Video Transcript: Stress

Sorry, Mr Smith, I'll get right on it. I got I got delayed. No excuses. Come on.  What are you doing here? Johnson, I asked you to get it to me yesterday. I  know, I know, but Right away, sir, right away. Oh, I gotta call, call Tim and maybe Jack and Sue. We gotta get going on this. Yes, honey, contractions. Oh, okay,  yeah, come on. Come on. Come on. It's okay, sweetie, it's all right. We'll get to  the hospital in time. We really will stress, stress and life that boss that wanted it  yesterday, your wife, husbands whose water broke and it's time to go, or wives,  your water just broke, it's time to go to the hospital, Honey, don't you get in the  car, stop staring at me, go stress or maybe that test that you've been stressed  out about, and it's gonna happen tomorrow morning, 8am if you're even awake,  oh, but adrenaline is your friend, as well as caffeine. Stress plays a big role in  our human experience. There's good stress, there's bad stress, there's in  between stress that can be good and bad, there's stress that's very detrimental  for the body, and stress that really empowers the body, and it even not only  empowers the body, but also helps it to get stronger, telling the stress that we  we we do, for instance, when we lift weights and and there's that that stress on  the muscles, but or the stress of doing that fast run, and good for the heart and  good and the stress in the body is then therefore helps it to To get stronger and  endurance. Stress has many applications, many meanings. Psychologically, it's  important to understand how stress affects not only the body, but also the mind.  So we look at stress, we need to understand its definition to properly understand how it works. Stress is the physiological response, or the physiological  responses, according to your book, that occur when an organism fails to  respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats. Now, of course, in the  example of exercise or stress upon the body that you expect to happen.  However, the body, of course, let's give it, make it more personal about the body. The body to personalize it, to make an anthropomorphism, if you will, is it's not  expecting it, oh, oh. But then there's a reaction to it, stress and with this  reaction, this response, physiological responses that occur when an organism  fails to respond appropriately to emotional or physical threats, we then have  many different reactions that happened after the initial reaction and response to  a stressor, a stressor, because, again, like with stimuli and responses, as we  looked at with emotion, and also with understanding how the stimulus response  was Skinner and Watson and with latent learning and all these things. Stress, of  course, is in the middle of all this. But then we get into the area of trauma. We  get into the area how stress can be rather bad. And this is often where theorists  go, not only the good part of stress, we'll look at that for certain. But when it  comes to the bad part of stress, how stress can can bring health issues and and disease and so and other things, and also stress to the mind, this is often where  we need to go, because of the well being of a person. A post traumatic stress  disorder, or PTSD, is one of those concerns. Anxiety Disorder is also a relate in  relation to this stress, insomnia, nightmares, flashbacks, or where we have 

things that flash in our minds that we remember from years ago that was  traumatic, and it hits without warning or being nervous or and because of this  post traumatic, there is after trauma, post traumatic, post trauma post stressor,  post traumatic stress disorder, something is out of order. We then often, if we  are victims of this, some people, not all, but some people do turn to drug abuse,  alcohol abuse because of their mental state. And we often find that with  veterans, those who have been through war, or others who have been through  abuse and so on. Well, what causes PTSD or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?  First of all, the definition is there's a medical syndrome that includes symptoms  of anxiety, sleeplessness, nightmares and social withdrawal. Of course, what  happens as what is extended out of this, of course, is the abuse of other drugs  and alcohol or food addiction, other addictive tendencies. But what are the top  four reasons men and women suffer PTSD? One study says number one is  rape, sexual traumatic experiences. The second is combat exposure, those who  have been in the military. Third is childhood neglect, and the fourth one is  childhood physical abuse, which is what we cited earlier about abuse and other  things like it. That's what we then turn to start understanding the disorder  caused by trauma. Well, from PTSD, we then, then come to understand, again,  this is all within the context of how you are, then helping people understand  where they are at. I've been counseling a gentleman right now who still is  experiencing grief and post traumatic stress because of a marriage that went  sour over 12 years ago, as well as a previous marriage. In fact, he has been  through three marriages, and because of this, there is ample evidence of post  traumatic stress. One wife was very manipulative. Another wife was  experiencing her own mental break, or came to borderline personality disorder,  a disorder going to discuss in another video headed with personality disorders in the realm of psychology, but coming back, we then look at how people adapt,  how people then work through trauma, work through stress. There is a an  adaptation pattern called general adaptation syndrome. General adaptation  syndrome and general adaptation syndrome has three stages, and with each  stage, there's initial reaction, the general adaptation syndrome. Of course,  looking at how people adapt to different stages, different things are these. The  first stage that we look at is the alarm state, the alarm stage, or the alarm  reaction. In other words, the initial reaction to stressors such as increased  oxygen and blood supply to the necessary areas of the body. So when I'm  running, there is an increase in oxygen going into my lungs and into my body,  and also then a reaction that might the brain has, where then I begin to feel the  dopamine taking in the natural THC as well, which one article recently cited after some study. And then we're not talking about marijuana here, but, but the body's natural juices get the natural chemicals giving off these the increased oxygen,  increased dopamine levels, increased the health benefits of running. Hence the  alarm. It's an alarm, and of course, the there's the negative aspects. Where the 

