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RON STUBBS Are YOU a STRESS Junkie? When we think of the term "addict or junkie" we tend to think of those people that get high on a variety of chemicals, alcohol or stimulants. Others get their rush doing things like skydiving, hangliding or any other sports considered "dangerous" by our society. Still others get high on life itself. Then there are those that need that rollercoaster of strife, deadlines and last minute acts to propel them into their personal version life's buzz factory.Those that choose the latter version think they are better off than the type of addicts that chose the chemical route. They don't have to search out late night dealers in back alleys or deserted parking lots to get their drug of choice. They don't worry about getting busted and spending time in jail, they don't spend the rent money looking for a "fix" because their drug is absolutely free, legal and readily available They have names like epinephrine, norepinephrine and glucocorticoids and they are manufactured not by some Columbian drug czar, but by their own bodies. Stress Junkies are real people, just like you and me, who, without even knowing it, use their own physiological responses as a mood altering device. When we percieve ourselves to be in a threatening type of situation, i.e. "stress", Mother Nature, in her infinite wisdom, equipped us with a hormone called cortisol that provides us with that little "something extra" designed to either run like hell or battle for our lives. Our blood pressure increases rushing extra oxygen to the muscles and our digestive process slows down preserving energy. If cortisol and the other hormones that cause these reaction were available on the street, I would expect their value to sky high! When we get that "stress buzz", we become much less conscious of pain, both physical and mental. Hunger, loneliness, bad memories, often retreat to the back of our mind so we can take care of the immediate issue at hand. The world, magnified by the heightened attention of the brain running on red alert status, has a tendency to seem more real, exciting, vivid and intense. Naturally, there's a catch. Just like heroin, cocaine and a host of other "rush" producing stimulants, stress hormones have side effects that can kill you. Pumped into the blood stream at high levels for long periods of time, these chemicals contribute to ulcers, heart disease, weaken the immune system and can leave us vulnerable to everything from depression to diabetes. We can literally stress ourselves to death. Like all addicts, stress junkies go to destructive extremes to get the high they want. That means creating situations that are heavy on anger or fear, the two emotions that cause the most dramatic responses. Dramatic pause for effect..................... When we left off our hero was about to discover the REAL reason why he had been left dangling over the flaming lava pit while his arch enemy, the villainous, Boris Badnoff tied sweet Nell to the railroad tracks on front of the oncoming train........wait..that was a different article...we were about to discuss and recognize the stress cycle.......ok...hold on tight, recognize anyone yet? Stress junkies indulge their habits in a variety of ways...some of these just "might" seem familiar... Favorites may include procrastination, perfectionism,obsessing about obligations, and the immortal inventing catastrophic fantasies about "What Could Go Wrong!. If this sounds WAY to familiar, maybe it's time to examine your own addictive tendencies. We all have them to some degree. But even if you have the wisdom and calm of a Zen Master, the people that you deal with on a day to day basis don't. They come in the form of our friends that worry because the last date they had hasn't called and they are SURE it's because of that small piece of cheesecake they had with dinner...or the boss that "knows" you have to work and extra day of overtime to catch up with an impossible schedule to begin with...or the relatives that are judgmental and are coming the T-day dinner so we have to paint the ENTIRE house, re-landscape, re-carpet the house, order new appliances and oh yeah, trade the kids in for some new ones that have GREAT manners to show them we are doing well in life....... The common factor that links these personalities is their single minded devotion to repeatedly creating specific kinds of upsetting situations. Why would someone DO such a thing? There are several common and VERY powerful reasons for this sort of behavior. Emotional Geyser Effect: Alot of stress junkies tend to have unhealed emotional wounds. The unresolved pain tends to remain stuck in sort of a holding tank filling it up till it blows. I remember my mom having an old pressure cooker with a small valve that bounced around when the steam built up. You remember those, your mom might have had one too. When the little valve started dancing, mom would yell for us kids to "Clear the kitchen, IT COULD BLOW!". Somehow even then, I saw this action for not being such a good thing. I mean , if you are cooking something that could possible blow up and hurt you....But we suppress feeling and emotions every day, telling ourselves just to "deal with it", and shove those emotions further down in our pressure cooker till we blow. or worse yet, those emotions come out in the form of illness.The stress junkie constantly re-creates the cycle for release of these emotions. Just like mom's old pressure cooker, they keep filling it up, shoving the unresolved pain and emotions down till there is little or no space. After that, even a little thing can set it off creating an intolerable zone that the stress addict has literally no control over at the time. An explosion of anger, outburst of tears, just like a geyser eruption lessens the internal pressure so the person can function again till the pressure builds up once again. Anxiety Diversion Technique: Creating and manufacturing stress is an excellent way to avoid a task that a person doesn't want to do. Things like personal growth, accepting responsibility, solving our own problems or even pursing own dreams right into the teeth of our own worst fears. It's much easier to blame, deny and generally avoid the issues altogether by creating a stress pattern in which we are "too busy" "not enough time" or "just not ready" when in reality the problem doesn't go away as we find other things to do instead. By creating an immediate "now" stress pattern with which to deal with " I HAVE to paint the house before THEY get here", we can successfully avoid unpleasant things we don't want to deal with. Safe in the comforting cocoon of these stresses, we become gratifying numb to the uncomfortable knowledge that we need to take on the deeper, more significant challenges. Look at Me Syndrome: Have you ever had a friend whose life was just one LONG series of bad times and events? A crisis factory? Everytime you hear from them it's just another horror story that you get drawn into time after time? Or maybe they just are a member of the walking wounded? Everytime you see them they are "hurt". Remember that sympathy and pity are manifestations of human kindness, we all want to help. Some stress junkies create their own world of pain and crisis because they have never learned to receive care or love in any other form. This is a very common syndrome for people who, in their formative years, never received much positive attention unless they were sick or hurt. By associating love with stress, they find a way to feel victimized whenever they want an emotional connection. SO...We're STRESSED....What DO we do? Simply put; we do what we can, when we can.
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