Impact of stress on student and society

ASISH , kolkata: Nov 23 2007

- ASISH BASAK

The single most important factor that plagues a society is not any disease, natural calamity, nor even terrorism. It is the worry, the reason behind more premature ailments and death than all other terrors can unleash. Each year innumerable people die from broken spirit and numerous additional maladies that spring from tension due to stress.
The human nature has four basic components - the Body, the Mind, the Heart and the Spirit. Worry enters unobtrusively in our system in response to a vague threat or stress. Slowly it rears its ugly head in the body, spreading such virulent poison as anxiety, insecurity, doubt, nervousness, frustration, sadness, foreboding and lethargy. All these negative aspects trigger more negative emotions and slowly worry begins to spread its evil tentacles over the free mental space. After enduring the formative stages, it then whimsically flirts in the alleys of the individual’s mind. The ever-expanding dark cloud of fear slowly eats into the human nervous system (like a deadly virus; each day building up more bad sector in the mind disk). This in turn destabilizes the mental equilibrium to cause an all consuming anger and resentment, ultimately leading the victim to complete disintegration. The control centre (brain), the engine (heart) and the fuel (spirit) are irreparably damaged under sporadic or perpetual stress and ultimately the machine (body) gives way.
Can anyone say why and when do we worry? Actually, there is no fixed time or exact reason, for if there was so, no body would have worried or felt drained out of stress.
But what is stress? According to its physical definition, stress is force applied per unit area. Our brain cells are capable of taking load (in form of ideas) till a certain limit (variable for different individuals due to various factors like environment, perception, upbringing, adaptability, etc.). Beyond this breaking point, an average individual begins to feel a sensation of uneasiness, undue solicitude; negligence, anger and general resentment towards life and society.
This scenario is explicitly seen in the case of our children. Bearing impressionable and tender minds, having learnt little from life during their nascent interaction with their environment, most school-going children are falling prey to the menace of stress.
Today’s world has set a tough guideline for students. Although some veterans may argue that there are more opportunities and prospects than earlier days, yet the demon of Peer Pressure and Parental Pressure leaves a telling impression on tender minds. Not just only in studies, a student has to excel in extra curriculum as well. 24 hours a day is split around his tuition time at various places. There is off course the attraction of a quick burger or a new film in the multiplex to add spice to their dreary lives. Bonding with the opposite gender (inspired by the tinsel world) is now seen from even primary stage at schools. Such dalliance of immature minds often leads to traumatic situations, as evident from almost regular reports in the media. Sensitivity and juvenile euphoria, tempered by abysmal stress, has even directed a few students to commit acts of folly and turpitude like molestation, eve teasing, drug addiction, suicide or even homicide. Indecision about the choice of courses to build a career, too much options in case of private institutions (all competing with each other to establish their brand value), parental shepherding towards the line of distraction, inability to cultivate one’s own intellect - all this make the stress on students a bit too much to handle sometimes.
The case of stress on senior students is more acute and abject. Many an ambition is nipped in the bud as they have to toil for regular jobs after completion of studies to meet their ends. Even students from wealthy background have to settle for a vocation of entirely different perspective than what he has viewed for himself. Naturally, after a few months, they get de-motivated and grow restless. The stress of not standing up to his own vision drives him to an inert, mundane and barren life, shorn of thrills and frills which he has so painfully planned for himself for so many years.
If such is the case of the students, then let us extrapolate the situation on the society as a whole. The internal state of animosity, felt due to duress, is neither a prerogative of the riches, nor the badge of the downtrodden. It pervades across all masses, irrespective of class, creed and social status, hanging like an albatross on almost every member of the society, dogging every step and stage of human life. Today’s cosmopolitan world has redefined and restructured the way we live and like all other laws of the universe, it has elicited equal and opposite reactions to the force of advancement. Life has become more complex, more problematic and more chaotic. And with them all, inevitably, we are given more gist for worrying as we are faced with increased stress and more crises.