body is under alarm because something is happening, where, where it's not  good. But with the initial stage, the alarm stage something of increased oxygen  levels. And, of course, you could argue too well when something traumatic is  happening and or that cars coming to you, like with James Lang theory and, and and also Cannen Bard, like car that bears coming at you, and there's that  arousal, and there's more oxygen coming into the body. Well, there's the next  stage, which is the resistance development stage, or increased functional  capacity to adapt to stressors such as increasing motor unit recruitment. So in  other words, I am now going to run from the bear. I'm now going to run from the  car that's coming at me that's out of fear, or I'm going to defend myself from an  attacker. You get the idea. Resistance stage. Resistance development,  increased functional capacity to adapt to stressors or stimuli, such as increasing  motor unit recruitment. My arms are going to do something, my hands are going  to do something. I'm recruiting right now automatically respond, and then from  the alarm and resistance, we then get into exhaustion, a prolonged and  intolerable stressor produces fatigue and leads to a breakdown in the system or  injury, this is the more the negative effect. Let's take a look at this, the these  stages in action on a chart. Now, this whole general adaptation syndrome was  developed by a researcher by the name of Hans Selye the 1950s and he you  looked at this and you look at stress resistance. As you can see at the top, the  body's resistance to stress can last only so long before exhaustion sets in. You  see that where the stressor occurs at the start of this bell curve and the Phase  One alarm reaction, mobilize resources. Here we go phase two, going up in the  stratosphere. Here there is a resistance, the coping with the stressor, positive or  negative, and then the downward spiral, the downward downward effect, where  there's exhaustion, the reserves are depleted. He observed the natural  progression of how we then can't handle it anymore, and we need to rest so we  can then return to that task, return to the job, return to what it is that will cause  stress in a good way or a bad way. Now, of course, as we can tell with that job,  you don't like for example, and you're back to the on the assembly line. Are you  back there? Back Of course, working the job in in painting, and you don't like it.  Of course, I'm speaking for myself, painting is not my gift, but or perhaps you're  going back to to fixing something in the car, and it's arduous, there's stress,  there's then the reactive part of it, you're then using your resources. And then,  okay, after a few hours, I'm tired, I need to rest again. Well, from Hans's  observation, and of course, measuring that the responses to also another  graphic that helps us see how stress levels interact with our bodies. Stress level  with such as these are measured in this way, performance and stress level. You  have the one side where there's the lane, the inactive and bored stage ever had, that Saturday afternoon where you're bored, you have nothing to do to the  healthy tension, okay, I'm engaged. I've got something going on. My spouse or  my my child is engaging me with whether something fun to do or a project to do 

