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Stress and Control

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California State University, Dominguez Hills
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Created: March 22, 2003
Latest Update: March 22, 2003
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takata@uwp.edu

Site Teaching Modules Stress in the Fast Track

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, March 2003.
"Fair use" encouraged.

On Saturday, March 22, 2003, Carla Calderon wrote:
Subject: The haunting image of youth

Hi Jeanne,

This is Carla Calderon, and I am writing to you in regard to the first [discussion] question on The Haunting Image of Youth: Anorexia. . . .

Do you ever feel that your lived experience is "out of control?" Do you think that's unusual?

To tell you the truth, I often feel like my life is out of control. I work in the morning and go to school in the afternoon. Usually my weekends are busy with homework, and it's hard for me to take it easy when I don't have anything to do. For some reason I always have to do something; otherwise I feel bad. I just feel as though my life controls me and not the other way around, because I have to follow my everyday routine. I have goals for the future of what I want to be and of what I want to do, and I am enslaved to my daily routines, because I feel if I don't follow my routine I won't reach my goals.

To tell you the truth, there are times when I wish I could do response B, that is quit my job, school, family, etc., but I can't, so I opt to do response D.

I try to relax whenever I can, and I try to put things in perspective, so that it doesn't feel so overwhelming. I try to go to the movies for example, or go to the beach. These things usually relax me.

On Saturday, March 22, 2003, jeanne responded:

Gee, I'm glad you wrote this, Carla. Your response is precisely the one I was trying to elicit when I wrote that question. And it fits into our theoretical discussions like this:

  • Stress.

    We're all under stress. With working towards goals, managing conflicts of priorities, the war, our looks, our nutrition and health. I'm glad you paused long enough to take a look at the stress, and to give it some names we can try to sort out.

  • Overwhelmed.

    We're all overwhelmed. Being overwhelmed isn't actually an evil in and of itself, but it is an evil when we and those around us refuse to acknowledge its reality. The first step to that is naming it; the next step is letting ourselves describe what it feels like. We can't always make it go away. We can't make the war go away. But if we bring it out into the open in our lifespace, and say, "Wow, look at that, I'm overwhelmed," and slow down for an extra coke or cup of coffee or whatever to ponder the little monster of overwhelmness, the little monster's not so terrible anymore.

  • "my life controls me and not the other way around"

    Another good term to describe what's happening to us. We know that we have agency, that we have the power to make some decisions, and that those decisions really do affect our lives. (Theoretical reference: Agency and Structural Context) But at the same time, there are major limitations on our decisions. We have to go to school. We have to be there on time. We have to study. We have to form and strengthen the relationships that let our personal life grow. We have to eat, but we don't have enough discretionary time and energy to cook. All these "have to"s lead us to see our lives as out of our control.

    Anorexia and bulimia, eating disorders, are one way to take back control. You can control the decisions about what, when, and how much you eat. Maybe not openly, but there's always the opportunity to hide and eat what you want and then throw it up, so no one can fuss about what you ate. We used to see most cases of this kind of control with young people. But the article, When Midlife Seems Just an Empty Plate (By Ginia Bellafante. New York Times article, at p. ST 1. March 9, 2003. Backup.) emphasizes that now women in their forties and fifties are relapsing and going back to anorexic behavior, or are experiencing it for the first time.

    But food is only one kind of control. We can refuse to study and flunk out of school. Or we can refuse to do anything but study, and drive ourselves until we collapse. We could quit our job and force someone else to care for us. Or we could sacrifice ourselves and permit another the luxury of not working. We have all these choices, but, as you say, "I am enslaved to my daily routines, because I feel if I don't follow my routine I won't reach my goals."

  • Whose life is out of control?
    Where's the problem located?

    In the article, When Midlife Seems Just an Empty Plate, the older womend succombing to anorexia are being treated with therapy, just as we have long treated young people with this problem. That assumes that we think it is the women and young girls who have the problem, and we can "fix them" by therapy.

    But there's another whole way to look at this problem. We could see the problem as located in an infrastructure that turns food into a commodity, and uses all its ingenuity to convince the population at large that they want that food, that they will be unhappy, unsuccessful, even unattractive to the other sex without it. Because I'm a sociologist, I like this approach better. It doesn't focus on what the women and young girls are doing that is "bad," and on their behavior, which they must change to "good." Instead, this theoretical approach focuses on how the infrastructure harms us when it carries its competitiveness in selling to such an extreme.