What Does Stress Do To You? Part 3

Happy people generally feel continually positive and joyful and rarely do they experience negative emotions. Negative emotions are often referred to as 'baggage' and are usually the result of negative or traumatic experiences and memories, negative beliefs and negative thoughts. Unhappy, disturbed or dysfunctional people are frequently said to be 'carrying a lot of baggage'. What this means is that such miserable people feel weighed down or burdened by all their negative feelings or emotions and usually see the world as a difficult or harsh place to be in.

Since unhappiness is a miserable or unnatural state of being, most people engage in activities which will create the necessary conditions in which they will feel happier. Having a safe and comfortable home, other material possessions and wealth or financial security for example, are certainly conditions which add to one’s happiness. However even these conditions are unable to protect you from the unhappiness and misery brought on by chronic stress.
In fact it has been found that traumatic experiences such as abuse in childhood prevent the stress response from being inhibited by those parts of the brain responsible for this function. Such traumatic experiences actually suppress the genes in these parts of the brain from their normal function of limiting or stopping the stress response. It has been found for example that such suppressed genes are commonly found in the brains of unhappy, depressed people who have committed suicide and were known to have had traumatic childhoods. Such childhoods can therefore lead to a life of chronic stress regardless of conditions or material possessions. Of course chronic stress resulting from any cause, including inherited negative memories and traumatic experiences during anytime of a person's life and not only an unhappy childhood will reduce the feelings of safety, comfort and security that wealth and material possessions bring.

Now stressful experiences also commonly cause people to become anxious. And anxious people are unhappy people. As you may know anxiety in its various forms, is an extremely common emotional disorder suffered by many people around the world. And a large number of them rely on very dangerous medications such as the benzodiazepines. These dangerous drugs are not only harmful to you because of their side effects but also have tragic habit-forming or addictive properties. Anxiety-ridden people who are dependent on these drugs often experience a difficult uphill battle when they try to stop using them.
It has also been found that lonely people often suffer from stress and sadly, frequently become depressed because of it. And such lonely and depressed people are often more prone to infection and sickness due to their weakened immune systems.

I could of course go on and on describing to you the many other stress-related conditions which make people miserable and unhappy, conditions such as Post-traumatic Stress Disorder or Obsessive – Compulsive Disorder for example but this is beyond the scope of this article. The point is that there is sufficient evidence which shows that stress and happiness have an ‘opposite’ relationship. In other words stress - filled people are unhappy people.