The thing about being stressed for me, is that reality can begin to feel different. What was manageable can now feel intolerable. Light demands can become burdens and making decisions seems complicated and effortful. My patience becomes shallow and the gap between irritation and maddening agitation feels veneer thin. All these things might just seem to be part of stress. Yet, maybe, something else is at work.
When rested, I take the impact of reality more easily. If it’s inconvenient I can tolerate it. If someone is difficult I can summon doubt about their vindictiveness more easily. If more than one thing is on my mind, there is not an enclosed battlefield experience going on. But when I’m stressed, that changes. I have an uncomfortable problem to navigate; the problem of easily concluding my feeling is Reality itself.
And there is another risk too; that I might conclude my feelings are just nonsense. As always, the actuality of the situation likely lies in between.
Stress can distort perspective. Problems magnify. Hostility rears. And the future can feel threatening. But stress too, can undermine delusion. Sometimes we cannot minimise difficulty. It is real, pressing and too heavy to carry as usual. This is when stress becomes an existential issue.
Stress is experienced within reality and our relationship with reality is affected. Our interpretations of reality are altered. That is a potential existential crisis. This is why, for me, stress is not just one of those things. It changes the conditions in which our understanding of reality; of the world, is based. And when our understanding of reality is compromised, making life-judgements is treacherous.
We require space to discover what is real and what our interpretation of reality is. And in stress we need space to discern between stress-ghosts and our non-stress realities. We don’t need to choose between the hyper-truth of stress and the psychological state of doubt stress can bring. Reality is more complicated than either.
Some say we never get more than we can handle. I believe this to be false. Sometimes the world really is asking too much. Sometimes we are asking too much of ourselves. Sometimes both are working in tandem. And we need space, time, quietness to find out which “ask” is predominant.
If we do not give our self space, time and quietness we are not just failing to deal with stress, we are failing to maintain our relationship with reality and if that breaks down, it is not guaranteed to be reconstructed to an existentially comfortable level. Our failure to deal with stress might leave us reality-isolated. And to be isolated from reality is a terrible state of existence.
Let stress not just be one of “those” things. It is a potential threat to everything,
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