Crystal Bell
The Effects of Chronic Stress and What we can do to Help Stress
In this essay I will be looking at the way our body controls stress and the way it handles it and what happens when it is exposed to prolonged stress (or chronic stress). For this specific essay I will be looking at chronic stress in homeless women. I will look at the reasons they experience chronic stress,what chronic stress is, and the ways they cope and handle it. At the end of this essay you should hopefully be able to take away some new coping mechanisms and if not that then maybe a better understanding of chronic stress. My big goal at then end of the day though is to hopefully help you understand stress better and maybe even convince you to take some small steps to ease the stress of the population of homeless women. Let’s get started.
Let’s start with what happens inside our body when we are experiencing stress. Our body is always subconsciously looking for signs of danger. It is always prepared for us to get into some kind of trouble. After our brains notice something off it sends a signal to the amygdala ( the amygdala is located in the frontal part of the temporal lobe and is in charge of you feeling certain emotions) and the amygdala processes the information. If the amygdala decides that it is something dangerous it sends a signal to the hypothalamus. ( The hypothalamus is located in the center of the brain and is in charge of hormone production) The hypothalamus will then use the autonomic nervous system to speak to the entire body. (the autonomic nervous system is split into two parts. The sympathetic nervous system will control the body’s fight or flight response. And then the parasympathetic nervous system regulates the body’s sexual arousal and digestion, it also lowers blood pressure and calms down the heart rate after the fight or flight response has been activated) to activate the sympathetic nervous system the hypothalamus will send signals to the adrenal gland and it will release adrenaline into the bloodstream. The adrenaline will then speed up heart rate and raise blood pressure. The body’s senses will become enhanced to help make processing outer stimulus quicker. The body will then activate the HPA axis ( hypothalamus, pituitary gland, and adrenal glands) that will release signals to keep the body alert until the danger passes. After the danger passes the parasympathetic nervous system activates and begins to put our body into the “rest and digest” phase.
Now what happens to the body when it is introduced to prolonged/chronic stress? The stress response has three phases known as GAS. (#1 Alarm. The fight or flight response. #2 Resistance. The body begins to try and normalize. #3 Exhaustion. The body begins to shut down causing fatigue.) If the body is forced into prolonged phase two the body will then begin to have troubles. It has been shown to decrease the production of serotonin ( the hormone that makes you happy), causes one to have an incapability to focus, causing insomnia and other sleeping disorders, It has been shown to weaken the immune system and increase risk for a multitude of diseases and much much more. Now knowing this, knowing that it can have real problems to one’s health, what happens to those who experience chronic stress?
One population that is known to experience chronic stress is homeless women. Studies have shown that homeless women have high levels of things such as depression and, yep you guessed it, stress. Despite all the research that has been done on stress very little has been done on this specific population. A population that in my personal opinion deals with stress the most. These women are forced into many different situations that cause them severe stress and in turn that make them vulnerable to health problems. How do they handle all the stress they must face on a day to day basis? What do they do to cope? And do their coping mechanisms work?
Well, according to the essay “Coping with Chronic Stress: Leisure and Women Who Are Homeless” by Sandra Wolf Klitzing they have many different forms of coping and they all work to different levels. Some of these coping mechanisms are. Confronting the problem head on and solving it, getting support from people around them, endurance and forcing themselves to just live till tomorrow, and many many more. They have many different ways to handle the things they deal with but the things that popped up the most were different kinds of leisure (leisure companionship, palliative leisure, and leisure mood enhancements), interaction with the people around them and staying away from people to get their bearings.
In the life of homeless women it’s hard to find any kind of consistency. They don’t even have the constancy of where they will sleep that night or whether or not they will have food. Things that for people like me are very consistent. To some of us seeing people who clearly have no home is saddening but then we go about our day and don’t think about it again until we see someone else. For others they even feel anger towards them for not being able to get out of their situation. What they don’t understand though is that once you lose your home it’s hard to keep a job, and it’s even harder to get one if you lost it (you need an address to even apply to get a job). So what can we do to help ease the stress of their lives well if we own a company or a business of some sort so we could consider giving them a chance to apply. And if we don’t then maybe be sure to have a little food in your car with you at all times, something that you can give to someone who may need it. Even doing something small like that can make a difference in their stress. Buying and donating feminine products or giving them to people who seem to need them helps them to have one less thing to stress about. You may not be able to “cure” them of their chronic stress but you sure can do things to help. And I hope you do.
Works Cited
Bellingham, Kay. “Chronic stress: a major driver of ‘dis-ease.’” Journal of Australian Traditional-Medicine Society 22, no. 3, spring 2016, p. 177. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=118335128&site=ehost-live.
“Parasympathetic Nervous System.” Parasympathetic Nervous System – an Overview | ScienceDirect Topics, www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/parasympathetic-nervous-system.
“Understanding the Stress Response.” Harvard Mental Health Letter, vol. 27, no. 9, Mar. 2011, pp. 4-5 EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=58041158&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Klitzing, Sandra Wolf. “Coping with Chronic Stress: Leisure and Women Who Are Homeless.” Leisure Sciences, vol. 25, no. 2/3, Apr. 2003, p. 163. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/01490400306564.
