STRESS Changing the conversation
If you were to look back into the history of human beings, for a long time there was no stress – only survival. A constant battle for shelter, food, water on a micro scale, war, disease, famine on a macro scale. Forty years ago, we didn’t talk about stress the way we do today – and yet, in the Western world at least, our lives have never been easier. The majority of us know where our next meal is coming from, where to seek medical help and we have a source of shelter to rely on. So why are we the most stressed we’ve ever been?
Dr Libby Weaver has worked in the health and wellness industry for more than 20 years and it was back in 2008 she noticed a shifting pattern in the language her patients had started using. “When they talked about stress, they were talking about everyday things – their to-do lists, an overflowing inbox, back-to-back meetings, running late for them… just a general sense of pressure and urgency with everything.”
It was this shift that led Libby to write in 2011, a look into the “tired but wired” lives of modern women balancing life/work/children/marriage. The work with her patients over the past decade led to the recent release of her 13th book: about overcoming stress and “overwhelm” in our lives. It’s a word that gets used by everyone, all the time. How are you today? Stressed, probably. Stressed, tired, overworked, always five minutes late, always three items behind on your to-do list, always fielding notifications and alerts from your various devices. “You
