Stress 101
So I stayed up last night after my run. Not because I wasn't tired, I was, but I got to thinking, and that's never a short-term commitment.
It was a pretty long, relatively stressful day, and I thought, '…you know what, I'm entirely too old to still have such juvenile uncertainties about some things, what's happening to me all of a sudden?' And then I remembered something.
I teach a few graduate classes in adolescent behavior and development, and there are several sections about identity formation, which I find fascinating. Ericson, Freud, Kohlberg, Gilligan, everyone has a theory about how we come to define who we are, but in a nutshell it boils down to our environments, our experiences and our interactions being the major sources of input.
Now, every seven years or so we overhaul ourselves - yes, even into adulthood. This may be provoked earlier that the seven years if something in our environment, experiences, or interactions acts as a catalyst, but for the most part, on the average it's every seven years - give or take a year or two - that we physically, mentally, and emotionally … shift. And every time there's a shift, there's what's called a state of crisis in which we redefine some things about who we are.
Now, a crisis isn't necessarily something bad, it just means that things are in formation and so, not yet decided. In fact, the word itself comes from the Greek: krisis – or judgment. A crisis, therefore, simply means being in a state of deciding, and though this may at times be stressful, it having to be stressful is really just a false assumption assigned to the word.
I always have to make a point to explain this thoroughly so that my students don't assume that an "identity crisis" itself, per se, is this huge state of dramatic angst and turmoil, and thus, expect the teenagers they work with to be perfect psychos. It really just means things are changing, and though this process could be stressful, it doesn't intrinsically have to be if we can all remember that at the heart of the matter, what's happening is just plain ol' growing. The simple reassurance tends to take a lot of pressure off for both the teachers and their students.
I thought about this last night, and finally fell asleep.
It was a pretty long, relatively stressful day, and I thought, '…you know what, I'm entirely too old to still have such juvenile uncertainties about some things, what's happening to me all of a sudden?' And then I remembered something.
I teach a few graduate classes in adolescent behavior and development, and there are several sections about identity formation, which I find fascinating. Ericson, Freud, Kohlberg, Gilligan, everyone has a theory about how we come to define who we are, but in a nutshell it boils down to our environments, our experiences and our interactions being the major sources of input.
Now, every seven years or so we overhaul ourselves - yes, even into adulthood. This may be provoked earlier that the seven years if something in our environment, experiences, or interactions acts as a catalyst, but for the most part, on the average it's every seven years - give or take a year or two - that we physically, mentally, and emotionally … shift. And every time there's a shift, there's what's called a state of crisis in which we redefine some things about who we are.
Now, a crisis isn't necessarily something bad, it just means that things are in formation and so, not yet decided. In fact, the word itself comes from the Greek: krisis – or judgment. A crisis, therefore, simply means being in a state of deciding, and though this may at times be stressful, it having to be stressful is really just a false assumption assigned to the word.
I always have to make a point to explain this thoroughly so that my students don't assume that an "identity crisis" itself, per se, is this huge state of dramatic angst and turmoil, and thus, expect the teenagers they work with to be perfect psychos. It really just means things are changing, and though this process could be stressful, it doesn't intrinsically have to be if we can all remember that at the heart of the matter, what's happening is just plain ol' growing. The simple reassurance tends to take a lot of pressure off for both the teachers and their students.
I thought about this last night, and finally fell asleep.
posted by Wil at 10:28 AM
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