Stress and the Spirit

I love my pathophysiology class. I probably learn more in it then all my other classes combined. Today, we briefly touched on the issue of stress-related disorders (think depression, irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, anxiety disorders, etc.). My professor, Dr. Sam, basically told us that these conditions did not exist 30 years ago. Why all of a sudden do we all have these chemical imbalances that effect our health? The simple answer is stress. Or is it?

Are these disorders caused by chemical imbalances? Well...sort of. We all have stressors in our lives, both good and bad. And we all have methods to cope with those stressors. We cannot control our likes and dislikes to certain things and our internal reactions to them. What we do control is the behavior we display. That is what makes us uniquely human. We are not forced to react on those most base feelings. We have a higher level of reasoning and thought process that allows us to interpret our life events. And this is where we run into trouble. It is not the stress that causes chemical imbalances it is our perception of the stress.

We all know that everyone responds differently to stressors. For some, a test might be a huge cause of stress and pressure while others actually enjoy studying. Why? It's all in the perception. It's not the test itself giving you stress, it's how you feel about the test. Some typical stressors actually can lead some people to thrive. An easy way to tell that someone is not effectively coping with stress? Asking questions with no answers. "Why did this happen to me?" "Why does nothing in my life ever go right?" "What did my friend/child/parent do to deserve this?" When our mind can't come up with these answers, it causes stress. We need to be able to answer these questions and satisfy our brain in order to reduce our stress level. When we can't answer these questions, our brains freak out and we end with the chemical imbalances that "cause" disorders. In short, we need answers.

What in our culture really offers answers to these questions? We live in a me-first world that says there is nothing more to life then being alive, having fun, and making ourselves happy. How do we cope when we can no longer do those things? This might seem like a contrite answer, but it's not meant to be. We've lost our spirituality, or sense of a deeper meaning and purpose. We don't have answers to these questions anymore. When I think about some of the most spiritual people I know, they don't struggle with these questions. Not that they necessarily have it all figured out and have answers to everything but they've come to a place where they are OK, they can cope with these questions. Faith offers us the most important coping mechanism of all: the ability to see things outside of ourselves and the first glimmer of insight into questions that are way to big for us to handle. If you look at it that way, I think maybe reading C.S. Lewis is the single best coping mechanism a person could ask for. The moral of the story? Get out there and get some stress relief- gospel style!

A Friend Indeed

In honor of my friend and fellow blogger Ben's adding me to his list of blogs and writing a very nice little entry on his blog about me, I've decided to return the favor in a non-conventional way. By posting an awkward fake-looking picture of him in my blog! This picture was taken when Ben was here for our friends Meg and Scott's wedding and we went to Atlantic City with Kim R. There's also pictures of Ben gambling but I'll leave those off. For his sake. So here it is, Ben in all his glory. I swear I didn't photo shop this.

Somethings You Can Never Say Too Much

I found this video today called The Miniature Earth. If you've seen it before, watch it again. Or watch it for the first time. It's a message we can't hear too often. Wanna go deeper then a flash movie? Check out Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger by Ron Sider. Or anything other book by him for that matter. I hope you feel blessed today.

Placing My Bets on the 6 Months Part

In high school, I went on a kick of reading Christian dating books. I read I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Passion and Purity, Letting God Write Your Love Story and a few other more obscure ones. In college I read the rules. None of them worked very well for me. So when I was at Border's recently and found How to Get a Date Worth Keeping: Be Dating in 6 Months are Your Money Back I was like whoa! This is the book for me my friends. And yes, it is from a Christian perspective. And no, it is nothing like I Kissed Dating Goodbye. Joshua Harris would die if he ever read this book. So I'm giving it a try. It certainly can't make things worse.

My first "assignment" is to assess my dating problem. So for a month I have to keep track of all the guys I meet who are 1) new to me 2) have enough of an interaction with me to want to ask me for a date and 3) have a way to contact me to ask me for a date. So I started counting on last Thursday. Last weeks total was 3. I'm not allowed to analyze it. It is what it is. 3. I think this weeks total will be 1, but we'll see. We're only two days in. So that's where I am. Wish me luck and go get yourself a copy! It seems promising!