You are a Bundle of Stress
"What's Wrong with You?", Part 3
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“Tell me about some of the difficulties you're having with your dog,” I say to a potential dog-training client on the phone.
“My young dog is jumping all over guests, and barking at everything that happens outside. He tries to pull my arm off while on walks to go see other dogs, and constantly demands attention.”
It’s a common conversation. When people contact me for dog-training, they tell me about the problematic behaviors they want to address. When I hear a list like this, I don't hear a list of behavior problems, but rather a list that reveals that the dog is struggling with excessive stress and arousal, which is generating behavior problems.
In this case, the dog is overly excited about everything. My task as a dog trainer, then, isn't really to stop the dog’s unwanted behavior. My real task is to help the dog learn how to calm down. I want to reduce the stress levels that are causing the problematic behavior.
Think about this in relation to our society…
If you want to reduce behavior problems that result from high stress levels, all you need to do is reduce the stress to negate the problem behaviors.
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A social source of anger, aggression, and violence
Back in the 1980s, a postal worker brought a gun to his workplace and started shooting. The phrase “going postal” was born.
As I recall, the trigger was a high-stress working environment. He had been pushed beyond what he could handle and finally popped. At the time, it was incredibly shocking because those kinds of things didn't normally happen.
Nowadays, they seem to happen all the time. Most significantly, we have school shootings on a regular basis. We had 82 in 2023, and about 50 as of September of this year (2024).
Yes, it is shocking. But, it’s not nearly as shocking as it should be because it's becoming normalized through sheer volume. We have no reason to assume that shootings aren't just going to happen again and again and again.
And this brings us back to the question I've been asking for over a month now: “What's wrong with us?”
I believe that a lot of the anger, aggression, and violence in our society that is tearing us apart can be traced back to chronic levels of unhealthy stress.
Living with chronic stress has identifiable negative effects on our physical and mental health. These effects on our physical and mental health (especially mental health) in turn affect our social health (in other words, the way we experience relationships and behave).
Think about the people who surround you regularly. You probably don't have to look far to find people living on the edge of a breakdown. Our society is continually piling more on to those already extreme amounts of pressure.
Stagnating wages
Increasing expenses
Pressures at work
Fear of losing employment
Fears around the upcoming elections
Note that the items on this short list are things people under extreme stress have no significant control over. And these are just the tip of the iceberg.
Trigger stacking
Ever heard the expression “the straw that broke the camel's back”? I’m sure you have. We’ve all experienced it.
In dog training, the phenomenon is called “trigger stacking”. I also talk about it as “the pressure cooker effect”.
Here’s the basics of how it works…
Pressures build up throughout the day. One thing after another. For a while, you’re fine. But, eventually, as the pressure builds, it becomes too much and you cross your “threshold” of tolerance. The next thing you know, you are blowing up about something that normally wouldn't affect you in this extreme way.
Here's an image I share with clients when working with dog emotions. It is an arousal-valence chart from neuroscience. It helps clients understand the struggles their dog faces and how they can work with their dogs to help them heal, and therefore change problematic behavior.
It’s like those old X,Y graphs we used to do back in high-school algebra. Going left to right we are measuring whether the dog is anticipating something bad happening (left) or good happening (right). Going up and down we are measuring arousal/stress levels, whether they are high or low. Since we’re looking at high stress/arousal levels in this article, I just need you to pay attention to the top half of the graph from this point on.
Notice the dotted line that arcs across the graph. That represents the dog's threshold.
While the dog’s stress levels are below that threshold, they are able to process new information and interact with their environment in a healthy way. Once stressors take them over that threshold, they start reacting to their environment. In other words, once over the threshold, they are incapable of controlling their emotions and their behavior.
Notice that the arc of the threshold bends down the further away from the center you go. In other words, the more intense the anticipation of something bad or good happening, the faster the dog will go over threshold and enter into reactivity mode.
Now, I want you to focus on the upper left part of the graph. That is where a dog anticipates something bad happening, and the arousal/stress level is high enough that the dog is reacting rather than interacting. Fear-based reactivity expresses the natural desire to survive, which leads to defensive behavior.
