Toxic Stress & Your Well-Being

What does it look like to be stressed?

When you are stressed some may experience fatigue, high levels of anxiety, head aches, forgetfulness and social withdrawal etc. In my experience stress can be a combination of each of these or a complete shutdown of energy. Stress causes me to socially withdraw, become highly frustrated and agitated, and sometimes I am overly sensitive to emotions. I do not enjoy stress, but sometimes it helps me focus on work that needs to get done and gets through the overwhelming emotions brought on by stress. I guess you can say that my directed attention kicks into over drive, but I'd also blame procrastination.

Much of the strain that is caused by stress comes from our daily lives such work, school, kids, car troubles, money etc. These strains can be perceived as either acute or chronic stress depending on how an individual may deal with stress and how much exposure a person may have to these or other strains. How many of you work, go to class, go to an internship and then have homework and a family to entertain by the end of the day? Seems overwhelming just reading it all. Well these everyday stresses could cause more health problems than one may know when exposed to chronic stressors as a child.

Toxic Stress?
As a practicing clinical social worker working with youth, I am exposed to youth who deal with traumas and significant changes in their lives early on. These early on chronic stressors is called toxic stress. Toxic Stress as defined by the Center of Developing Child at Harvard University (2016) is "strong, frequent, and/or prolonged adversity- such as physical or emotional abuse, chronic abuse, caregiver substance abuse, exposure to violence and/or the accumulated burdens of family burdens and hardship without adequate adult support". These children are predispose to stress at a young age and not given a chance to restore their mental health or change their environment. These stressors are detrimental to the development of the youth because as they develop their coping skills, emotional and mental stability is fragile compared to other youth who are not exposed to the same amount of stress. As you see below, there are different levels of stress responses that someone can endure.

As you can see in lecture and in the video above stress is long lasting for your development and mental health. Toxic Stress is becoming a new study in infant development due to the predisposed stressed developed during pregnancy. Women who are pregnant are generally emotional and dealing with significant change, but when a woman is dealing with things such as abuse, homelessness, or a traumatic pregnancy these stressors can trickle down into the fetus. Without adequate support for the parent and child these can deem fatal or effect the development of the infant.

Resolutions?

While we can't fix everything for everyone, it is important to understand the effects of toxic stress and the effects it has on families and children. I believe that children with toxic stress or dealing with stressful environment should have a space to feel safe and someone to support them. While going to therapy is accessible to some, it may not for others. So having a community center, positive mentors and/ or extracurricular activities for youth- such as football, music, drama etc. to relieve this stress is important for youth to escape and release. Also providing adequate support for mothers by donating or giving supplies for newborns or providing a space for relaxation. At Beaumont Hospital in Berkeley, MI provides a support for mothers through their Birthing Center & Postpartum depression program.

Reference:
Harvard University: Center on the Developing Child.
http://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/key-concepts/toxic-stress/