[Martinelv]

I've just given myself a good talking to in the toilet (bathroom/restroom), and I thought this might be of some help.

I've just been in a mega-high powered meeting where I had to, under the gaze of the board of directors, come up with solutions to certain problems. Now, because I pretend I'm so bloody clever, despite the reality, I was expected to produce some solid results...on the spot. I sat there while my conscious brain took a back seat, and gabbled on for twenty minutes, while my semi-conscious brain said...'Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitssssssss PANIC TIME !!!!!'.

So, despite coming out of the meeting with my psuedo-clever reputation intact, I felt like I was going to have a panic attack. The usual feelings, adrenaline, sweating, dizzyness....etc etc. But...I said to myself, for Christ's sake Martin, this ISN'T anxiety...it's stress...and something that has enabled me to perform a function that was asked of me. And guess what, I calmed the hell down.

Saying that, because I managed to sound clever, I've just been called to another meeting..............sigh. Ready the toilet. :?

 

[Guest]

I think I get what you meant -- that there's a difference between stress versus anxiety -- but could you elaborate? I always thought those words were interchangable.

PS
Hope your meeting went well!

 

[Sojourner]

They are interchangeable. Normal people get anxious thoughts and panicky thoughts too.

The only difference is that they handle them differently. People you think are "normal" often know exactly what a panic attack is and have read Claire Weekes' book. They now how to handle them, and they are "normal."

We can all recover from nervous illness -- totally.

 

[Dreamer]

I'd like to clarify from what I've been reading about stress. I have a lot of good books to recommend.

Stress is an event which instigates the survival response.

Stress in its purest form would be, in days of our ancestors sp!, related to fending off danger of being eaten by a lion.

Stress occurs daily. It is that which knocks the body out of homeostasis or "balance." Martin, your leukemia is a stressor. Birth of a child is a stressor.

These things are understandable in terms of survival. They are primitive events that all animals face. Unfortunately as we have moved into a more modern world where running from a lion is not a daily concern, we have more "abstract" stressors, such as your presentation.

Anxiety is the survival mechanism which allows us to act immediately to function well in a "dangerous situation." The problem is, stress these days can become generalized. That is a situation that isn't "dangerous", becomes overgeneralized to be interpreted by the body as "dangerous."

As humans we become concerned with failure, with being judged, etc, and these things become stressors. They cause us to become anxious and our bodies react in their normal primitive mode... but that mode of "survival"/"fight or flight" isn't necessary.

For those of us here, we have an overactive stress response, or rather we overreact to normal everyday stress that doesn't bother "healthier" people. I KNOW such people who haven't the faintest idea what I mean when I say, "Don't you get anxious making a presentation for 500 people?" "Don't you get anxious getting up in front of a classroom full of kids?" They have no clue what is so stressful about it, once they have mastered it.

This is getting too long. But there are many excellent books out there that talk about stress and its negative effects on those of us who live in a chronic fight/flight state.

I hope this makes sense.

Stress is any EVENT (internal or external -- illness/pregnancy/hunger or giving a presentation/losing one's wallet/getting robbed) that causes us to use our primitive fight/flight response which is anxiety.

They are two very distinct entities.

Will provide references upon request, LOL.

Best,
D 8)

Ah, the newest term for stress is "allostatic load". And there is a great relationship with the hypothalamus/pituitary axis (HPA) and the introduction of cortisol into the bloodstream under stress.

It is a survival mechansim that in those of us with anxiety DISORDERS is malfunctioning, per what I have read and understand on the subject.

End of lecture 8)

 

[Dreamer]

OK, three good books:

(My bibliography, LOL)

Mind, Stress and Emotions by Wallerstein

Does Stress Damage the Brain by Bremner
PLEASE don't stress over that title, LOL, ya' gotta read the thing!

An excellent book which is a "update" on the definition of stress. Here "allostatic load" is discussed. This is excellent.

The End of Stress As We Know It by McEwan/Lasley
(And this does not mean there is no stress -- the title is a tad misleading. He redefines it with great clarity and discusses how stress knocks the body out of homeostasis)

There are millions of articles on stress on PubMed/MedScape, etc.

Stress is NOT anxiety. Stress instigates the Anxiety Response.

