Addictive stress

[Rosebolt]

Yesterday i was thinking about something. What if i look at stress like it's addictive? Alcohol fucks with your liver and brain, smoking fucks with you lungs, so on, and your heart? Well, stress kind of messes that one up.

Through my own experience and the experiences of others i know that when a person has felt not much more than stress and sadness in their lives, they kind of cling to it. They become afraid to turn their life around and be happy. They hate feeling sad, but are afraid to change it. It seems only natural, as change is something human beings generally shun. This doesn't happen to everyone by the way, it's just something i observed in some people.

So what if we look at stress as something addictive? As something that could be treated in similar ways as any other addiction. Maybe it already is, i've only been in group therapies and never in any therapy or group that deals with addiction primarily, anyone over here can provide any insight on those?

So to conclude, people can become stuck or "addicted" to negative thoughts and feelings, making it harder to break free from it. I know therapy focusses on getting rid of those negative thoughts, but as i said in the beginning, it was just a thought.

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[quintus]

When I read you right, stress is a synonyme for negative thinking for you. I don't think stress and negative thoughts are the same thing. You now that there are two different kinds of stress: negative stress and positive stress.
But yes, I think one can get very used to negative thoughts. Depends on experience, I guess. And probably you are right if you talk of addiction. Interesting idea, though. But the unability of "turning around and be happy" may be the result of fear. The fear of getting disapointed, for example.

 

[Rosebolt]

Very much true, i was talking about stress and negative thoughts as two different things as well though. But i kind of forgot about positive stress, that's something to consider as well.

Yeah i kind of implied that they were afraid to turn around to be happy, afraid of the change and what it might bring, as you say.

 

[quintus]

...That it may bring (another) disapointment, I meant. Not the change in itself, just another failure that would lead to more negative stress. I reckon it is quite hard to change it, once trapped in the negative thinking mode.

 

[perfanoff]

I wouldn't call it an addiction because addiction works by stimulating dopamine/happiness hormones when satisfied, and a severe lack of, when in withdrawal.

I'd call it a vicious loop. Psychologically, it would be something akin to an endless fight or flight state for a person. Flight (withdrawing from situations) and fight (passive-aggressive outbursts) feedback to themselves so a person feels more threatened due to their understanding they have done something out of society norms, which by itself, triggers the fight or flight state again.

 

[Tiina63]

I think that you are right. It is hard to reach out for happiness when you are not used to feeling it. You are saying what I have often thought. Loneliness is also addictive. Although I long for my loneliness to end, I am perversely scared of its ending as at least it is familiar. And sometimes you feel that, if you turn your back on loneliness, stress, etc, would it invalidate all the lonely and unhappy years you have had? I know this sounds stupid, but I do think like this at times.

 

[Lua]

Like perfanoff, I wouldn’t have thought of it as an addiction because it doesn’t have that short-term alleviating effect. Unless maybe, if you use stress at work etc. to distract yourself from personal problems...

I agree that you’re right about stress or sadness functioning as a comfort zone though. Being unhappy in a way you’re used to can be far less scary than changing something and possibly being hurt in a new way.

Tiina, I don’t think that’s stupid, I know what you mean. But those years would not be invalidated. It often takes unhappy times to make progress and become a person who is able and willing to change.

 

[Rosebolt]

It often takes unhappy times to make progress and become a person who is able and willing to change.

^This.

I've had my share of difficult times but it was during those times that i learned the most and developed myself the most as a person, in such magnitudes that i sometimes consider letting myself feel bad again just so i can learn some more.

 

[bulmabriefs144]

I can sorta see it.

I took a job where we delivered veggies to DC, waking up at 3am, and working the day before packing. I liked the job at first because it made me feel like I had a purpose. Then, of course the boss couldn't leave well enough alone. He kept nagging me to quit jobs that I had on certain days (despite me making it clear early on that I was for part-time), and belittling said jobs (which paid about $3 more per hour than his) because the hours weren't as long or whatever.

I stayed on because I felt like the 3am gave me something fairly worthwhile to do (delivering food to restaurants so they had fresh produce instead of crap from interstate/overseas/etc), and the job itself was giving me a sense of belonging. But I was starting to get stressed. Then he cut the good part out completely giving the shipping one to some Hispanic because I wouldn't sacrifice what I wanted for his whim (btw, if you still think I was being lazy or something, consider the fact that he gave this one girl Wednesday off because of her second job with no penalty, but the fact that I had a Tuesday job apparently wasn't acceptable). He kept me on, but now I had like 6 hours of work left (the 3am part gave me 14+ hours in addition to that), and basically nothing to fill it with. So yea, I should have just told him flatly "this is bull" and left, but instead I stuck around in a job that was giving me a progressively suckier deal, until a hurricane wiped out his business for the year. At the time, I was like "bummer, I don't have a place to go." But now, a year or so later, I'm starting to lean more towards "serves him right."

