Have we seen any animal stressed ever? We have so many dogs, cats, rats, and other animals surrounding us. We see them almost every day. All these animals either take action when they feel threatened or remain silent. For example, dogs keep silently lying on the streets and when they feel threatened, they start barking. Human beings are quite a strange species. Most human beings are so full of stress and despite that, they keep smiling or at least do not express their stress openly.
Hidden stress has numerous consequences on our health and is probably one of the biggest reasons for different diseases in our bodies. Stress simply means suppression. The body wants to react and the mind is stopping the body from reacting. Thus, the body and the mind are in a state of constant conflict and a lot of energy is being consumed in this conflict. Fortunately or unfortunately, human beings have a very robust mind that can think of the future and past. Therefore, we keep thinking of the consequences of our actions and will keep imagining the future. We also constantly think of our past that too keeps troubling us with mixed feelings of guilt, shame, victimhood, pride, inferiority superiority complexes, and so on. The business with the memories of the past and imagination of the future does not allow us to stay in the present and we become restless to react. With the constant engagement with the past and the future, our body hormones make us ready to react but since we live in communities, we have to hold on to our emotions and we do not react. In a meeting, we feel like reacting, but we hold on to our emotions because we are civilized, and that holding on creates stress.
Constant traveling in the past and the future seems to be a defense mechanism. Since we have lost awareness of our true nature that is consciousness, which is timeless and spaceless, we get fixated on some mental construct of the self that is bound by time and space. Since that mental construct of self, which we may call "ego" is just a creation of the mind, it is quite fragile. Any insecure person becomes either quite defensive or aggressive. Similarly, since "ego" has infinite insecurities, it reacts in the same way and keeps traveling in the past and the future to feel secure. It tries to gather strength from the experiences of the past to justify its existence and also keeps making plans for the future to be safe and secure.
Though "ego" appears to be a personal construct or the creation of an individual mind, in reality, it is a social construct. Human beings are born with mirror neurons, which have been apparently acquired by human beings in the course of evolution. Mirror neurons are the foundation of our community living. They help us mirror whatever we see. For example, the kids learn the language, eating habits, culture, and traditions by observing the elders of the community. We identify quite strongly with all these things and they constitute a significant portion of our "ego". The nationality, region, community, organization, service, cadre, and culture represent almost the whole of what we are. It looks like an impossibility to do away with these identities and that is the reason why we keep calibrating our responses to what is "acceptable" by society. We generally do not shout in meetings and keep smiling even if we are full of stress inside. That creates a conflict between the body and the mind.
Thus, there are two fundamental elements of stress. First: fragile "ego" due to the lack of awareness of our true nature and the second "need for social validation". We keep living almost the whole of our lives like sailing in two boats which keep pulling us apart. On the one hand "ego" craves individual liberty and freedom and on the other hand, it also craves social validation. We keep suppressing our desire for individual freedom for the sake of social approval and that creates a lot of stress. We live in difficult and exploitative relationships just for the sake of social validation. We keep working in organizations that suppress freedom of speech and the right to have "office free life" post office hours because we get a social identity working in that organization. Probably this battle will go on forever because we have made the entire structure of our life on the foundation of "ego" and "ego" by its very nature is fragile. "Ego" is based on falsity and anything that is not real will be fragile and insecure. Since "ego" is the foundation of our existence, it is very difficult to live with truth and reality. That necessitates the collapse of the existing structure which is quite an impossible ask for most of us and that's why we continue to live with stress and anxiety.
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