The stress of life

He was sitting alone in a dark alley with only the light from a nearby road creeping onto his right side and the left barely lit by an open restaurant door that lead to the busy kitchen. He was crouched down on a milk crate eating a tray of noodles, likely from a cook inside the restaurant.

I could not understand much of what he had to say, but he was very talkative so I simply listened to what sounded like meaningless chatter. But, it made me wonder what has caused him to become this way? Did it start before he became homeless while working as a diesel mechanic or did it happen due to one extreme stressor in life or multiple stressful situations with negative outcomes?

Have you ever thought about how unnerving our world is today? So many people fall into emotional and physical disrepair because of an inability to handle the things around us. Politics, natural disasters, physical ailments, declining health due to age or bad habits, addiction, loss of employment, false ideas of how religion should be verses how it is viewed in our churches, fear of relationships – I could continue typing for hours naming things that bog us down. But, why do we let these things get under our skin?

The simple answer is that not all of us do – some are better equipped with handling today’s times.

A Yale University study found that some people had brains that were able to process stressors better than others. What was interesting is that the study allowed researchers to see which three areas of the brain responded to stress during a functional MRI (fMRI).

The Yale study saw a decrease in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) area of the brain at first and then a huge increase in that same area by most of their study participants. That huge increase could be seen on scans that were overseen by doctors and scientist. For those that had the hyper increase of activity, it meant that their brains were blocking the stressors or protecting the person from stress.

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex area is involved in brain management, in a way. It is utilized when dealing with self-related processing or figuring out when to feel stress or not to feel stress. This area of the brain also causes disruptions in individuals with autism and those who function poorly in social settings. In other words, the vmPFC is not building that wall to block the stress as it does in some people.

Basically, the ventromedial prefrontal cortex either goes into overdrive to protect the brain from extreme emotional response, or fails to go into overdrive (fails to build that wall), which equals a flood of stress and emotional reactions to the stressor.

The Yale study found that those whose brain failed to guard against the stressor, they likely had an increased risk of binge drinking, binge eating or other self-destructive behavior after being stressed.

So if you react poorly to stress and find yourself acting out in self-destructive behaviors after a hard day, your ventromedial prefrontal cortex area is not guarding your brain. A quick fix for this problem is not available, but it is now the spotlight of more research.

For those who experience one extreme stressors daily, weekly or even monthly – these stressors add up and cause serious health issues. Those health issues can include high blood pressure, diabetes or heart disease which can lead to more stress. More stress then leads to depression, anxiety or the onset of an underlying mental illness that did not make itself known until that stress in life continued to build up. So, if not tackled in the beginning, it can quickly become uncontrollable for an individual.

The end result of accumulated stress that is not handled properly… we break.

“Stress is the trash of modern life-we all generate it but if you don't dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake your life.” ― Danzae Pace

Depression strikes the homeless and others - What about medication?

Sadness is something that others may be able to see in someone’s face, but what is behind the eyes only the sufferer knows. However, sadness and depression are quite different.

For example: “Shorty,” who is pictured, was likely sad when he and his girlfriend had a falling out. However, he may or may not have been depressed at the time, but sadness was definitely an emotion he felt. The good news is that sadness passes fairly quickly while depression can stick around for months or even years.

So many of those who live on the street experience deep and often dark depression. While it may start out as something mild in their younger years, it lingers into age and grows deeper into severe depression.

People often confuse mild depression with severe depression, only because they have not experienced such agony themselves. Others suggest that those who are sad simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps, which can’t be done if severe depression is involved. Those who make such suggestions fail to understand or even try to understand the underlying darkness.

Sadness can trigger depression and your chances are also higher if you have family members who have fought depression in the past. Severe illnesses can also lead to depression. Other items that can lead to depression in adult life include being abused as a child (any nature of abuse). In fact, child abuse greatly increases the chances of becoming depressed as an adult.

To help cure depression, doctors often encourage a healthier lifestyle along with medication. But, if you are homeless it is hard to eat right and hit the gym. It is also hard to afford a doctor’s visit, much less pay for medication. But, studies show that medication is important.

The brain is extremely complex, as most realize. Some areas of the brain regulate mood while other areas focus on daily tasks like extending your arm to turn off the alarm clock.

According to a Harvard Health article from 2009, “Areas that play a significant role in depression are the amygdala, the thalamus, and the hippocampus.” A recent study demonstrated how the hippocampus is 9% to 13% smaller in those who are depressed or who have dealt with bouts of depression.

To increase positive moods and decrease depression, the production of new neurons are needed. Doctors will prescribe antidepressants to help boost the number of neurotransmitters, but the medication takes four to six weeks to start working. The extended period of time between the depression and a good mood have to do with neurons growing and forming new connections.

Antidepressants promote the growth of nerve cells in the hippocampus. It takes weeks for that growth to occur, which explains why it takes so long for antidepressants to work. This growth process is called neurogenesis, meaning neuron growth or formation.

As for Shorty… he told me that he came to Tennessee because of a girl. He later said that he went to jail for 7 months because of that same girl. "I caught her with another man," he told me. The woman is now in California.

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sadness on the street

"One must not let oneself be overwhelmed by sadness." -Jackie Kennedy

If only you could correct sadness by not letting yourself think sad thoughts, everyone would be at 100% all the time.

Some suggest that those on the street who are battling depression can snap out of it or think positive. However, when depression is deep enough to cause you to lose your friends, family and housing… it is much more complex.

A Harvard Health Publication from the Harvard Medical School stated, “To be sure, chemicals are involved in this process, but it is not a simple matter of one chemical being too low and another too high. Rather, many chemicals are involved, working both inside and outside nerve cells. There are millions, even billions, of chemical reactions that make up the dynamic system that is responsible for your mood, perceptions, and how you experience life.”

As for the man in this photo, he was once a diesel mechanic.