 

[Dreamer]

An excellent discussion of this by V.S. Ramachandran. This was discussed in the BBC Reith lectures and this is the transcript. The Lectures were adapted and made into the book "A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/lecture5.shtml

If you read nothing else, read this.

..... from Ramachandran's lecture... see link to all lectures....
"Now Capgras and Cotard are both rare syndromes. But there's another disorder, a sort of mini-Cotard's that's much more commonly seen in clinical practice (those of you here who are psychiatrists know this, or psychologists). It's called Derealisation and Depersonalisation. It's seen in acute anxiety, panic attacks, depression and other dissociative states. Suddenly the world seems completely unreal - like a dream. Or you may feel that you are not real - Doctor, I feel like a zombie. Why does this happen? As I said, it's quite common.

I think it involves the same circuits as Capgras and Cotard's. You've all heard of the phrase, playing possum. An opossum when chased by a predator suddenly loses all muscle tone and plays dead. Why? This is because any movement by the possum will encourage the predatory behaviour of the carnivore - and carnivores also avoid dead infected food. So playing dead is very adaptive for the possum.

Following the lead of Martin Roth and Sierra and Berrios, I suggested Derealisation and Depersonalisation and other dissociative states are an example of playing possum in the emotional realm. And I'll explain. It's an evolutionary adaptive mechanism. Remember the story of Livingstone being mauled by a lion.

He saw his arm being ripped off but felt no pain or even fear. He felt like he was detached from it all, watching it all happen. The same thing happens, by the way, to soldiers in battle or sometimes even to women being raped. During such dire emergencies, the anterior cingular in the brain, part of the frontal lobes, becomes extremely active. This inhibits or temporarily shuts down your amygdala and other limbic emotional centres, so you suppress potentially disabling emotions like anxiety and fear - temporarily. But at the same time, the anterior cingular makes you extremely alert and vigilant so you can take the appropriate action.

Now of course in an emergency this combination of shutting down emotions and being hyper-vigilant at the same time is useful, keeping you out of harm's way. It's best to do nothing than engage in some sort of erratic behaviour. But what if the same mechanism is accidentally triggered by chemical imbalances or brain disease, when there is no emergency. You look at the world, you're intensely alert, hyper-vigilant, but it's completely devoid of emotional meaning because you've shut down your limbic system. And there are only two ways for you to interpret this dilemma. Either you say the world isn't real - and that's called Derealisation. Or you say, I'm not real, I feel empty - and that's called Depersonalisation.

Epileptic seizures originating in this part of the brain can also produce these dreamy states of Deralisation and Depersonalisation. And, intriguingly, we know that during the actual seizure when the patient is experiencing Derealisation, you can obtain a Galvanic Skin Response and there's no response to anything. But once he comes out of the seizure, fine, he's normal. And all of this supports the hypothesis that I'm proposing."

V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., Ph.D.

 

[Sojourner]

OK, Dreamer, but isn't there a healthy "anxiety"? The kind that doesn't stick around longer than it's needed. Maybe you're calling that "stress." I certainly do that sometimes.

 

[Dreamer]

OK, Dreamer, but isn't there a healthy "anxiety"? The kind that doesn't stick around longer than it's needed. Maybe you're calling that "stress." I certainly do that sometimes.

Absolutely. If you read Ramachandran's article. Healthy anxiety is how react to situations that require a survival response. Fleeing from the WTC on 9/11, hanging onto the steering wheel and slamming on the brakes in a head on collision, keeping yourself together when someone has a heart attack in front of you, or when you need to flee Hurricane Rita, etc., etc. It's even healthy to be anxious before your wedding, before a presentation, so you're focused, on your toes. But if the anxiety keeps you from carrying out what a healthy person could do in the same circumstance it's unhealthy.

Yes, there is healthy anxiety. It helps athletes pump up for a game, helps us study late into the night to get a project finished, etc., etc.

UNHEALTHY anxiety is that which makes one incapacitated, hangs around FAR longer than it should (after it's served its purpose). Someone with an anxiety disorder has PATHOLOGICAL anxiety, not "healthy anxiety."

And again STRESS is an EVENT which causes the anxiety response to kick in. From my reading/research/discussions w/professionals Stress is not Anxiety.

