Make not your thoughts your prison.

— Shakespeare

Sometimes people just sit down and think and think and think, worrying about every little thing and, as they say, major in the minor, trapped by their thoughts. Anxiety, worry, stress are all members of the same family and it’s a family that means you no good and indeed does more harm than it does any good.

Stress can lead to serious health problems and is known as the silent killer, just like its cousin hypertension or, as we say here, pressure.

“How the man sick and pop down so?”

“Stress take him true him wife leff him.”

Yes, it’s been medically proven that stress can bring down the strongest person in spite of how they appear on the outside. In fact, even the act of putting on a brave face and bottling up the stress inside, instead of dealing with the root cause, can do more harm to one’s mental and physical health.

“Hey Kirk, yuh alright, yu look kinda stressed.”

“Yeah man, I’m alright, I’m always alright.”

They say that it’s better to let it all out, release those escape valves, de-stress yourself, not distress yourself, find some outlet to ease that pressure.

Ha! That sounds so simple, yet it’s easier said than done as stress continues to take its toll on countless people every year, complicating their lives and mashing them down. Stress is so powerful that it can actually affect your heart, and in the USA there’s even a term for it — ‘broken heart syndrome’, whereby people actually die of a broken heart.

The most recent high-profile example was of this man who died a few days after his wife was killed in that awful USA mass shooting in that school in Uvalde. The doctors say that he died of broken heart syndrome triggered by the death of his wife.

The stress factors, that’s the spiral staircase that we’ll be taking today, right after these responses to what I had to say about ‘Not good enough’.

Tony,

I have had two cross/class relationships and they did not work. The cultural repertoire and access to resources with which I was raised were not valued by those two men, and I was resented eventually when they saw that my formative years were really different from theirs. I don’t see my upper-middle-class background as better than theirs, but it was certainly different. Class differences, even in Jamaica, matter, and rarely does later acquisition of wealth enable folks to appreciate this unfortunate truth.

Maria

Hi Tony,

I can’t believe that in this day and age that social status is still in vogue and a person’s worth is measured by same. Many rich and successful men in their downtime might dress casually, wearing blue jeans ripped at the knees, T-shirt, and running shoes. Based solely on this first impression, one would think that those men would not be welcomed at certain social events and are looked down upon. However, what usually might give them away is the Rolex on their wrist and the Ferrari in the parking lot.

Wickham

Ontario, Canada

“Hey man, stop stress yourself, mind pressure tek yuh.” How often have people either heard those words or said them to someone else? Sure, they meant well, but the person who is stressed may not be able to simply stop being stressed just like that at the snap of a finger. That’s because stress is an involuntary, insidious, invisible, silent force that has great power.

Sometimes when the stress factor seems obvious and apparent, the person can step away from it, like a high-stressed work environment, but in many cases that’s not possible. The definition of stress explains: “Stress is a feeling of emotional or physical tension. It can come from any event or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, or nervous. Stress is your body’s reaction to a challenge or demand. In short bursts, stress can be positive, such as when it helps you avoid danger or meet a deadline.”

Two things resonated with me from that definition, the word ‘thought’, that matches exactly what Shakespeare’s quote said about not making your thoughts your prison, and also the fact that stress can motivate you into action. Some people do say that they work better under stress to meet deadlines, and there’s always the primal instinct to fight or flee when stress takes you.

In this case, though, I’m focusing more on the negative aspect of stress and the factors that bring it on. Simply trying to survive in this fast-paced, highly competitive world can be stressful, and one factor that increases the stress level of many people is the simple task of financial survival.

The world is not as simple as it used to be, and many people are being stressed by just trying to make ends meet. There is crime that hangs like a shadow over our heads, price increases, health issues, and, of course, trying to find a suitable partner, or worse yet, finding one who stresses you out. There is the stress of not being able to have children, or having children but not being able to manage them.

“Lord, de pickney dem a stress mi out.”

As you can see, the stress factors are myriad, numerous, numberless, as people say in Jamaica. Now, I’m sure that those factors existed long ago, but somehow people didn’t seem as stressed the as they are now. Why? How come our parents and grandparents didn’t seem so stressed as people are nowadays?

Maybe they were stressed, but just didn’t show it, but I like to think that they weren’t as stressed as people of this generation. Even children are highly stressed nowadays and are showing it in ways that are most disturbing and unpleasant.

One major factor that leads to stress is relationship. Combine that with money issues and the stress levels of many people hit the roof. I heard a man on TV news lamenting that because he has no money his woman is surely going to leave him. That’s double stress. Most people who I spoke to expressed that being in a relationship was the most stressful thing that they ever experienced.

“I’m a security officer and been involved in all sort of stressful situations, but none can’t match what I’m going through with my woman.”

Women express similar sentiments also, but somehow I seem to hear it more from men than I do women. Don’t get me wrong, women do complain about men a lot, but about different aspects of the relationship, not necessarily about being stressed.

“He’s lazy, he has a wandering eyes, he’s mean, he’s verbally abusive.” While men will say, “She miserable, cantankerous, nagging, spiteful, everything that stresses me out.”

I was speaking with a friend of mine recently, whose wife had left him, and even though he feels angry, upset, resentful, and hurt about the situation, his words to me were, “I feel less stressed now that she’s gone, I feel liberated.” The fact that he was living in a toxic relationship for many years and now was released from that prison was liberating to him.

Back to that Shakespeare quote again, “Let not your thoughts be your prison.” Being released from that stress is akin to getting a parole from a life sentence, is what he told me.

Stress can lead to serious health issues as all that bottled up, pent up emotional tension can build up a stew that breeds nothing but bad toxins in your cells. It even affects your appearance, making you look haggard and miserable. I have seen women, just out of a toxic relationship, who looked 10 years younger than how they used to look.

The same goes for men too, who say, “I finally got my life back; she was stressing the hell out of me.” But is it true that stress actually destroys men and that they die earlier than women because of it?

The statistics do seem to corroborate that. As one guy said, “My uncle was so stressed, but he died with a smile on his face. No more stress.”

Hey, we can take serious thing and make joke, but most of the men polled expressed the same sentiments — that their women stress them out.

Interestingly, even the act of watching too much bad news can lead to stress in people, but that’s one factor that you can control. Other factors aren’t so simple, but some men find temporary solutions and a respite from the stress.

Men have been known to stay out as late as possible to avoid going home to a stressful environment. Some even turn to drink, while others just resign themselves to their fate and live with it.

Some women seek the company of other men to escape the stress at home, but that in itself can create even more stress. That being said, women are stressed too, but perhaps can deal with it better.

Whatever the reasons may be, the fact is: Stress is not good for the mind, body, or soul.

More time.

seido1yard@gmail.com

Footnote: Jamaica’s 60th anniversary is this year and plenty celebrations are in store. It was announced that due to lack of suitable entrants there would be no Festival Song Competition this year. That came as a shock and disappointment to some people, while others were not surprised. Well, it seems that there was a last-minute effort to salvage the competition and it’s taking place after all, albeit with fewer entrants. I heard also that there was thought given to having a compilation of past great festival songs to commemorate our milestone celebration. If this is true, I applaud it. Sometimes much good can come from seemingly bad situations. Imagine having one album with all of our past great festival songs?