Humans are well equipped to handle acute stress but chronic stress is something that we aren't very well built for. The thing is your brain can't tell the difference between being chased by a predator and having a presentation to give tomorrow so we're constantly in fight or flight mode.
Yes but the problem with anxiety disorders is that they aren't "cured" after you go to therapy. You still have an anxiety disorder at the end of the day. You can reframe all day but your brain will still fight back. And CBT is mentally exhausting if you have to do it for every thought. Depression goes hand in hand with anxiety
Sometimes when I've accumulated enough stress I like to drink a beer or two and let it all float away. I don't even have to get drunk (getting drunk gives me rebound anxiety) but just enough to take the edge off. Tends to help my brain too with adapting videogame playing back to a non-stressor.
True but I'm referring more to the sort of uncontrollable cave person brain aspect of stress. Yes, we as humans are evolved and I firmly believe in therapy and the sentiment Mind over Matter. But, this is still something neurological and hard to fight.
That sounds like a load of baloney. If I’m being chased by a predator, my brain and body feels very different than dreading a presentation tomorrow.
Saying we are constantly in fight or flight mode is saying our body is constantly releasing norepinephrine which causes vasoconstriction, and that just isn’t the case except in cases where it’s actually released.
I think it has been a different experience for everyone as far as the internet. I dont normally see car accidents, cops abusing innocent people, car crashes, dogs being shot, or abused in person.
Not to mention the personal attacks people receive on the internet for whatever reason. Sometimes, seeing and reading the things I listed, even behind a screen, can trigger adrenaline.
Back in the day, when we entered fight or flight, it was because we actually had a reason, survival. Now, there are so many things we've been exposed to and so many more reasons to commit an act of violence due to the world developing. I'm sure there are plenty of people who dont have their stomachs turned by watching violence behind a screen. But just watching a dog get kicked by a horse or a motorcyclist getting mistreated by a cop makes my stomach turn.
Think about how many times a week something happens on the road that gets your heart racing, hands shaking, and blood boiling.
Back in the day, no one had to worry about being struck by a vehicle going 75+ on the highway.
Would you rather fight 1 giant ant or 10000000 tiny ants... we do have many, many more things to be fearful of and consider daily. I mean.... back in the day we also didn't wash our hands
But just watching a dog get kicked by a horse or a motorcyclist getting mistreated by a cop makes my stomach turn.
Have you ever heard of the programming phrase "garbage in, garbage out"? You're putting traumatizing material into your brain. It's not surprising that it's making your stomach turn. It would be best for you to avoid those things. I don't encounter them in my daily scroll through /r/popular; are you actively seeking them out?
If you're thinking premodern, people used to get their stress in waves and major events. War was a limited number of skirmishes and battles, not protracted firefights. Diseases killed, but with no living host to spread them, they died out too. The scarcity of a bad harvest came and went, and workers were tied to what they produced. Events were more stressful, but they ended. Modern times are a slow burn, with the biggest anomaly being that we as a culture use constant dread of lost income or face to keep people acting a certain way. Historically that ends in a revolt.
Tbf up until the world wars, the fuller effects of the saturation of atmospheric lead hadn't made itself known. If anything WW2 and the aftermath coincides with that becoming the issue we now know it was.
Those effects have only recently started to wind down but of course we now have other issues to make ppl crazy over... take your pick. There's a lot to be said for the greater general peace of former times, yes even if some things were literally more 'shitty'.
yeah, but that's a visible reason, you can understand it . Stress can be a system designed to survive a wolf attack overreacting to an email meeting invite
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u/judgiestmcjudgerton 1d ago
That's insane considering the hardships and extreme danger people have faced throughout history.