I will be giving a presentation on stress at work next Friday so I was re-watching a documentary from years ago I found very insightful then and even more so after watching it recently. Its called “Stress: Portrait of a Killer”.
I find the material so different the second time around not because the material has changed but because I have. I stumbled across a particularly valuable insight to me personally in this documentary from 2008 that I can’t believe I missed before.
So, there is two kinds of stress – acute and chronic. Acute stress is a zebra running away from a lion on the Savannah. In 30 seconds the stress is over, one way or the other. Chronic stress is having to pay the rent every month. Our bodies were never designed to deal with chronic stress, just acute stress. Since the body doesn’t know the difference, it treats having to pay the rent the same way as having to run from the lion, releasing the same chemicals. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. But treating a chronic problem with an acute solution always creates more problems.
Its not just our bodies that can’t tell the difference between chronic and acute pain. Neither can our culture. People who suffer from acute pain – either physically, mentally, or spiritually are very well served by our culture. There are no shortage of therapists, doctors, specialists, treatments or pills. Acute pain is something you can “do” something about. Acute pain is something you can “fix”. But when we dole out the “doing” and “fixing” pill to people who are in chronic pain, we usually end up making them feel worse in the long run. This is particularly true if the person has CHOSEN their pain.
How many of us are in situations of chronic pain that we are choosing to be in? And how painful is it to listen to the acute problem solutions of well-meaning professionals as well as friends?
The part of the documentary that fuels this post was the coverage of a support group for parents of children with special needs. This group of parents suffer from chronic stress. One of the members of the group said something to the effect of “somebody told me the other day I should consider putting my child in a home. What I like about this group is that no one here would ever say anything like that.” In our “let’s do something about it already!” society, there is an over-abundance of therapists and precious few support groups. Therapists deal with acute solutions and then judge you if you don’t take the actions necessary to alleviate your pain. Only support groups, formal and informal, have the ability to be with us over the long haul standing beside us as we face our pain daily, even and especially if it is chosen pain.
This parent was choosing to suffer, choosing the path of pain on a daily basis. Choosing to stay in pain is not always because we lack the courage or will to face the alternative as our culture will have us believe. Sometimes the alternative just doesn’t work for us. Maybe even for reasons we can’t explain. But that doesn’t make our pain less real and our need to express it less valid.Such a shortage of people who will empathize with you, listening to the same story of pain day after day and never offer a single solution. These are the precious ones.Here is the documentary if your interested. The part about the support group occurs at minute 39:40 https
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