HOW DO WE, MODERN PEOPLE HANDLE STRESS?

ARE THERE SOME DIFFERENCES BETWEEN

WHICH STRESS MECHANISMS ARE INVOLVED IN THIS PROCESS?

MEN AND WOMEN WHEN IT COMESTO HANDLING THE STRESS?

THE STRESS MECHANISMS

Fight-or-flight response

(men)

Tend and befriend response (women)

CAUSES OF THESE MECHANISMS

Women : Tend and be friend mechanism refer to the behavioural response of managing stress by caring for offspring and social support. Human females are more likely than males tend to and seek support from others in times of stress.Human males show higher level of the physical fight responses than females in contrast to males, females have lower levels of circulating androgen such as testosterone which are associated with aggression. This can be the main reason why often the women do not fight a lot compared to men.

Men: A person’s reaction to anything is controlled by the secretion of hormones such as oestrogen and testosterone. The fight of flight response is an inborn reflex which is responsible for the body’s reaction to excessive stress. Hypothalamus which regulates the homeostasis in the body releases chemical signals that prepare us for fighting or running away from something that can be suspected to be dangerous and threat our survival in any way.

FIGHT OR FLIGHT RESPONSELet’s imagine a situation when a male feels danger and look at his body’s response to this in some details.

When a male feels threatened by someone or something the chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol are released by the pituitary gland in is brain. As a consequence of this the human starts to breath faster and the blood is used in his muscles & limbs because these parts of the body are essential when it comes to running or fighting. Consequently the male in question will need more energy to perform these actions and therefore his impuls will quicken and he will look for danger.

THE CONTINUATION..The male is question is likely to become more paranoid and suspicious when his fight-or-flight system is activated. He will probably loose the ability to feel content with his position in life and acquire a negative outlook on events that will take place in the environment around him.

This reaction has been present for a vitally long time since it is proven that modern humans respond to stress in a similar way to other homo-sapiens.

TEND-AND-BEFRIEND RESPONSEWhat if a mother would not stay back and just use fight-flight mechanism? Then the children would be attacked by the enemies and no one would be able to take care of them. Like we can see in history most women stayed back to take care of the children while the men went out and hunted for them ago provide food for their families. As a group they also used to protect each other the weak ones and the brave ones.

The situation is totally different nowadays, let us say the woman is

in office because most women obviously work to support their

families in the generation that we live in, so if the boss stresses them

they won’t call her kids or her husband to fight him she will

simply quit the job and look for another one.

THE CONTINUATION Let us talk about depending on men, it is different now days the women also have to be independent and support herself if she can. She do not have to stay and look after kids anymore, we also have kinder garden schools we can take the kids to be looked after and educate them at early age. And also if we feel stressed now days we have therapist that we can talk to and feel more free because we just talked about our stress compared to old age period they did not had that time of listening to each other problem and there was not too much compared to now. We can also use google and get answers from there. The situation is totally different from the past but the common thing is we all had stress.

AN IMPORTANT FACT :While observing humans’ reactions to stress it is important to remember the fact that males and females have fairly different responses to stress.

This can depend on the genetic differences between a male’s and a female’s body, but also the environmental that they live in and their daily responsibilities. Some males have a responsibility to protect their families physically and the excess of certain chemical substances that are released in the body during an activated fight-or-flight response makes males heroic.

WHY DID THE HOMO-SAPIENS SURVIVE AND NOT THE NEANDERTHALS?

WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF THE NEANDERTHALS SURVIVED? 

WHAT HAPPENED TO NEANDERTHALS?It was believed that we Homo-sapiens whipped the Neanderthals out of existent. The modern human is a very curious and social species and its believed that we interact with the Neanderthals and shared DNA. In comparison to the Neanderthals the Homo-sapiens are very good at adapting, one theory that is said is that the Neanderthals went extinct because of the gradual or dramatic climate change. Another theory is that they didn't go extinct but simply that we interbred with them until they were absorbed into our DNA. 

WHAT WOULD THE WORLD HAVE LOOKED LIKE IF THE NEANDERTHALS HAD SURVIVED?As our ancestor “took over the world” they started the first

most radical and most important ethnic cleansing in history, and all this shaped all subsequent events in history. Imagine what the world would have looked like, what history would have looked like if the Neanderthals manage to survive alongside us. Imagine the bible, the Roman Empire, the Industrial Revolution or our present day where you have the Neanderthals alongside the Homo-sapiens. Try to imagine what religion would have looked like, what would the bible had said about the creation of Adam and Eve, are the Neanderthals descendant of Adam and Eve or not? And what happens after we die? When we go to heaven or hell. Do only Homo-sapiens go to heaven? What would happen to the Neanderthals? Would they go to heaven to or hell? Similar to this try to think about modern Britain if in addition to all the other division and conflicts between rich and poor, between different ethnic groups, between citizens and immigrants and the most basic division of all between the Homo-sapiens and the Neanderthals.

A THEORY ABOUT THE EXTINCTION OF THE NEANDERTHALS

One of the theories for the extinction of the neanderthals is that the modern humans killed all the neanderthals. that would suggest that when the modern humans reached Europe and saw the neanderthals they might have felt threatened and fought for food and land. the modern humans were more social and better and adapting at changes , this can be the reason why modern humans survived the climate change, were better at fighting and killed all the neanderthals.

SOURCES:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_response

http://www.thebodysoulconnection.com/EducationCenter/fight.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tend_and_befriend

http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/mccarthy.html