around the house, to motivate it. I'm motivated to get to my job because, ooh,  I'm I'm really wanting to do a good job for the boss, for the cause, for the  organization today, and then it gets us to the focus area where there's optimum  stress, and we are focused, we're in the game. And maybe that that it really,  literally is the game of baseball, football or or one of these other games,  depending on what or cricket, that's your famous game. There your part of the  world, and at that peak performance, we hit that peak, but then we then go from  that healthy stage, then to the fatigue stage, and that's where they can we see  that the overload as opposed to the optimum level. And this researchers have  looked at this psychologically, we see that the body is going to get stressed. It's  overloading the stress from healthy stress to unhealthy stress, which we  observed earlier then, to the exhaustion, and if we don't rest, as it says in the  Bible, of course, Genesis 1, the seventh day. What God rested? Rest is a design God has given to us. God knows we can't go 24/7 high level energy being on  and on it all the time. 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we need to sleep. We  need to take a day off, or an equivalent of a day off, half a day here, another half day here, where we then had that Shabbat, that shalom, that that Sabbath. So  we can, in fact, take care of ourselves. Stress can be good and it can be bad if  we don't take care as we say. So we see the exhaustion release can lead to  panic, anxiety, hence, anxiety disorders, anger as well. Why? Because there's  there's worth that's being robbed from us, as well as dignity that's being taken  away and then to burn out, break down, and we see disease. Stress has been  linked to heart attacks, cancer and other things, which, course, we're not  specializing here in this course, or in your this, any of the programs, necessarily, here at CLI but we are looking at the aspects of how the realities of spiritually to  begin with, of Course, biblically speaking, spiritually speaking, as well as  physically speaking and psychologically speaking, where we then can say, yes,  there's a problem. Yes, we understand personality. Yes, we see how you are  overdoing it. We balance in our lives the biblical perspective. Of course,  everything comes out of Scripture, not only looking at the psychological,  sociological, but also the biological and also physiological. All of it is there. So  this is what we then measure, how we understand the human experience when  it comes to stress. In fact, what researchers have given to us to help us better  understand and measure how at what level person is in stress, in duress, is a  special scale. Let's take a look these scales of stress involve these. This scale,  which you'll find in your your textbook, help us to understand how stress then is  interpreted, how stress can then add up, literally, to a danger zone, or to add up  to a low risk zone, or a mid risk zone, or a high risk zone, which you can call a  danger zone, the number one, it's very interesting, the number one life event  that causes the most stress in a person's life is a death of a spouse. Right  behind it, which some have argued is worse than death, is a divorce. The mean  value, or the value given to this life event, is 100 for the death of a spouse, 73 

for for a divorce, and right behind that is marital separation at a 65 No wonder  when we look at marriage and the family, and no wonder why we are needed in  as clergy, as those involved in church leadership and ministry, God has called us to come alongside and not fix because I can't fix you. You can't fix me. I can't fix  the guy who I talked about earlier, who's been through through stress, post  traumatic stress, and thank the Lord, by the holy power of the Holy Spirit, give  all glory to God he is. Been healing. It's going well. Thank you, Lord. Now of it all the time. You know it's in God's time, but again we prove ourselves effective.  Again we prove ourselves worthy, as in says in I and II Timothy. We then look at  our character as counselors and church leaders and pastors and so on, as we  are there to come alongside to help our brothers and sisters move forward,  succeed with God's help and where God does it. But with this, this  measurement, this measurement helps us to better understand where people  are at so we help them see where things are. Let's go back to that, that scale.  One more look at some other examples. See, we look at death of a spouse,  divorce, marital separation as the top, top three, top five. You look at a jail term,  prison death of a close family member. So death and also limitations, kind of  makes you wonder about, in fact, what's not listed here are lockdowns. We look  at our current covid 19 situation, as well as the context of those lockdowns  where there's isolation, jail terms are very similar to this. Why? Because you're  locked up, you are isolated, with the exception of those who are locked up with  and then you have marriage itself, which is a good thing, but there's still stress.  It's in the top 10, or there's a firing, you're fired at work or this marital  reconciliation that takes work stress, retirement. Coming in. Number 10 is  retirement and change in health. Number 11, pregnancy, sex difficulties, and on  down they go right down to changing eating habits. In the top 40. It's kind of like, it feels like the whole, you know, top 40 billboard, the top 100 billboard, where  do you rank, and how things can maybe change and shift and rank. Oh, with the research here, looking at life events and stress, they don't change that often.  Death of a spouse is still number one and so on. But then, how do we interpret  this? How does this work? When we help a person getting again, listening and  then responding, listening and then also coaching through and counseling, we  then look at an interpretation. Interpretation is, if you have a score after you cite  all things going on here at the moment, maybe there's death of a spouse, or  maybe it is that changing eating habits. And I don't have the whole, I didn't show you, the whole scale, it goes right down to, I believe, not having here in front of  me, you have, then the whole thing of down to the top, down to the bottom,  where the number 20, number 19, so on, number 15, so 40 is not the cutoff, but  you get the idea, if you score 11 to 150 You have only a low to moderate chance of becoming ill in the near future. This is very helpful. The second level of  interpretation is 150, to 299, you have a moderate to high chance of becoming ill in the near future, depending on what the life events have been happening here 