Now, back to trigger stacking.
Dogs experience triggers all the time. Stressors accumulate. Imagine a dog in a home where in a single day…
A service technician who is a stranger comes to fix the refrigerator
The neighbors have started roof repairs and are making a lot of noise
Five Harley-Davidsons drive very loudly down the street in front of the house
A new friend comes to visit who happens to love dogs
This strange new friend tries to pet the dog
Look at that accumulation of stress. Even though the dog is okay with strangers under normal circumstances, that doesn't mean that the dog is going to be comfortable with the stranger petting her right now. Now is different than a normal circumstance. Now the dog is under a lot of stress, and the dog may enter into survival mode when the stranger invades her space. The possibility of a dog bite increases significantly.
People are animals, too
Remember, the arousal-valence chart comes from neuroscience. I use it for dogs, but it's not just about dogs.
Everything I just described about dogs is true for humans as well. The more stress we are under, the more likely we are to encounter the straw that broke the camel's back. And the next thing we know we are in survival mode reacting to our situations, no longer in control of our emotions or behaviors.
How many of American society’s problems are the consequence of chronic daily stress?
Right now, I want you to stop reading, sit back, and really think about that question.
I mean it. Step away from this article. Come back to it in a minute or so.
Take a moment here to reflect.
When you're ready to continue…
Just like with dog training, if you want to help people heal from the effects of stress, you need to identify those triggers that drive stress levels up. Then, your goal is to eliminate (or at least minimize) those stressors so healing can happen.
A great way to identify important stressors in a society is to pay attention to what the researchers identify as the most important ones. Right now, the most accessible researchers we have are those working for political campaigns. So the question becomes, “What are the primary political issues that political ads address?”
Something I see highlighted by both Republican and Democratic ads is the economy. They are both talking about how hard it is for people to make ends meet and put food on the table. They both want to be seen as the party that will help middle- and lower-class Americans have more money so they can survive.
Yes, I intentionally used the word “survive”.
I believe most people in America live in that upper-left quadrant near their threshold. They are living in chronic fear driven by their economic situation. In fact, 65% of Americans say they are living paycheck-to-paycheck this year (2024). This is up from last year.
Through the pressure cooker effect, they are constantly being pushed bit by bit toward that threshold, toward the point where they explode because they have no control over their emotions or behavior.
What’s the leverage point for making the world a better place?
Remember, the stress in our society is primarily what is tearing us apart. When stress levels are lower and people are farther away from the threshold, they are able to do things like…
listen to one another
appreciate the perspective of another
care for one another
make better decisions with their lives
In contrast, our high-stress society is becoming more polarized, vengeful, xenophobic, and violent.
I'm a fan of “minimum effort/maximum gain”. I want to know where I will get the most bang for my buck when it comes to my time, energy, and resources.
Based on what I'm seeing, the number one thing that needs to be addressed in order to improve the health and well-being of our society (which manifests in the way that we deal with one another) revolves primarily around improving the economic situation of those at the bottom and in the middle of society.
The people at the bottom and middle of our society do not feel safe economically. Making them feel safe will eliminate a lot of our societal problems.
Possible solutions
I’ve been a long-time advocate for universal health care. Other countries do it, and they do it very well. There is no reason why the richest country in the world cannot offer universal health care to everybody.
Imagine the extent to which that alone would decrease stress levels, especially the stress levels in households with children. How would that improve the quality of their lives?
More recently I have become a huge fan of a basic income program. If you don't know already, a basic income program guarantees a certain amount of income for everybody. Unlike social programs such as food stamps, a basic income program does not limit how a recipient can spend the money. They are free to spend it as they choose.
While I support a basic income program, I do not support replacing current social programs with it. That only moves money around and doesn't give people the income they need to alleviate their financial stress. A basic income program has to be on top of other social programs (such as food stamps).
Based on what I’ve seen from the research of pilot basic income programs, improved happiness seems to be a universal effect for participants. On the surface, whether or not people are happier doesn't seem like it's that important if we are going to put money into the programs. But, here's the important takeaway for today…
They're happier because they're dealing with less financial stress.
