LIFE-LESSONS | SELF | MICROSTRESS
Are You Under The Merciless Chinese Torture Of Microstress?
Having less reduces stress, but not having enough kills your will to live.
Mary was sitting in her car, staring horizon. She was not sad or happy. She wasn’t anything. She had plenty of energy but too many things that needed it from her.
Mary didn’t know anymore how and where it should go. So instead of doing something with her energy, she felt empty but in a weird way. Like full but empty at the same time.
As a high performer, Mary always had more grit, strength and discipline than most.
But now she had just a horizon in front of her, an ocean of microscopic things that all required her attention, and slowly she started to choke.
She had just sent an edgy email to her son and couldn’t even regret it. She knew that with her son, there was very little left of their togetherness. And her husband was already too busy with his lover, this brand new job that took him away even when he was with her.
Somehow Mary had this ocean between her and her loved ones. They drifted too far away from her. Or did she leave them on the deserted island of past happiness? Was it already a year since they were on holiday together? And where did they go?
– “I am not sum total, but in pieces,” she said to her image on the rear mirror at the beach. The person who looked at her from the mirror was strangely familiar, but unfortunately, she had forgotten what she was like.
Everything was well and fine. Tomorrow is a new day, and Mary needs to keep her cool. Unfortunately, she didn’t anymore know how to be cool.
Mary suffered from the new epidemics of microstress.
The story above is fiction. Until it is not.
Microstress is the plague of achievers.
Harward Business Review published an excellent article about microstress, The Hidden Toll of Microstress. Rob Cross and Karen Dillion have written an insightful and frightening article about this slow killer of creativity, productivity and joy of life.
When I read it, I could see how many people in my wider circles of friends and acquittances are under this continuous Chinese torture.
I have heard stories like Mary’s with different variations over the years I have been coaching people. I have experienced it myself to the point that I developed physical symptoms that made me stop, ponder and change direction.
It all happens slowly, under the radar and eats your energy, your emotions start to wobble, and you no longer know who you are.
Cross and Dillion have distilled their findings into three categories that show what microstress does to you.
1# — You are constantly running on a low battery.
You are bombarded from the left and right with requests, demands and suggestions. They are all small, some even insignificant, but they pile up, and you are in the quicksand of them eventually.
You might be physically fit and full of beans, but you don’t have any beanbags to put them in. All those tiny things drain your batteries and reserves. You cannot rest, not on your laurels or in the pleasant and lazy afternoon, because you don’t have afternoons but the constant worry about the next day.
Does it sound familiar? If it does, you might be in the torture chamber already.
#2 — Your emotions wobble
You start to lose connections. You are there but too often not present.
Minor irritations grow, and tiny moments of frustration make you grit your teeth — and sometimes, through those teeth comes a very sharp comment, which makes everybody jump.
The issue at work casts a shadow in the bedroom.
There is nothing big or overwhelming but just a lack of connection. Emotions are floating out of context and over the wrong people and circumstances.
You cannot trust but are on your toes, just in case.
Your identity starts to look like a broken mirror.
You see only the fragments and hurt your finger into the sharp edges of the broken glass.
Many people have said that they don’t recognise themselves anymore. All should be fine, but something is missing from their self-image. Is it impostor syndrome, they often ask — or is it simply a lack of integrity?
They feel that they should be more, always more, but how?
There is a cure.
The HBR article lists three aspects of fighting microstress.
- Push back on microstress in concrete, practical ways.
- Be attuned to the microstress you are causing others.
- Rise above.
In my experience, pushing back is the easiest thing to do: stop multitasking, learn to say now, set boundaries and make sure that you take care of yourself before anything else. Everybody will suffer if you don’t feel good about yourself, your work and your family.
The tricky one is the second approach. It is so easy to offload some of our stuff to others without even noticing it. It can happen with all good intentions.
HeartMath Insitute has also shown through their research that the magnetic field of our heart affects others. So you can emit bad vibes, and people around you feel them even if the conversation is pleasant and friendly. You can become a transmitter of microstress.
Scientists invented the microwave oven by observing birds roasted near the transmission towers. Don’t become a microstress emitter that kills joy around.
The third is the most challenging approach to apply. Rising above requires self-awareness and honesty. It is the spiritual way out from the microstress.
You are in trouble if you have lost your life’s purpose and no longer see meaning in your existence. It is a profound existential crisis that is often camouflaged in the tired dullness of routine.
Find a spiritual practice that can give you a broader perspective.
If you are like Mary at the beginning of this article, spiritual practice can become your ship across the ocean of microstress. It can take you back to your loved ones, make you feel again and fix the broken mirror of your identity.
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