How We're Conditioned by Sin - Part II

Any type of strain produces stress, no matter if the strain originates from a spiritual, mental, emotional or physical source. Depending upon the factors involved, stress can have positive or negative consequences in one’s life. Basically, there are two types of stress, eustress and distress. The first type is healthful – such as when we go to the gym and exercise. The second type of stress, distress, is a state that occurs when we experience persistent strain that cannot effectively be coped with or adapted to. In many respects, it is our repeated experiences with distress that lead us into maladaptive states, where modes of thinking and traits of behaving fall outside of God’s will. To better understand how this is so, let’s study a theory known as General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS).

Endocrinologist, Hans Selye, served as a pioneer in the study of distress, and developed the GAS theory involving a three stage process. The first was identified as alarm. The moment we sense a threat, a complex physiological response is generated. If our state of alarm persists, we will experience the second stage – resistance. Because our body could not tolerate the strain of continuous alarm without eventually breaking down, it attempts to cope with the distress through resistance. Selye observed that if resistance does not prove effective in coping with persistent distress, we will then attempt to adapt. If we are unsuccessful at reducing our distress through resistance or adaptation, we’ll experience the third stage of GAS, known as exhaustion. Here, the body is depleted of its resources and breakdown of our physiological systems occur.

Where dysfunctional coping mechanisms are most significantly learned and reinforced is during stage two - resistance/adaptation. More often than not, resistance is performed through repressive acts; while adaptation might be accomplished through such mechanisms as codependency.