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Interpersonal problems, self-isolation
With the second phase of distress, problems in relationships with others begin: one becomes suspicious and hostile towards everyone, ready for a fight. The ability to self-control decreases every day, while the ease of getting angry for negligible or imaginary reasons increases. By worsening interpersonal relationships, the possibilities of gratification and comfort linked to good relationships with others are lost. This tends to gradually reduce meetings with other people, neglecting both the closest friendships and family members; so it can happen that husband and wife become two strangers while continuing to live, in spite of themselves, in the same house. The tendency to withdraw into oneself and to isolation from social life grows rapidly, together with fatigue, which leaves just enough strength to bear the days of work; and every slightest difficulty becomes an insoluble problem.
Emotional disturbances
In the third phase of distress, the irritability of the previous phase becomes almost constant, but the aggression is less directed towards others because it is internalized, involving the whole organism. One is therefore insecure, confused, unable to make choices or make decisions. Social relationships continue to deteriorate until the inability to control one's emotions becomes a serious and worrying problem. One suffers from the lack of a stable emotional equilibrium, now understanding its importance but being forced to undergo an alternation of depressions and unjustified exaltations. Emotional instability strongly affects work efficiency, causing, according to mood changes, alternating results of excellent or very bad quality. Due to the resulting psychological wear and tear, one ends up completely losing control of one's life, which it now seems. without specific aims and governed by chance, even the few remaining affections are gradually exhausted, aggravating the sense of dissatisfaction.
Chronic pains
The fourth phase is that of physical pains through which the body rings the alarm bell, strongly denouncing the need to get out of a long phase of resistance to stress and the consequent state of chronic anxiety. The first physical symptom is muscle stiffness, especially in the neck, shoulder, lower back, and entire face areas. Not infrequently at night there is a tendency to clench the jaws and sometimes to grind the teeth in sleep (bruxism) as if to release the inner tension, with the risk of causing or worsening the anomalies of position of the dental arches (malocclusions) or defects in the "temporomandibular joint (temporomandibular joint syndrome) with consequent resentment at the postural level, therefore on the whole musculoskeletal system. Attempts to rest prolonged, for example on Saturday or Sunday morning, in an attempt to recover after a long and heavy week, they often lead to migraines or "weekend" headaches, typical of too intense and rapid muscle relaxation, due to the sudden return of normal flow in the blood vessels of the head, after days of forced compression.
Stress disorders
In this last phase of distress, the long period of resistance is exited to enter the chronic variant of exhaustion (in fact, we speak of "exhausted" people). The invisible damage accumulated for a long time in the organism is manifested by specific diseases, largely part favored by the progressive weakening of the immune system: colds, flus, ulcers, colitis, asthma, hypertension, various cardiovascular defects, etc. Then when you relax, for a short vacation, rapid changes occur in the organism, in particular hormonal ones, capable of causing potentially catastrophic effects.
Some recent studies have analyzed the relationships between chronic distress and the common cold, a typical disease of the fifth phase. In several research centers, including the "Cold Research Center" in Bristol in Great Britain, attempts have been made to find out why only viruses of a certain type, among the hundreds capable of causing a cold, infect some people rather than others. . An experiment on married couples, who had been deliberately inoculated with a cold virus, clarified the importance of distress as the main cause of the subjective differences between the infected and others.
, anxietyexcessive and neurotic hunger or loss of appetite
irritable bowel, feeling of fullness after a meal, nausea, acidity and stomach pains
difficulty concentrating, memory loss
easy irritability
decreased sexual desire
hyperactivity, insomnia or continued sleepiness
shallow and accelerated breathing
by dr. Giovanni Chetta
