Laboratory research on stress necessarily involves only mild and short-term stressors. Real-life stressors are unconstrained by such ethical considerations. Naturalistic observation has identified stress response patterns in the wake of extreme stressors like natural and technological disasters, personal losses, and societal changes. We can identify five major categories of such extreme stressors: unemployment, relationship termination, bereavement, combat, and environmental disasters.
1. Unemployment
Increases in the rate of joblessness have been correlated with mental and physical illness and suicide. People seem to react to the loss of a job in four stages: First they are confident of reemployment; secondly they actively job-seek; thirdly they suffer from doubt and deteriorated relations with others; and finally, feeling cynical and unhealthy, they give up.
Evidence indicates that the effects of unemployment are, like other life changes, to exacerbate existing problems rather than create new ones. Similar effects are ironically observable after economic upturns, another form of life change.
2. Relationship Termination
Divorce and separation are major sources of stress, whether one seeks to end a relationship or is the victim of rejection or abandonment. After separation, an individual experiences separation distress, a reaction to loss of an attachment figure. Emotions become labile(suddenly, dramatically changeable) and ambivalent. Insomnia, lethargy, preoccupation, and depression are not uncommon. Loneliness is experienced because one has lost both one's intimate partner and one's social connection with the community.
3. Bereavement
It is not surprising that death of one's spouse tops the list of stressful life changes. Reactions to loss through death involve disruption in activity and change in identity. Grief work -- behavioural and emotional strategies to cope the the death of a loved one -- involves a likely sequence of numbness, despair, yearning, depression and apathy, before achievement of acceptance. Bereavement, like responses to separation and divorce, is often characterized by the use of defense mechanisms such as denial and displacement.
4. Combat
After World War I, psychologists identified the syndrome of 'shell shock', in which soldiers were disabled by their responses to the trauma of warfare. Common symptoms subsequently observed among veterans of other wars include low threshold for frustration, sponstaneous crying or rage, sleeplessness, fear of sudden noises, and confusion. Effects have sometimes been long-term. The condition, identified among Vietnam veterans, has been labeled the posttraumatic stress disorder.
5. Environmental Disasters
Reactions to catastrophes like earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, fires, and plane crashes appear to involve at least three common stages. In the shock stage, victims appear stunned, dazed, numb, or even amnesic. in the suggestible stage, victims passively cooperate with their rescuers and therapists. In the third stage, recovery, anxiety threatens regaining emotional stability, and victims may repeat their stories in an effort to control and understand. Some research suggests the development of later stages involving guilt for having survived when others did not.
Nobody told me how hard and lonely change is. ~ Joan Gilbertson
Pain, repeatedly experienced, indicates a need for self-assessment, an inventory of our behavior. Honest self-appraisal may well call for change, a change in attitude perhaps, a change in specific behavior in some instances, or maybe a change in direction. We get off the right path occasionally, but go merrily on our way until barriers surface, doors close, and experiences become painful.
Most of us willingly wallow in our pain a while, not because we like it, but because its familiarity offers security. We find some comfort in our pain because at least it holds no surprises.
When our trust in God is high, we are more willing to change. And we open ourselves to the indications for movement in a new direction.
Each of us must find our own willingness. Each of us must develop attentiveness to the signs that repeatedly invite changes in our behavior. But most of all, each of us has to travel the road to change, singly.
Changes we must find the courage to make will never be exactly like someone else's changes.
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