In the book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks shared clinical histories of patients he treated during his career as a neurologist, and he explored some common traits of different types of neurological disorders.
In particular, he mentioned deficits, hyper-activation of the nervous system’s functions, and altered perceptions. Several of the examples from the book (in which there are many more) are as follows: The case of a man who couldn’t recognize familiar faces, patients with tics they couldn’t stop, and people who lost contact with reality to such an extent that they couldn’t recognize their own limbs.
In my opinion, those traits, considered typical signs of neurological conditions, are applicable to the description of the stress we suffer from.
Stress as a deficit.
Nothing should be more familiar to us than our own desires and needs, yet way too often we all experience a feeling of shutting down—that sense of going around blind, caught up in some business that at the end of the day reveals itself for what it truly was: just busyness. We are distracted; we seem to be chasing always what we don’t have. Our stress is sustained by our sensation of having some kind of deficiency.
Stress as hyper-activation.
Stress comes from the constant triggering of our alarm system. We are hyper-vigilant in the modern world; we are always on the lookout for dangers. They appear in the form of children, colleagues, or bosses. Our nervous system never finds proper rest.
Stress as a distorted perception.
We are frustrated by misunderstandings, cryptic behaviors, and aggressive attitudes. But are they real? Or, rather, do they just appear a certain way because of our biases? Personally, I lost count of the many times I replied aggressively to my husband because I felt attacked. He would reply by saying, “Why are you yelling at me? I just asked […whatever he was asking…],” and after he rephrased his question, it seemed so genuinely harmless—and, indeed, it was. I attached a meaning based on my own altered perceptions.
What is the difference, then, between someone labeled ‘not normal’ and diagnosed with a neurological illness and someone considered ‘normal’ who is simply stressed out?
Maybe the threshold between what is normal and what is not, simply rests with our own acceptance. As a species and as a society, we accepted stress as normal.
As we know it today, stress is a generalized, shared, and socially accepted form of strain.
It has become the condition of the modern man in the sense that it was the most logical consequence of measuring success by beating the competition, accumulating wealth, and practicing perfectionism and efficiency. Since it was ‘logical’, it was accepted.
Modern stress is the byproduct of a culture in which we trade our humanity for measurable performances and appearances. Yet, we are not machines. We are the designers of the machines.
The last section of Sacks’ book covers a class of disorders he named The world of the simple: People cognitively impaired but extraordinary gifted in one area, like mathematics or music.
We, the stressed species, didn’t create a simple world; rather, we created a twisted, intricate, complex environment. However, the result is not dissimilar from The world of the simple. We too suffer from a sub-optimal comprehension of ourselves and of the world. Yet, each of us retains a special talent, no matter what.
The most peculiar thing about your special talent is that it cannot be replicated by any machines because it’s the combination of experiences, feelings, challenges, and solutions that only you have processed the way you have.
The expression of that talent can save you from your stressed-out life.
Intelligence might be replicated. Creative intelligence cannot.
Remind yourself more often that you are not the machine. You are the designer.
