychodynamic theory is applicable here since man becomes heavily subject to subconscious forces being heavily disturbed by physiological responses. Instinctual thought tends to take precedence, man becomes more subject to the need for dominance and self-preservation, as psychodynamic theory suggests. The question arises, what psychological reality made Adam and Eve not only seek cover from God, all-good and loving but also each other? I would hypothesize that this is the effect of sin and guilt/shame, i.e. the psychological reality of regret and fear of just consequences while knowing one’s deservingness of them, causing the state of distress. Knowing the other does not necessarily will their good, they hid from each other (Genesis 3:6-10 NRSVCE). Psychodynamic theory, thus, seems to apply specifically in situations where virtue is not prevalent but vice.
In conclusion, “hearts are restless until they rest in you”.[2] Suddenly, a new depth of this overly quoted saying is realized. Until we are free to rest in God’s Providence and Love, we are not able to be free to actually rest. God Indeed calls us to serve him in ways that are not often comfortable. Consequently, stress is natural to real love. This also means that sometimes when we will the good of others we will naturally be brought to distress, and all the same called to trust in God. This trust is faith in God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence. We also must be aware of and address the need for catharsis/emotional/physiological release of stress in our lives as there is a physical dimension to our nature. We must move all aspects of our nature to rest in God, because without this much we cannot be who we were truly meant to be nor even who we truly are. After all, the loss of peace has no justifiable cause, neither is anything but God alone, worthy of human thought.
W.B. Yeats’ The Lake Isle of Innisfree:
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
FN:
- American Psychological Society. 'Dictionary of Psychology: Distress.' at American Psychological Society, (1 January 2020,) at https://dictionary.apa.org/
- St. Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, 1,1.5
Written by Carter Carruthers
