WHAT? ME WORRY?
Feeling unusually anxious, depressed, sleepless, overweight, feeling helpless and can’t get the weight off, having trouble with concentration and memory? Stomach upset, higher blood pressure? More frequent and harder to shake off illness? According to the Mayo Clinic’s Healthy Lifestyle webpage entitled “Chronic stress puts your health at risk: Chronic stress can wreak havoc on your mind and body,” these frequent signs of the times may be related to chronic stress. Acute stress is a hormonal reaction to an immediate danger and lasts up to 15-20 minutes after the danger is perceived to have passed. It’s all part of the body’s evolutionary “Flight or Flight” protection system. Chronic stress is an altogether different animal. If the perceived stress continues, for weeks to months for example, the “protective” effects of acute stress are replaced by the potentially debilitating effects of chronic stress.
Signs of the times? I don’t know about you, but after months of COVID-19 alongside increasing political, social and economic unrest, I sure feel under the heavy hand of chronic stress, and I wonder how many others are feeling similar. In fact, I wonder how much of the events of today are the product of people acting impulsively under the influence of chronic stress to unconsciously try to aggravate the situation and bring it to an end.
This was an issue I struggled with in all three of my thrillers, THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) being the newest and most recent. In fact, I tried to weave into the storyline various feelings of chronic stress, that three young firebrands might experience while trying to find their place in NewAmerica, a shadow of its former United States of America, and a challenging and dangerous future place to live. If it all sounds a lot like today, then I invite you to take a peek into what might be our own post-COVID future might hold.
Chronic stress wasn’t so much a plot consideration when I wrote the ribald, sexual-political thriller TOTAL MELTDOWN (Borgo/Wildside 2009) with William Maltese, or the more serious political thriller QUANTUM DEATH (Savant 2016) with A. G. Hayes. Everything was happening so fast, the two situations would have triggered acute than chronic stress, and trigger acute stress they did. Both in the characters, and, who know, possibly even readers totally immersed in the stories. Maybe that’s what makes a thriller a thriller. In THE EDGE OF MADNESS, while the characters’ thoughts and actions may (and definitely should) reflect the presence of chronic stress, readers, I sincerely hope, will experience their chronic stress as acute “thriller” stress. Just for the moment. Just enough to enjoy the thrill of the read.
Signs of the times? I don’t know about you, but after months of COVID-19 alongside increasing political, social and economic unrest, I sure feel under the heavy hand of chronic stress, and I wonder how many others are feeling similar. In fact, I wonder how much of the events of today are the product of people acting impulsively under the influence of chronic stress to unconsciously try to aggravate the situation and bring it to an end.
This was an issue I struggled with in all three of my thrillers, THE EDGE OF MADNESS (Aignos 2020) being the newest and most recent. In fact, I tried to weave into the storyline various feelings of chronic stress, that three young firebrands might experience while trying to find their place in NewAmerica, a shadow of its former United States of America, and a challenging and dangerous future place to live. If it all sounds a lot like today, then I invite you to take a peek into what might be our own post-COVID future might hold.
Chronic stress wasn’t so much a plot consideration when I wrote the ribald, sexual-political thriller TOTAL MELTDOWN (Borgo/Wildside 2009) with William Maltese, or the more serious political thriller QUANTUM DEATH (Savant 2016) with A. G. Hayes. Everything was happening so fast, the two situations would have triggered acute than chronic stress, and trigger acute stress they did. Both in the characters, and, who know, possibly even readers totally immersed in the stories. Maybe that’s what makes a thriller a thriller. In THE EDGE OF MADNESS, while the characters’ thoughts and actions may (and definitely should) reflect the presence of chronic stress, readers, I sincerely hope, will experience their chronic stress as acute “thriller” stress. Just for the moment. Just enough to enjoy the thrill of the read.
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