I may have it ass backwards, but this is my understanding.

D :shock:

 

[Dreamer]

Here's a great definition:

THIS IS STRESS:
You are walking to your car at 2:30 a.m. after work. The parking structure is empty. You are a woman, alone.

THIS IS HEALTHY ANXIETY:
You are hypervigilant for any strange noises/people. You carry mace in your hand. Your keys are ready to open the door to your car.

Your heart may be pounding. THE HPA survival mode has kicked in. You are trying to survive what could be a dangerous situation.

After you're in your car, safe and sound, your vigilence and any anxiety decreases. You return to normal, to homeostasis.

End of healthy anxiety event.

---------------------------------------------------
EVEN WORSE STRESS:
You are attacked on your way to your car.

HEALTHY ANXIETY:
Your HPAxis kicks in (in a very healthy way). You kick and scream. You hit the emergency key so your car's horn goes off. You yell "fire."

Every bone in your body is focused on NOTHING but survival.

You bring attention to yourself and a security guard comes running.

Afterwards you are shaking from all the anxiety hormones that have been keeping you in fight/flight mode. EMS personnel come to see if you're OK, you slowly calm down.

IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO CALM DOWN, that healthy anxiety has become UNHEALTHY. If it persists, you need to seek treatment or you may never be able to go into a parking garage again..... this is exagerrated to make my point.

 

[Dreamer]

Since I wholeheartedly admit to being obsessed with details -- which I think is healthy when one does research 8) -- I have the Webster's definition of stress.

I think the layterm has gotten messed up as usual.

Stress: 1. Pressure, strain esp: a force that tends to distort a body

(that of course would refer to putting too much stress on an object, too much weight on a support beam in a bridge and it collapses.)

2. a factor that induces bodily or mental tension

it also notes, but this is a lay distortion "a state induced by such a stress" -- in medical terms that is not correct, again per what I have read.

I.E. "nervous breakdown" is a layterm. There is no medical term -- "nervous breakdown". It is not used in psychiatric practice. It is a euphemism used by folks who don't want to say, "Our daughter has postpartum depression." Instead they say, "She had a nervous breakdown and needs isolation and rest."

I believe that has to do with stigma. People don't want to hear or use "the real words", so they use euphemisms.

 

[Sojourner]

This is very helpful, Dreamer, and I think you are right. I've read some things about stress' relationship to anxiety and I think I probably conflated the two or otherwise mucked things up. Thanks for the clarification.

It's interesting that Claire Weekes, who was writing almost 40 years ago, does use "nervous illness" and "nervous breakdown" -- but she does so in such a way, I think, that tends to de-stigmatize it. I never knew what "nervous breakdown" meant, actually, when I was growing up, though I heard the term. I always thought of an old jalopy on the side of the road when I heard it. 8)

 

[Dreamer]

It's interesting that Claire Weekes, who was writing almost 40 years ago, does use "nervous illness" and "nervous breakdown" -- but she does so in such a way, I think, that tends to de-stigmatize it. I never knew what "nervous breakdown" meant, actually, when I was growing up, though I heard the term. I always thought of an old jalopy on the side of the road when I heard it. 8)

LOL at the jalopy!

That's like when I thought The Lord's Prayer said, "Our Father, who art in Heaven, Hallow'ed be thy Name..." I thought, "Why do they call God Hallow'ed, that's an odd name." :?

Yes, because Claire Weekes wrote some time ago, she was using expression of the time. I don't know enough about her or the term 40 years ago, but it isn't really very helpful in terms of diagnosing someone. It could mean anything from being agoraphobic to having a manic episode.

I think overall the woman was a pretty smart cookie re: anxiety. Her coping skills are invaluable to so many anxiety sufferers to this day. Wish I'd written the damned thing.

Gotta go!
Cheers

 

[Luka]

Yeah, I don't think stress and anxiety are (always) interchangable. Many people experience stress at work or school (making a deadline, giving a presentation etc.). Anxiety goes a step further (I believe). Healthy stress is very usefull, it can make your performance (in the case of a presentation at work/school) even better! Healthy anxiety can save your life (run like h*ll if you meet an angry tiger that wants you for a sidedish!). Unhealthy anxiety is when you're scared to death without a (realistic) reason.