Basically, people are willing to go along with stress if the alternative means rejection or loneliness. After being abused a few times though, I'm probably one of the few here that says while it is important to talk to people, "what's the big deal about loneliness?"

 

[Lone Apothecary]

Interesting thought. I've never thought to describe any of the negative stress that I experience as addictive, but, now that I think of it, I seem to fall back on cynicism and pessimism in a similar manner to how people fall back on other addictive things that help them cope with stress. I'd imagine that some coping mechanisms are addictive, and some of those coping methods can revolve around negative thinking (expecting the worst to avoid disappointment, for example).

 

[bodafuko]

Physical addiction and mental/emotional addiction (or dependency) manifest differently in my experience. I've experienced physical and mental addition, to cocaine to be precise when I was a youngster. After going cold turkey, the physical addiction subsided after some weeks. Almost fifteen years later, every day at least once I long to snort a line. Which is more insidious? The physical or the mental...

---

In that context, I would say 'yes', you can be addicted to a feeling.

 

[ladyforsaken]

I wouldn't call it an addiction because addiction works by stimulating dopamine/happiness hormones when satisfied, and a severe lack of, when in withdrawal.

I'd call it a vicious loop. Psychologically, it would be something akin to an endless fight or flight state for a person. Flight (withdrawing from situations) and fight (passive-aggressive outbursts) feedback to themselves so a person feels more threatened due to their understanding they have done something out of society norms, which by itself, triggers the fight or flight state again.

Like perfanoff, I wouldn’t have thought of it as an addiction because it doesn’t have that short-term alleviating effect. Unless maybe, if you use stress at work etc. to distract yourself from personal problems...

I agree that you’re right about stress or sadness functioning as a comfort zone though. Being unhappy in a way you’re used to can be far less scary than changing something and possibly being hurt in a new way.

Tiina, I don’t think that’s stupid, I know what you mean. But those years would not be invalidated. It often takes unhappy times to make progress and become a person who is able and willing to change.

^ Agree with perfanoff and Lua.

I think it's more of a cycle because one knows no better than stress or sadness. I was in that situation. I didn't know what happiness was and didn't know how to be happy even though I was fortunate to have good things in life despite all the bad. My perceptions changed though. Something happened, I got sick and tired of feeling sad all the time and feeling sorry for myself. So I got up, and left it.

Today, it's still there, dragging along at my feet. Having grown up only knowing that feeling, it's hard to just shake it off entirely. So I just learn to deal. When it comes up creeping over my shoulders, I try to deal. I sulk and whine and stuff, but then I get past it and shake it off again. All I know is that - I have control over shitty things like that. I control how I want to feel and even though at times I feel like I want to be emo and sulk, I do that, but I know that I have control over putting a line to it and say, hey, that's it, that's enough now, quit it, get up and live life. It's too short to waste it on stupid moments like that.

 

[el Jay]

I think that you are right. It is hard to reach out for happiness when you are not used to feeling it. You are saying what I have often thought. Loneliness is also addictive. Although I long for my loneliness to end, I am perversely scared of its ending as at least it is familiar. And sometimes you feel that, if you turn your back on loneliness, stress, etc, would it invalidate all the lonely and unhappy years you have had? I know this sounds stupid, but I do think like this at times.

This is definitely true, I feel. It's not so much that it's an addiction so much as it's familiar. And thus, people who are too used to stress, loneliness, anxiety, and other such things become unknowingly dependent on those factors, as negative as they are, simply because they don't know anything else. If things change for the better, it's new and scary.

There's also the issue that it seems like when someone lives with stress/anxiety/loneliness/whatever for too long, they fear things improving because of the possibility of being thrown right back into their problem. Someone who's lonely gets a relationship? Well, they'll fear the person leaving them and plunging them right back into loneliness. They work up the courage to do something social? It'll fail, they'll be laughed at, and made to regret even thinking of it.

And even if things do go well and are successful, the person may fear it failing eventually. This is how it usually is for me: no matter how many successes I have at something, they never take the fear of failure away completely, and just one failure, even if there's a thousand successes too, will throw me back right to the bottom of despair and hopelessness. So to escape that, it feels like I don't need to just succeed, but must succeed forever, infinitely, without even a hint of failure.

Obviously it isn't quite as bad as that makes it sound, since I DO go do stuff and haven't given up on life completely, but it quite effectively prevents me from feeling happy about most things I do and experience, no matter how positive, by constantly reminding me of the many, many ways it can go horribly wrong and make me wish I'd just stayed in my room never interacting with anyone. And if something DOES fail, such as asking someone out, or making plans with a friend, it usually wrecks the rest of my day irrevocably, and leaves me paralyzed with a rather unique combination of fear, anxiety, rejection, and generally feeling completely useless. Basically shuts me down socially for the rest of that day (and if it's particularly bad, sometimes for a few days).