recently, currently, or what you're anticipating happening to 300 to 600 where  you have a high or very high risk of becoming ill in the near future, there is  stress, there are life events that You can't control, or you can control, but it's  inevitable. You have to make that choice. There is a path you have to go down.  Well from here, then we look at fight or flight in particular. Now we've talked  about fight and flight before when it comes to stimulus and response and as  other Freud and also other theorists, but more importantly, we want to look at  fight and flight by itself. What does it mean? How is it the dynamic here, as we  look at the whole thing of stress this context rather well, it's an emotional and  behavioral reaction to stress that increases the readiness for action. Before we  looked at fight and flight in the context of the unconscious to the conscious. We  looked at in terms of latent learning. We looked at and in all those other. Their  physical to non physical responses. Fight and flight was included in that. In  those explanations, however, we now look more specifically at stress as a  framework as a context of its own, coming back with fight and flight, it is that  emotional and behavioral reaction to stress that increases the readiness for  action, as we see here in the graphic. Next to the definition, there are four  responses, thanks to Grace LaConte, four responses to fear. At the top, you see where we engage, at the bottom, where we disengage. Then horizontally, we  see repel, as opposed to attract, and vice versa, between engage and repel.  There's that fight I want to fight, and between engage and attract we see, we  then face the situation. We face the stress and between attract and disengage.  Whew, that's when we freeze. I remember as a kid, I was crossing a busy street  on my bike, and just like James and Lang and also the other Bard and Cannen I  was crossing, I was about to cross that busy street, and I froze, and a whole  bunch of cars were coming at me. I can still remember today, in my mind's eye, I was stressed. I was about 10-11 years old, biking home from gramma's house,  living in the city, and I was on that bike I had. I was about to go for it. I'd gotten  off the curb into the street, and I for some reason, I was kind of stuck, or my tire  didn't go the way it needed to, and I saw the car coming, like the bear and the  oncoming car. I froze. I disengaged. I thought, Okay, God, you take it.  Fortunately, the car stopped. Couple young guys, they got out. It was the, of  course, a teenage guy said we couldn't stop. And, you know, you pretty much  scolding me, as opposed to saying, Hey, are you okay with him? It was more  anger and frustration, and I just said, thank you very much. Got back on the  curb, waited for another opportunity and got across that street. Well, engage,  disengage, face the fear, or freeze because of the fear, or disengage to repel at  that flight. Run away. In I Corinthians 6, morality, run. Run for the hills. Don't go  there. If there's someone is is coming after you, you run right now. They think  you're all that and and they are sexually trying to engage. You get out of there  now, because it's time to flee, says Paul in Scripture. And of course, the repel to  engage you are ready to fight now, not necessarily the put up your fists or 

maybe because of self defense, but to fight, it's that posture, it's the tone of  voice, it's the eyes and the eye to eye contact and the facial expressions.  Remember nonverbal communication very important. This is where it can come  in, and where you can even scare off somebody without saying a word, fight,  flight, engage, disengage, but then for fight or flight, in the context of stress, we  then look at testosterone and estrogen, men and women, and how there's  oxytocin, another chemical in the bodies of men and women, regardless of  gender, which is in fact, that special chemical in us that helps to bring the feeling of nurture, the feeling of reduction of stress and also a bit of some relaxation,  although not. Full, but the initial relaxing of the body and where there's that  feeling of, I can, I can then breathe, breathe relief. Well, this goes to the fight or  flight versus the tend and befriend you saw in the previous graphic, tend and  befriend. Tend and befriend, as opposed to fight or flight. Is responding to stress  with nurturant activities designed to protect oneself and one's offspring, where  you tend to them or someone who you're close to, or are you connected with,  well, if you will, and creating social networks that provide protection from threats, where we befriend and protect and provide which is why, of course, when it  comes to the husband comforting The wife with the news level of the loss, or  when it comes to that stress that she just can't doesn't know what to do with,  and the husband's right there, or vice versa, or the hot the stress the husband's  dealing with because of work and and often, that often the case, or and with  mom or something Home, or mom because she's working outside the home,  whichever, however the roles are, wherever stress may be, there is that  nurturing that tend and attend to you. I'm going to befriend, I'm going to help  protect, as a pastor, as a church leader, as that volunteer, the peer coach,  whatever your role may be in ministry, God has called us biblically speaking, and also then in the whole area of psychology to come alongside of people, not fix  them, where God will fix them and use you in the process of Reducing stress  and building community, as the Bible mandates.