And that is exactly what needs to happen in our society: We need to alleviate the financial stress that is driving us into defensiveness, aggression, and violence.
A mountain of evidence shows how tightly income inequality correlates with crime rates, education levels, drug abuse, incarceration, intimate-partner violence, and physical and mental health, which together cost billions upon billions of tax dollars.
I believe very strongly that we need some form of basic income program in place because of the effect it has on the health and well-being of society as a whole. Yes, we need to figure out how to pay for it, and I don't deny that concern. But that doesn't mean we don't need something like this sooner rather than later.
Economic issues are about to get worse
Last year (2023) McDonald’s introduced a fully-automated restaurant in Texas. It’s a grab-and-go location. Yes, the entire process from ordering, through paying, to receiving your order is automated. I assume they have some form of management or technician working there to ensure it all works smoothly, but overall (from what I can tell) there is no staff.
Welcome to the wonderful world of robotics and artificial intelligence.
Imagine the effect on our society if the bulk of restaurants went to that model. What would happen to the jobs in the service industry? You wouldn't need wait staff, cashiers, cooks, or anyone else for that matter. Instead, you have a professional technician or two who could service multiple local stores, and this service could be outsourced to a company that tended to multiple chains.
I’ve come across several articles recently that say A.I. and robotics are going to take over about 80% of the jobs in the near future. That basically means we will eventually only need about 20% of the workforce.
While it may be the case that people will still be employed but in different capacities, I think the writing is on the wall. The number of available jobs is about to tank…hard.
What will this do to stress levels? What will this to do the way we relate to others in our society?
I can’t imagine anything other than disaster as we continue down this path. People in the lower and middle classes already struggle economically. Doing nothing to support them as they try to survive is no longer an option. The longer we wait to address the issue, the more drastic the measures we will need to take to keep society afloat.
In fact, some have already started moving away from a call for a “universal basic income” to a “universal high income”.
Wealth inequality
If we want to get money into the hands of those at the bottom and the middle, it has to come from somewhere. The obvious source is those at the top.
Overall, the top 10% richest own more than the bottom 90% combined, with $95 trillion in wealth.
We have to deal with the issue of wealth inequality in America.
Everybody knows that the top tier of income makers in America don't pay their fair share in taxes. “Fair share” doesn't mean “the same amount”. People who make $10,000 a year shouldn't have to pay the same percentage in taxes as people who make $50,000 a year. After all, a gallon of milk (when measured according to income) costs five times as much when you live on $10,000 a year.
In the same sense, those who make a million dollars a year should be paying significantly more in taxes than those who make $50,000 per year. After all, a gallon of milk (when measured according to income) costs a millionaire 20 times less.
Of course, one could argue that those at the top of the economic ladder do indeed pay their fair share of income tax. After all, the tax brackets scale with income. But I think this argument is deceptive.
Yes, the tax brackets scale with income. However, the scaling stops around $600K. So if you make $10M, you pay the same scale as someone who made $700K.
But insufficient income scaling isn’t the bigger issue. The bigger issue is how the super-wealthy are living off loans. Their money is wrapped up in stock. If they sell their stock to live off the income, they have to pay income tax on what they sell.
To get around this, they use the stock as collateral to get low-interest loans. They then live off these loans. This enables them to…
avoid paying income tax (the loans aren’t technically “income”)
pay less in loan interest than they would in taxes
continue to make money off the stocks they didn’t sell since they are still in the market
The bottom line is this: We need to find a way to ensure that those on the top tier of the economic ladder pay their fair share of income tax just like everybody else has to.
I admit, I am a bit baffled at the resistance to this idea that those at the top of the economic scale should have to pay their fair share. In an ideal world, those at the top of the economic scale should want to pay their fair share of taxes because that's one of the ways they give back to society and help keep it healthy.
But that requires a certain sense of social responsibility. It requires people to step out of the “it’s all about me” mindset and into a mindset that sees the interconnectedness of all things and recognizes the importance of playing their part in the building up of others.
And that's what I'm going to talk about next week.
Peace, Bo
www.evolvingchristianfaith.net
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Credits
Thanks to Nightcafe for the cover art