Stress Management, Past and Present

People have always felt stress, but for thousands of years it remained a vague concept, making it difficult to address.

The holidays will be here soon, a stressful time for many. There’s things to do, people to see, seasonal budgets to manage . . . that’s a lot of balls to juggle from October through December.

So, since we’re in the middle of the gap between the end of summer and the hectic final months of the year, we thought we’d post a short overview of stress management and how it came to be, with some examples of different proven strategies.

Stress has been around since Neanderthals were being chased by saber-tooth tigers. Amazingly, though, stress wasn’t really identified as a “thing” until the 1930’s. That’s when Canadian Hans Selye began to study, methodically, the physiological effects of duress on rats and found commonalities in how their bodies changed, never for the better. This is where the formal idea of stress was born, and its potential costs to the body identified.[1]

Seyle ended up writing 39 books on stress, a bit of overkill, but basically a good thing since you can’t treat a condition unless you know what it is. By the mid-1950s two American cardiologists—Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman—had made sufficient progress to create the concept of the “Type A” personality, a profile particularly vulnerable to the effects of stress.[2]

In light of these relatively recent developments, it’s interesting to note that many effective ways of handling stress were really around from the beginning. Truthfully, the stress health of our cave dwelling ancestors was pretty good. They exercised, for one, walking and running constantly. Proper nutrition wasn’t a problem, either (“Caveman Diet,” anyone?). And though they may not have been square dancing or attending art exhibitions, cave people socialized constantly, a cornerstone of stress management technique.

As society has developed and civilization evolved, so, too, have approaches to relieving anxiety. The basics are still very much effective, but other ways to maintain calm have surfaced over the last hundred years. Here are some examples:

  • The growth and acceptance of meditation as a healing tool applied to stress is at an all-time high, as this article from the Mayo Clinic
  • A new MIT study shows that benevolence may help people cope with distressing events.
  • The University of Exter published a study showing that watching fish in an aquarium is an effective de-stressor: the more fish, the better!
  • Laughter Yoga is a popular movement and breathing exercise that aims to “cultivate joy, bring out your inner child, and help you let go of daily life stressors.”
  • Increasingly, new kinds of technology are being applied to address stress, as summarized in this Forbes article.

Speaking of technology, if you are a c-store operator that’s looking to reduce stress during the Holiday Season, SSCS Software is definitely worth a look. Our back office technology will help you get things done faster, while at the same time adding efficiency and profitability to your business. In the extra time you create for yourself, you can get away from the store and pursue your other favorite stress relieving practices. If that sounds good, please take a deep breath, relax, and call us at (800) 972-7727.

[1] Alix Spiegel, “The Secret History Behind The Science Of Stress,” npr.org, July 7, 2014, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/07/07/325946892/the-secret-history-behind-the-science-of-stress.

[2] Ibid.