CHAPTER IX
"WHICH IS THE FUNDAMENTAL CAUSE OF THE "STRESS?"
Fundamentally, the "stress" is an effort of the organism to maintain the balance due to certain aggressive situations.
The balance is regulated by two factors physiologic: nervous system and glandular system.
The nervous system receives the external impacts, through the senses and, by them, there also circulate the internal reactions, of psychic nature. The brain decodes, interprets and directs the answer. In correspondence with the interpretation given to the incentive, there will be generated hormones that will relax, bringing calm states, or that will provoke tension, bringing disturbed states.
When the man is submitted to a situation of real tension, fear situation, for instance - let us say that he is in the imminence of being ran over by a car, or suffering an assault - in that fraction of second, there appears in the sanguine current certain hormones, as adrenaline and other corticoids of the suprarenal, hormones these that will request defined nervous reactions, that generate a particular picture - palpitation, anguish, paleness. This comes accompanied by an alert state that is favorable for the escape or for the attack.
Stimulated by that internal reaction, the individual enlarges in a fantastic way his agility, his force, in order to escape of the situation in the most favorable way.
Well then, passed the danger, the hormones are eliminated and the organism goes back working again normally; up to there, everything well, defined and favorable reactions.
Dr. Hans Selye, Viennese physiologist, that took root in Canada, developed very deep studies in respect to those types of reaction and he gave, with that, origin to one of the most recent chapters of the medicine, that is the psychosomatic, first line of the traditional medicine that begins considering the man as a whole.
Through their studies, he reached the following conclusion: when the man receives aggressions of psychological nature, such as, frustrations, offenses, he gets ready just as if he were before a real aggression - generates hormones that will request an organic reaction.
Not getting to eliminate the cause, because the cause is not clear, he hides the cause and he stratifies the defense state, that is, the hormones continue circulating indefinitely, provoking organic reactions that will produce symptoms and, consequently, organic lesions.
To that crystallized state of defense, Dr. Hans Selye gave the name of "Stress" and, to that mechanism of reacting generating straining hormones; the psychology gives the name of Self Aggression.
"Stress" doesn't result only from the load of pressures exercised by the life, as the hallucinating hurry of the XX century, competitions, bureaucracy, wages not fair, 365 annual days of routines when the nature demands variety and a thousand other tensions known by each one of us. The agent that causes "Stress" is not in those facts, properly, but it is in the way that they are interpreted, in the manner that we face all those events and in the form how we get to manipulate our reactions.
The Psychosomatic puts the emotional factors as causes of the auto aggression and of "Stress", because it is them that direct our interpretation of the events that surround us. This is the key point of the whole process. It is necessary to take conscience of that truth for us to lower sensibly the level of "Stress".
The rage, for instance, the disaffection, they generate a picture of "Stress." The vanity, the pride, the offended self esteem, they take us to give interpretations highly stressful to the offenses, back bitings, slanders that we receive in life.
These values - vanity, pride, self esteem - turn us unable to receive censorship, in any measure, no matter how appropriate it is. The perfectionism is a great generator of "Stress."
And here it adjusts, to suit, that story of the Hindu tradition: "Certain disciple went to complain to his guru that their school friends mistreated him for being of inferior breed, to what the Master answers: "My son, if you throw a stone to a window and this has window pane, it will be just to hope that the glasses will be broken, producing great noise and material damages. If, however, the window doesn't have glasses, the stone will pass without causing damages. The disciple should be as the window without glasses. Take off your self esteem, your pride, your vanity, that is not the true of your nature and nobody, never, will get to humiliate you or to hurt you".
We should assume a position of such impartiality, that we would become capable to judge the justice or injustice of the events in a neutral way. We should be capable to take all of the necessary providences, with a minimum possible of emotional involvement. The SERENITY is one of the Laws of the Psychosomatic.
To change the way to interpret and to learn how to control the aggressive emotional reactions, we need to know better the possibilities of the human thought.
It is in the control of the mind and in the power of the thought well conducted that is the key for the liberation of the "Stress." This subject is in full detail developed in the book "Personal Balance" of my authorship. You get to know how the mind works and to conduct it constructively.