Stress

“ Now the serious is the habitual stress which the mind lays upon the expectation of a given order of events, following one another with a certain regularity and weight of interest attached to them. When this stress is increased beyond its usual pitch of intensity, so as to overstrain the feelings by the violent opposition of good to bad, or of objects to our desires, it becomes the pathetic or tragical. ”

“ Many people, and those not the least thoughtful and intelligent, find by experience that it is almost the first thing to disappear in moments of stress and pressure. Physical pain, grief, pre-occupation, business, anxiety, all seem to have the power of quenching it instantaneously, until one is apt to feel that it is a thing of infinite delicacy and tenderness, and can only co-exist with a tranquillity which it is hard in life to secure. ”

“ Hence, final stress is appropriate to the expression of resolution, of obstinacy, of earnest conviction, of passionate resolve. It emphasizes the characteristics of wide intervals, giving to rising intonations a more decidedly interrogatory character, and making falling intonations more vehemently and passionately positive.
[xxx] Median Stress, as it can be effectively applied to none but indefinite or mutable syllables, is compatible only with such a rate of utterance as will permit of these receiving long quantities. ”

“ It is associated with high blood pressure, hardening of the arteries, strokes, ulcers, colitis, and a host of other physical conditions. And severe stress endured too long leads to emotional breakdown.
All physical materials can be loaded or stressed to a certain point beyond which they distort, snap, fracture, or break. Stress loads human beings physically as well as emotionally. Any change—whether for good or for ill—is a stressor. ”

“ MEDIAN STRESS. The Median Stress is used in the expression of grandeur, sublimity, reverence, etc., and smoothness and dignity are its characteristics, for it gives emphasis without abruptness or violence. In using this stress, there is a gradual increase and swell in the middle of a sound, and a subsequent gradual decrease—thus giving a greater intensity of voice and dignity of expression than Radical Stress. ”

“ After regular practice over a period of months, many people, when they face a suddenly upsetting situation, can quickly offset their emotional and physical reactions to stress by inducing a calm and relaxed state in themselves. They are able to neutralize the stressor's potential for doing damage. If you can learn to do this, you have learned a skill in controlling your own life that is of great value. It is a survival skill that can help you protect yourself against being worn down by stressful events that otherwise eventually lead to learned habits of anxiety and tension. ”

“ The real stress and strain in life arises from the difficulty of applying principles to special cases in hand, and it is just this difficulty that is experienced amid the shock of the conflict by many souls, even those who are illuminated by the Holy Ghost. ”

“ You've heard of Rest-cures for people who've broken down under stress of too much worry and strenuous living; well, you're suffering from overmuch repose and placidity, and you need the opposite kind of treatment. ”

“ It is a small price to pay if emotional symptoms can be traced to a physical cause.
It is well known that virtually any serious organic illness or injury can produce emotional suffering, either in the form of physical pain or in the form of anxiety and depression. Chronic pain is a chronic stress and can lead to the same emotional problems as prolonged stress of any variety: anxiety or depression. Similarly, prolonged severe anxiety or depression can cause physical deterioration and make the body more susceptible to disease. ”

“ And now, one final word in conclusion, for the purpose of drawing together, as it were, the multiplicity of threads which constitute the complex skein of causes and effects, with their remedial measures which cover the wide range of human life's vicissitudes—the interruptions of its would-be harmonies—which take the forms, all too common in these times of stress, of physical disturbance and of mental strain which come to us in the combined and threatening guise of suffering and disease. ”

“ Moreover, in every circle I have met men who had themselves suffered from nervous collapse due to stress of business, or named friends who had either killed themselves by overwork, or had been permanently incapacitated, or had wasted long periods in endeavors to recover health. ”

“ Like all weak men he laid an exaggerated stress on not changing one's mind. ”

“ As collateral to, and consequent on, this condition of the mind, they lay the utmost stress on a disregard of all the vanities of life, a proper subjection of the lusts of the flesh, and an abstaining from the pomp and vainglory of ambition, riches, power, and the faculties. ”

