Levels

I know many people who are retired, live alone or who have lives that are stable. They are financially secure, have no major health problems and their lives, from the outside, look fine.

And some of them can get incredibly stressed about such minor problems that people like me look and cannot understand what is wrong with them. There is, of course, nothing wrong with them. Their lives are just running along at a different level to mine.

I remember a couple of years back, being joined to my BlackBerry, dealing with hundreds of emails and text messages a day and just generally living at a level that felt natural after months of behaving that way. Little problems were ignored, major problems somehow became less significant and I never felt really stressed because I was stressed 24 hours a day and it felt normal in a perverse sort of way. Eventually it all took its toll and I crashed. Not badly, but enough to make me step back and realise what was happening.

Today I am much less stressed and my life is relatively normal. I have no BlackBerry, not so many emails and am cutting back on needless work. Yes, I find myself getting stressed over silly things that would not have even entered my consciousness two years ago. I am at a different level. A level I enjoy much more of that there is no doubt, but it occurred to me that as humans we all need stress and if we have none, we will go and find it. We will make up stressful situations and exaggerate problems in our minds just so that we can be stressed.

This article has little connection to smartphones, but I will say it again. Smartphones (BlackBerrys in business) can be a source of stress and stepping back is rarely a bad thing.

Comments

[Neil]

I'm not so sure — I reckon, give it a while, and you'll feel differently. Whilst I do still find elements of work a stress, my stress levels are a heck of a lot lower than a year ago, and I think that my "measured connection" approach is at least something to do with it. I am unsure that humans seek out stress, or even need stress, though — I think it's fair to see that, to get things done, there needs to be some motivating factor, but that need not be stress, to my mind.

Perhaps a case of keeping on the disconnectedness side of things, and just seeing whether, in time, your stress levels drop?

[Bob Deskin]

Not being a psychologist, I really have no idea, but it may be a relative thing. If everything else is fine, then a small blip seems large by comparison. Since everything else is great, the small thing is a major annoyance, or disturbance in the force.

It's the opposite if you have too much going on or too much stress. A small unimportant thing gets totally lost in the forest. However, when under stress, something else that's major enough to warrant attention can be the straw that broke the camels back.