In my office, we have regular Monday Morning Meeting which one of the agenda is someone who has been appointed the week before to do a presentation in front of everyone in the meeting. It’s called Pecha Kucha.

Pecha Kucha itself means a presentation which presents only maximum 20 power point slides and the time for each slide is only 20 seconds. Therefore we need to set an automatic timer for each slide.

Last week was my turn.
I pick a topic about stress, because I think this is an important knowledge for everyone. Usually, people will not aware that they are stress or they don’t want to admit the fact that they are stress.

So, here is my Pecha Kucha.

What could trigger stress? Basically it will be different for every one. Nervous, anxiety, under pressure, etc. You could have a different trigger.

When we are in these conditions, the signal will be sent to our brain, saying that there is a danger or threat to our body. So, the natural stress system will be activated.


Because we are stressed, our brain will respond with what we called Fight or Flight Response. Because this kind of respond, our body will release several hormones, including the adrenalin and cortisol.

As a result, our heart will beat faster, we begin to sweat, then our breath becomes shallower, and our senses become more acute. This is what we call Fight or Flight response.

So what is adrenaline? Actually this hormone will help us to fight, increase heart rate, elevate blood pressure, we become stronger because it boost energy supplies, we become alert and focus, so we are ready to fight.

So does the cortisol. It helps our body in such a way so we are ready to fight. It increases glucose supplies to our brain and even it helps us in getting our muscles tensed and ready.

So if you realize that this natural response is so needed by our ancestor, in escaping from a lion, chasing away a rival, etc.
But in this modern society, we cannot escape easily from the stressor, be it our work, crowded cities, or traffic jams, etc.

Adrenaline works at a different speed with cortisol. Adrenaline rise quickly to meet an emergency, but drop just as quickly when the emergency is over.
While cortisol builds up more slowly and works on a larger scale. It's also slower to go back down to normal. Often the cortisol is just getting started while adrenaline level is heading back down.


Each individual will release a different amount of adrenaline and cortisol. Because people are biologically created to react differently to stress.
One person may release higher levels of adrenaline and cortisol than another in the same situation.

So imagine if we are under stress for long time. When the adrenaline is going down, the cortisol is just going up.
If we face another stress trigger, the adrenaline will again go up, while the cortisol is even not yet going down.
The higher our cortisol level, the longer it takes to recover from the rush.

Its long-term elevated levels in the blood stream affect how our whole body functions.
This is what doctors are so concerned about because it has been found to be the root cause behind a large number of stress diseases. And even it can lead to death.

So stress is related, even though seemingly indirectly, to many…diseases.
But usually, we take this lightly. We don’t put attention to this and consider that this is not a real problem.

In Medical Science, they call it psychosomatic, when stress affects our physical area.
Based on the research by UI, around 15 to 30% of people live in Jakarta die because of psychosomatic.

In summary, these are the effect of stress on our body, thoughts and feelings, and behaviour.

There are so many sources like journals, books, articles that provide methods for relieving stress, such as:
§ Laughter
§ Quite time
§ Noisy time
§ Move around
§ Talk
§ Get enough sleep
§ Quit worrying
§ Etc

We can find it easily. But what I want to discuss more right now is not how the stress people should manage their selves but how you could help stress people.

The simplest way is to let stress people talk to you. But if they don’t want to talk, don’t insist.
All you have to do is only to listen because they just need trash bin.

There are many popular advices for stress people, but please avoid:
1. Don’t be stressed. Why? Because it will just create an additional burden, we will keep thinking I shouldn’t be stressed, but why I do?
2. You should think positively, because it’s difficult to keep us focus at only one thing, just let the mind walk so we are not burdened with these additional rules.

Finally..
§ A moderate amount of anxiety and stress is good for us. It helps motivate us to plan for future events.
§ But, when stress or anxiety become too great or continue for too long, they become a problem. Beyond a certain point, your performance will deteriorate.
So, remember that stress is a normal part of life, but don’t accept it as our normal condition.