If Life Were Easy They Would Have Asked For Volunteers

Stress is ubiquitous and follows us everywhere. Since there is simply no avoiding it, the task for mental health professionals has become to further our understanding to improve management in our patients and in ourselves.

We see the goal in this is to have a more preventive health care system and consequently a happier and healthier population. We hope to contribute to that end, having made the detailed description of this common occurrence and its impact on the body and mind the focus of The American Institute of Stress.

Through the understanding of the stress phenomenon all people everywhere will be in a better position to marshal the positive aspects of this phenomenon. Our collective hope for humankind is that this will improve health care as well as life itself. It is a fact that we program ourselves for disappointment as many expectations remain unfulfilled throughout the day.

Such is life, yet we need not be so reactive, as this is not healthy. We must make every effort to recognize fear, eat better, laugh it off when things don’t go as we hoped, and, as health care professionals, to measure and bring to the attention of our patients what all this means.

After all, rarely are we chased by saber-toothed tigers in the urban jungles of the twenty-first century. This is the age of information overload. It is simply not in our best interests to keep acting so prehistorically. It is time to understand how to increase the modulation of our primitive brains so we can become better, more tolerant neighbors on this planet that we all call home.

The American Institute of Stress is here to help. Won’t you join us? Support our mission by donating or become a member today.


Adapted from Kirsch, Daniel L. and Woodbury, Michel A.. Stress in Health and Disease. Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 37(4), 2014.