Stress/Control or something like that

I think Katy Perry is getting overexposed, don't you?

well, on second thought...

Killer Stress

So, I've been watching a PBS doco called "Killer Stress" whenever "California Gurls" isn't melting my popsicle.

The theme: stress kills.

Yeah and if we keep doing that thing, we'll grow hair on our palms.

We all know that stress is a serious thing that leads to numerous illnesses, both physical and mental.

It's also pretty clear that "going to your special place" (that place where blind people with hairy palms go) or doing whatever other things the weird middle-age ladies and their dingy daughters tell us to do can help relieve stress.  Me, I get more stressed that someone who knows me will see me in my special place with incense, candles and Katy Perry. Worse, I get stressed he might have his iPhone on him.  Even worse, he knows how to use YouTube.

So, screw all that new-age ass-holiness.  I'm grabbing a six-pack and my trusty Glock 23 for a round of stress release redneck-style.

Actually, I guess a redneck wouldn't be using a Glock.  His granddad's shotgun is more like it.

Anyway, releasing stress is something that everyone is told about and of course, it's clear we do whatever we must for a release of stress

What's not so clear is how stress comes about.

According to the PBS documentary "Killer Stress" there looks like there is a role for social status in the development of stress.

You know the thing: there is a social hierarchy in groups and societies.  In most groups, someone is an alpha (or maybe a couple of someones are alphas) and the rest are pretty much shitheels.

Two examples:  in a baboon troop (all right - sociologically it is perfectly valid to study primate behaviors and compare them to human behavior you fucking SRF troll) the dominant baboons were always sniping at the subordinates, chasing, swatting, and screaming to establish their dominance.  You would think all this pissed-off-ed-ness would raise stress hormones off the chart.

Hell no!

It was discovered the alphas in the troop had far LOWER stress hormones in their blood than the subordinates.  The subordinates had much higher amounts of stress hormones in their blood thanks to all the evil shit the alphas were dealing out.  It's thought that not only the aggressive behavior but the unpredictability of the behavior caused an enormous amount of stress in the subordinates.

Think that's just primate behavior?  Think of this:  a British study of the civil service system revealed that the higher in the pyramid you got, the lower your stress.  The lower on the Totem Pole you were, the higher your stress.

Those of us in the real world aren't surprised to see that.  However, the Brits also found that when you had a feeling of control, you didn't feel stress.  When you were controlled, you did feel stress.

And stressed you were.  Lower-level civil servants (the ones who are bound to follow regulations and the usually-idiotic orders of their superiors) had far more illnesses and absences than the blokes on the top of the heap.

Now as it relates to our experience with the damaging, worthless and utterly vile cult named the Academy for Psychic Studies - well, I think you know where I am going with this.

Despite their constant pleas of stress, despite their constant wailing that our own incompetence and willful insubordination was causing them unending grief and life-altering stressful situations it wouldn't take a genius to figure out that as the head of the SRF snake, the Witches of Ellsworth have anything but an existence of constant strife and turmoil.

I mean, if they can shuffle off to a much needed three-weeks-a-month vacation to any damn place they want while they spend that fourth week screaming at their followers to give them more money, how stressful can their lives be?

And as the Witches of Ellsworth are clearly the only ones with any authority and are the only ones who control the lives of their followers and are the only ones who benefit from the fruits of their follower's labor, you can pretty much see how alpha they must be.  It comes across when they point a gnarled finger in your face and emit through their craggy, infested lips the command for you to give even more of the money you earned from the sweat of your own brow.

So if you are one of the many who had health issues - simple or serious; if you are one of the many who have experienced mental or emotional distress; if you were one of, well, everyone who had their grocery money vacuumed out of your pockets, you can pretty well see where all those problems came from.

Everyone who spent a good amount of time and a considerable amount of money there can look back on the feelings of helplessness, the constant struggle for survival, the gnawing pain of loss and isolation.

For those of you who haven't, please join the Academy.  They want you to come buy it before you try it.  They are hoping you'll lay down your money before you find out where the bus is really going.  Why not do as they say and just hop on board and just relax when the door slams shut behind you?  In just a few short years, you'll find out the hard way all the things we have discovered.

For the rest of us, we have to acknowledge one thing: that the cause of the stress we experience with this wacky cult wasn't the doing of our "family programming", "ambitious nature" or other idiotic observations.

It was the meaning of our rank in the society we were in.  As we were in an unholy cult, and of a rank that was below any other form of life and because our needs came well behind the needs of the leaders, their dogs and their offspring (the leader's - not the dog's, although it's kind of hard to know the difference), we were in a stressful situation just because we were the lowest of the low.

That low rank was the reason we were given far more stress than we would have if we were not in a cult and stress does more than cause physical illness - it makes your brain shuts off.  You literally can't think and you can't make decisions.

Pretty damn convenient for a cult leader who can't have people thinking for themselves, isn't it?  Because there was an ocean of stress poured on our shoulders causing an internal conflict so strong we not only saw no relief outside the cult, we could only see relief from the same people who caused our situation in the first place.

When your brain can't think from all the stress, you have to fall back to whatever is quick an familiar.  For a cultie, it's the cult.

Now that we are out, we can start rebuilding the parts of the brain that were shut off.  It can happen (but don't ask me how or why as that part of my brain doesn't work like it used to).  Researchers who found the brain shuts down from stress found the brain can regenerate the vital connections that blew out.  A big part of that was to find people with similar experiences and building a strong connection with them in a not-so-stressful situation.

I've done that at the local bar with Jagermeister so I guess it was kind of a wash in my case.

At any rate the conclusion is pretty simple:  The Academy for Psychic Studies is a hierarchical society with two Alpha Witches who exert extraordinary control over their followers and have created (and probably are still creating) enormous stress and resulting physical, mental and emotional stress in their followers.

Now that you are out, the road is clear and your brain has have time to recover and rebuild.  Your critical thinking and ability to reason is returning and with it, so is your life.