Most of the things we worry about hardly ever happen by the law of averages; but we still torment ourselves with disturbing thoughts and fret and fume about them. Thus, worry is an unproductive and wastefully extravagant negative spiral which feeds on itself. The more time and energy is spent on it, the more it sucks into itself. Considerate and constant stress constricts the smooth flow of confidence, the X factor which determines the rate of success in our life. As the lack of confidence seeps into our conscience, we tend to be more aware, more conscious about it. As we become more conscious, slowly our whole system undergoes changes. Because our emotions and attitude are very delicately inter-balanced, we gradually get conditioned to think and accept more such problems. In other words, we become receptive to this malady and sooner, rather than later, we become the slave of the all-conquering force of worry.
Worry becomes a habit that is associated not only with the well-being of oneself, of near and dear ones, but also encompasses the distant notions like welfare of one’s favourite team, society, country, world or even the universe. Worrying about tomorrow and repenting about the lost time (that is, the yesterday) will surely make us worry about our future later on. Because we all know but tend to forget the simple truth that today was the tomorrow we had worried about yesterday. Thus worrying creates a vicious circle from which we can never hope to come out unless we try it from today, nay, this moment only.
Six basic emotions - surprise, happiness, fear, anger, disgust and sadness - have been associated with human nervous system under stress. Since man is a gregarious animal, he is being judged every waking moment. Each individual, by dint of his body language, constantly gives out non-verbal signals to the people surrounding him. All the above emotions, however may one try to conceal, are revealed by the various positioning and movement of head, eyes, lips, shoulders, hands, fingers and legs that speak a language understood across borders and party lines.
Worry is a classic case of ‘fight and flight’ stimuli with the notable absence of actual activity. One can neither dispel worry by fighting it nor can escape from it by running away. Absolute stress impedes our ability to lead a healthy life and compress ourselves physically, mentally and spiritually. The rationale and creative sight is mostly blocked or shriveled to a miniscule, through which only depression and hypertension adsorbs inside the human system. Worry produces stress in body, increases our blood pressure and produces several physical and chemical changes in our exterior and interior body system. Itching of skin, hair loss, acnes and pimples, etc. are visible impacts of excessive worry and tension. Internally, it can damage our immune system causing stomach aches, constipation, acid, gas, hysteria, insomnia, headache, heart attack, stroke, etc. We have to consciously break the worry habit, before it breaks us completely.
Some people worry so much that sometimes they worry that they are not worrying enough to keep them well. Thus everything originates and also culminates in the mind.
Insanity, according to some prominent psychologists, is a shelter of harassed individuals who have retreated into this surreal stress-free world, unable to cope with the hazards of the harsh reality.
Although worry is universally recognised as a damaging exercise, sometimes it can positively affect our imagination and action. As worry begets fear, we may start to imagine different things and plan and act accordingly. Thus it sparks our imagination and initiates action which under ordinary circumstances would not have happened. Thus worry acts as a trigger factor of the nervous system.
Most people seek negative aspects and discontentment in whatever situation they find themselves in. A vast majority of us tend to live in problem-centric castles of thin air where the pasture yonder always looks greener. It is imperative that we stop whining and start finding whatever is good under the existing scenario. Happiness and contentment will fill our lives with abundance instead of the insecurity and inconvenience we feel ourselves in. This enlightened state of the quasi-forgotten soul can be equated with that of the elation of victory which infuses a wonderful feeling of both ecstasy and gratification. We must abstain from being continuously stressed and fill our life with troubles most of which have never and will never happen. Worrying minutes do not affect the clock in any way except that it only decreases our span of life in the earth.
Our mental attitude is the deciding factor that determines our fate. Neuroscience research has found many patients spending sleepless nights mourning over gross misfortunes most of which never happen in real life. Every day the husband goes to the office, the child goes to the school, the mother cooks on the gas oven, hundreds of people cross the bridge, thousands ride a railway carriage - these are all day-to-day occurrences where each one safely returns to the warmth and shelter of home. How many of these suffer mishaps according to the law of averages? It is about 1%, a really microscopic part of the gigantic proportion of what we worry about.
Most of us cannot accept the truth that some events which are beyond our control cannot be controlled. It is equally true that each of us is enamoured with our own well-being and self-good. But if you consider your chief worries against the backdrop of the innumerable and untold sufferings of the masses across the world, over the years, then you will be really ashamed that you have even bothered to think that you are in trouble. All your worries will seem so trivial in terms of eternity. And then you realise how fortunate you have been, and you start to enjoy the blessings of life instead of languishing for the misses that had occurred.