When last polled in 2017 by the Gallup Organization, only a third of Americans said they were happy. Men report being happier than women.
Separately, half of Americans report they frequently experience significant stress (about 160 million people), naming child discipline, work pressures, health and money issues as their primary stressors.
When people experience stress, psychological researchers tell us a lot more is going on in us than just emotional tension. Heart rate increases, breathing rate becomes more rapid and shallow, we become more irritable, we lose sleep and have more difficulty concentrating. Not surprisingly, we also become more susceptible to illness.
Stress has significant medical consequences as well. 30% of Americans report taking anti-depressants and anti-anxiety prescriptions routinely. Almost half of Americans have some form of heart disease and one third of Americans have diabetes or pre-diabetes. We can’t overlook the percentage of our population that “self-medicates” through alcohol and drug addiction.
We read that opioid use is at epidemic levels, and Americans spend almost $1 trillion annually on psychotropic drugs, like Xanax and Valium. Perhaps most disturbing, children today experience much higher levels of stress and anxiety than did children in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
In the United States virtually everyone is impacted by stress and its crushing effects either personally or with family, friends and colleagues. The medical profession is booming because ofthe impact of stress on our health.
Yet experiencing small levels of stress is completely normal and in no way harmful to us. Virtually all wonderful experiences in our lives are accompanied by some stress. When we learn to ride a bike or drive a car, go to college, get married or have children, experiencing some stress is a positive and natural emotional element of these occurrences.
But that isn’t the type of stress causing so many problems in the United States now. The stress we suffer with today accompanies the dread, worry, frustration, anger, resentment and heartache that is so much a part of our frazzled lifestyles.
Psychologists tell us that stress in an internally generated emotional condition. That is good news, for it means the negative reactions we have to events in our lives that create all this problematic stress can be reduced or eliminated by simply changing our thoughts and attitude.
This might be easier said than done, and will be the subject of our next blog.
Tom Searcy, BCC
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