“ But there is another side to living successfully, and that is, first, the ability to recognize situations and circumstances that cause you excessive stress and, second, the willingness to leave them before it is too late. We tend to place all of the responsibility for adjustment to stress on ourselves, on our inner strengths. ”

“ What Stress does the first citizen use?
How does the mental attitude of the second citizen influence his Stress and Inflection? (Introduction, pp. 21, 22, and 30.) Where does he change his Stress? For what reason?
Wherefore rejoice? Point out the various examples of Climax in this speech, and show how the voice indicates them. (Introduction, p. 31.)
Account for the Inflection on the various questions. (Introduction, pp. 18 and 19.)
See whe'r their basest metal, etc. Note the change in tension and energy. What change in Pitch and Force is the natural result? ”

“ Phrases like "to sit on thorns," "to be on pins and needles," "to drain the cup of misery to the dregs," show with graphic power the folly and curse of worry. Why should one sit on thorns, or on pins and needles? If one does so accidentally he arises in a hurry, yet in worrying, one seems deliberately, with intent, to sit down upon prickles in order to compel himself to discomfort, distress, and pain. Is there any wisdom, when one has the cup of misery at his lips, in deliberately keeping it there, and persistently drinking it to the "very dregs"? ”

“ Some things on which we lay particular stress have no importance whatever; and, regarding some that we ought to lay stress on, we allow them to stand without any care whatever. This is well known and a trite saying in our holy order. ”

“ The stress and hurry of modern life have forced so many of Us to draw upon Our nervous energy that We imagine that [Look at that 'that'! The whole Elizabethan tradition chucked away!] _We are exceeding our powers, and when this depression comes over Us, we think it necessary to take a rest, and Let up from working. ”

“ Thus that nervous anxiety to hastily repair broken fortunes, and to prevent still greater ruin and distress, embraces nearly all classes, and imprints upon all the movements of the social body a morbid character. ”

“ They are thus more delicately poised and any kind of stress or strain—cerebral, nervous, or muscular—is more likely to produce serious disturbance and requires an accurate adjustment to their special needs. ”

“ So far as the patient's own responsible life is concerned, the common causes, such as accident, infection, overwork, mental and moral strain—in fact, all the usual forms of stress—have, of course, been just as variously to blame, and in just the same way as they have been in the production of insanities in other individuals who finally recover. ”

“ In the distress which had come like a cloud over the sunlight of his spirits, so gayly anticipative a few hours previous, they flung a wordless challenge to the battling instinct in the man, and he accepted it with the thought that the best balm for troubled minds is strenuous bodily action. ”

“ Since this test of emotion is fundamentally sound, it is not surprising that the nervous man is in a state of distress. Indigestion, fatigue, over-sensibility, sound like problems in physiology, but we cannot go far in the discussion of any of them without coming face to face with the emotions as the real factors in the case. When we turn to the mental characteristics of nervous folk, we even more quickly find ourselves in the midst of an emotional disturbance. ”

“ The statistics from the NIMH study reveal how very wide-spread personal psychological difficulties are. Given the degree of complexity of our mental, emotional, and spiritual makeup, this should be understandable, especially when we take into account twentieth-century stresses that wear us down. ”

“ First comes the very extremity of distress, then follows unexpected relief. There seems no doubt that we are each and all of us to some extent victims of habit-neurosis. We have to admit the wider potential range and the habitually narrow actual use. ”

“ The truth that recklessness brings distress, fully acknowledged though it may be, remains inoperative. The mere cognition does not affect conduct—conduct is affected only when the cognition passes out of that intellectual form in which the idea of distress is little more than verbal, into a form in which this term of the proposition is developed into a vivid imagination of distress—a mass of painful feeling. ”

“ All my life long I have been more melted by the distress under which a strong, proud, and powerful mind is compelled to give way, than by the more easily excited sorrows of softer dispositions. ”

