Many people \u2013 including physicians \u2013 see stress as some kind of blob. To have or not to have\u2026 And then: to have it to a certain degree on a scale from nil to X.<\/p>\n
\u201cYesterday I had a lot of stress.\u201d \u201cThis stresses me out very much.\u201d And so on. Using a number of questions, one can make a \u2018stress scale\u2019 and concretely give a number, a score. With much caution, this may be practical for instance when comparing levels in the course of time.<\/p>\n
But this has a huge drawback: stress is too complex to be scored one-dimensionally. Using a simple scoring system, a lot of meaningful information gets drowned. \u2018Meaningful\u2019 in the sense that what one item can mean to one person, doesn\u2019t necessarily mean the same thing to another person at all<\/em>. Some fuzziness would be OK, but it\u2019s much more than that.<\/p>\n If something has meaning to someone, there is always a \u2018deeper meaning\u2019.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n At the surface, things may look surface-like, obviously, but not so in reality. For instance, your boss gives you negative feedback:<\/p>\n As a general rule, the deeper one goes into \u2018meaning\u2019, the less concrete and the more energetic it becomes.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Thus the more deeply meaningful, the more there is potential<\/em> to be stressful. So, if someone is quite stressed out, it\u2019s interesting to look into the real \u2018why,\u2019 which is seldom the most obvious one. For instance, a \u2018loss of self-worth\u2019 may mean to one person a lot more than to another person. It may be a pattern that is engrained again and again in childhood. As a child, one may have felt very un-supported in self-worth. This may mean to a person the lack of having been loved. It may still mean the lack of feeling loved. A deep pattern may pervade past and present and possibly also the future.<\/p>\n The deepest always goes to the domain of \u2018total person\u2019. <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In this domain, things are always very much interconnected. Including brain-wise: \u2018depth\u2019 is where many parts of the brain act together in synchrony with each other and even the rest of the body. It\u2019s about wholeness: of body and mind and also of social environment.<\/p>\n In this lies a cause of illness through distress. In the same also lies an opportunity to help the stressed-out person. In our example, it would be about going deep and showing there \u2013 experiencing together \u2013 how one\u2019s feeling of self-worth may become more independent from praise or scorn.<\/p>\n Eventually, all meaning is related to the meaning of life.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s a matter of life or death\u2026 while living. This shows the connection with depression \/ burn-out. After a period of fighting (being \u2018stressed\u2019), a person may just plainly give up, or he lacks the energy to continue the battle. Depression \/ burn-out then shows its ugly head. The fight may feel as being addressed against stressful circumstances but in the end<\/em> it\u2019s against a lack of meaningfulness.<\/p>\n More formally:<\/p>\n The boss then symbolizes\u2026 well, actually himself: the \u2018boss\u2019 as someone who lacks meaningfulness in how he gives feedback in the first place. A leader doesn\u2019t give such feedback inasmuch as he gives meaningfulness. He motivates to get beyond, to do better, to see this as a challenge that is definitely worthwhile, say: meaningful.<\/p>\n Leadership and negative\/positive stress are very interconnected. The glue is meaningfulness.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n The former appears in surveys time and time again. The latter is seldom recognized. Nevertheless:<\/p>\n Without bread, we die.<\/strong><\/p>\n Without meaning, we are already dead (psychologically).<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
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