{"id":2161,"date":"2014-01-28T15:51:18","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T23:51:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stanford.edu\/group\/sdgc\/cgi-bin\/ycisl\/?p=2161"},"modified":"2014-01-28T15:51:18","modified_gmt":"2014-01-28T23:51:18","slug":"thoughts-the-feeling-of-stress-and-strain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/?p=2161","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts: The Feeling of Stress and Strain"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my previous post, I developed thoughts using chemistry terms. In this post, I will use terms I learned in geology. “Stressor” is also a term used in environmental toxicology and some terms from this area will also be used.<\/p>\n

Adults often talk about their stress. Stress from work especially but there’s also major stress from money (all the way from lack of to an abundance of), relationships, etc. How can we define stress? Geology.com (1\/27\/14) defines stress as “A force acting upon or within a mass or rock, expressed in terms of unit weight per surface area such as tons per square inch.” So the thing to remember is that stress is an external entity to the object being stressed (i.e., you) and that maximum stress occurs when the force is perpendicular to your surface. Another thing to remember is that stress is typically a field meaning other objects in proximity are feeling the same or similar stress. Stress can be sudden (acute) or chronic. Would you like to be stress-free? What do you think of products that promise to be “stress-free”?<\/p>\n

Then there’s strain. We commonly hear about muscle strain, mental strain and eyesight strain (I’m sure you have other strains you are personally familiar with). Geology.com (1\/27\/14) defines strain as “A change in the volume or shape of a rock mass in response to stress.” For our YCISL discussion, strain is the feeling we experience of change due to external stressors, and sometimes it may be well-intentioned but misplaced or misguided stress. In one case, strain results in a multitude of deformities – in people, it can be psychological as well as physical and physiological. But understand that not all stress results in strain and deformity. We usually have stress thresholds below which there is no change (or at least noticeable change).<\/p>\n

In terms of personal development and heightened emotional intelligence\/awareness, we could think of stress and strain in terms of our own susceptibility, resilience and recoverability (borrowed from the terminology use in environmental toxicology).<\/p>\n

1. Susceptibility describes the relative amount stressor required to cause an effect. Have you ever used a magnet and see an object move only within a certain distance? That’s magnetic susceptibility; the magnetic field had to be within a certain threshold distance to cause a magnetic effect. How close do you need to be to someone who sneezes to catch their flu germs? How close do you need to be to a fire to be bothered by the smoke? At what temperature do you feel cold\/hot? Odd thing though is that the answers vary – even with the magnet. Therefore, it is good to know one’s own susceptibility to the various stressors that we each experience – and to deal with it with that knowledge.<\/p>\n

2. Resiliency describes the quickness with which we can “bounce back” from being strained. Often, we would like to return to our initial state as quickly as possible but factors such as age might affect our resiliency. If we are already weakened by some other strain, resiliency towards another strain might also be less. If you’re a teenager, how long does it take to get over an ankle sprain? How long does it take for an adult?<\/p>\n

3. Recoverability describes whether we have the means or mechanisms to even return to the original state. If these recovery paths are not present, then the effects of the strain will continue.<\/p>\n

In order to get these concepts understood, I have framed stress and strain in their usual negative sense. We deal with it – usually youth do better at it than adults (just one of the YCISL program’s premises). But at the present time, I am thinking of stress being that of school education and how it is a stress field over numerous objects (students). This stress field is extremely complex as numerous nodes are contributing to the field strength and pattern (it might help to think of having a handful of magnets over a cupful of ball bearings). Are students helpless in this stress field? What if you lie in a shear plane – the interface of two dissimilar, possibly opposing, stress fields? What should or could be done about optimizing the stress field (after all, the aim is to educate)?<\/p>\n

This is just as much a message for parents and teachers as it is for students. Share your thoughts with each other about the stresses being imposed and experienced. Understand the susceptibility of the student to strain and measure your imposition of stress accordingly (yes, stress can often be necessary to make progress). Discuss how positive thinking is the best stance with which to cope with stress and strain. Identify recovery paths and keep them at your disposal. In the infamous words of Douglas Adams from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “DON’T PANIC!”<\/p>\n

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In my previous post, I developed thoughts using chemistry terms. In this post, I will use terms I learned in geology. “Stressor” is also a term used in environmental toxicology and some terms from this area will also be used. Adults often talk about their stress. Stress from work especially but there’s also major stress […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2161"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2181,"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2161\/revisions\/2181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ycisl.su.domains\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}