The Stressed Self

The section Stressed Perception looks at how fear and other stress forces can force entry into our sense of reality, secretively stealing in through the “doorway” of the amygdala and hippocampus, and seeding our mind with their stories.

The more that these stories accumulate within us, the more that they can contort us into one or other of the “head shapes” shown below - as formed by the “stress force” of compulsive desire and its opposite number, gloom , together with fear and anger . Being moulded like this is to be assigned a whole new personality - one that is not truly ours.

With their stock of stories and myths, “stress forces” can uproot our head from our heart, alienate us to the truth, and hollow out our true self.

As an example of how this can happen, take compulsive desire . This can fabricate such rave reviews for given “desire objects” that these start to seem the answer for our every need.

When it turns its rose-tinting inwards, this “stress force” gets to raving about us . Now, compulsive desire dabs touch-up paint onto our self-portrait, exaggerating our plus points and airbrushing away our flaws. The effect is to render us so much the apple of our own eye that we’re oversupplied with entitlement and self-praise. Our head swells and we end up as a “Prima Donna”.

Another of the self-representations by which stress can delude us is the exact mirror image, namely the “Cinderella”. Here, we see the opposite effect, where compulsive desire takes back its praise, and our self-image is subjected to a downgrade. This humiliation is, of course, arranged by the "stress force" gloom - that fills us with self-doubt, to leave us feeling like a clown.

Besides making us too big for our boots or down in the dumps, stress can give us the “trembling terrors” of fear .

Fear’s stories mould our “head shape” by having us read danger wherever we tread, and can leave us full of deep-set insecurity and fret. They can leave us trapped inside a prison of suspiciousness and avoidance, and make it hard for us to take anyone or anything on trust. Fear can also play tag team with other “stress forces”, as when it lends weight to defeatist gloom .

In the meantime, anger can do its darnedest to fill us with resentfulness and vengefulness, so we stew away like a pressure cooker. Soon, such might be our aggravation that we blow our lid and boil over.

Anger can make us read “badness” into whomever and whatever it highlights, leading us down the road of impatience, intolerance and contempt. Now, we can find even the loveliest persons and things to be irritants.

Maybe anger has us mark out our territory as the local big shot, kicking over trash cans and toting out insults. Or it might make us act up just because our fiancée arrives the tiniest bit late on a date.

Neither do anger's flashes and flares necessarily leave our own self spared. Especially when gloom rears its head, anger can mar our self-image with bruises and scars. Now, we can find ourselves turned against ourselves, overrun by shame, and wearing the blame for every misfortune and mistake. In this case, anger further exaggerates any self-portrait bearing the Cinderella stain (see above).

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