“ Among other things, a nervous symptom furnishes a seemingly reasonable excuse for the sense of distress which is behind every breakdown. Something troubles us. We are not willing to acknowledge what it is. ”

“ Just as we feel no particular pleasure when we breathe freely, but a very intense feeling of distress when the respiratory motions are prevented,—so any unobstructed tendency to action discharges itself without the production of much cogitative accompaniment, and any perfectly fluent course of thought awakens but little feeling; but when the movement is inhibited, or when the thought meets with difficulties, we experience distress. ”

“ Mental activity shows the phenomenon as well as physical, and in exceptional cases we may find, beyond the very extremity of fatigue-distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those early critical points. ”

“ Indeed, from the most credible scientific evidence we possess, the emotions which are thus aroused are characterized by all the organic stresses and strains which are present in the most violent overt activity of which we are capable. ”

“ but what physic, what chirurgery, what wealth, favour, authority can relieve, bear out, assuage, or expel a troubled conscience? A quiet mind cureth all them, but all they cannot comfort a distressed soul: who can put to silence the voice of desperation? ”

“ Only in distress can people understand how difficult it is to master their thoughts and feelings. ”

“ Whatever anguish she suffered she concealed. She saw shrewdly that the world is quickly bored by the recital of misfortune, and willingly avoids the sight of distress. ”

“ She did not suspect that the Abbess, even there, was hovering above the house, herself estimating the stresses and watching for the moment when a burden harms and not strengthens. ”

“ Thousands and hundreds of thousands of men and women have hard work, mental strain, fret and anxiety, daily, and for years together;—indeed, scarcely do anything to lighten the tension in this direction. ”

“ Brain weary, nerve weary, is there any wonder that he rolls and tosses, throws over his pillow, kicks off the clothes, groans, almost cries aloud in his agony of longing for rest. Poor victim of worry and sleeplessness, how I long to help you get rid of your evil habit and save others from falling into it. ”

“ When we have constructed a true psychological pathology, we shall understand clearly why and how it is that fear can turn the hair gray in a single night; that a mother's milk can be poisoned by a moment of terror; that the heart may be paralyzed by a sudden joy or sorrow; that dyspepsia, paralysis, and many other diseases are produced by mental worry and fret and the brain-fag of overwork and anxiety. ”

“ Whoever has marked the effects of success and failure upon the mind, and the power of the mind over the body, will see that in the one case both temper and health are favourably affected, while in the other there is danger of permanent moroseness, or permanent timidity, and even of permanent constitutional depression. ”

“ All of us are putting up with the same discomforts, the same nerve strain and we're getting sport out of it, or at least the consciousness that we must sacrifice comforts for the cause. You are the first I have heard complain. ”

“ By a line of humorous reflection already suggested, we may in all cases of worry and moral disturbance reach the consolatory idea that the trouble has, in the first view of it, been grossly exaggerated. At the moment when the sensitive tissue is lacerated the shock of pain blinds us to dimensions; our disappointment fills the outlook, like a thunder-storm. The healthy nervous organism will show its vitality in the rapidity of the recuperative process ”

“ The dissemination of the knowledge of the far-reaching deleterious effects of protracted emotional strain, of overwork, and of worry will automatically raise man's threshold to the damaging activating stimuli causing the strong emotions, and will cause him to avoid dangerous strains of every kind. The individual thus protected will therefore rise to a plane of poise and efficiency far above that of his uncontrolled fellows, and by so much will his efficiency, health, and happiness be augmented. ”

“ The physical side of agreeable emotions, as a rule, is a heightened tone of the purely animal functions. The physical side of fear is a complicated series of effects, one of them being the depression of the organic processes, digestion among the rest. In this respect, however, it more or less resembles severe pain, sorrow, shame, remorse, and other states, characterised by the general phrase “depressing passions;” the depression being both mental and physical. ”