Our concern in this course is to complement stress management with spiritual formation. 1
Stress has only been used in popular culture since the second world war. Before 1940 people used other words to describe what we now call ‘stress’. 2
From Aristotle (in the fourth-century BC) through Augustine (in the fourth-century AD) to Aquinas (in the thirteenth century) the language of passions and affections was used. Passions are involuntary movements of the soul towards the sensual, and affections are voluntary movements of the soul towards God. 3
Emotions were first introduced as a comprehensive category in Thomas Brown’s 1820 book, Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, then refined by William James seventy years later. Modernity has no place for God and the soul. Modernity is more concerned with the causes of feelings than their ends. So we tend to reduce feelings from spiritual ends to psychosomatic causes. 4
But now we find ourselves in the post-war, post-modern era. Some define stress in terms of stressors – those things that stress us out. Others define stress in terms of the strain we subsequently experience. And some define stress as the relation between the two. 5
However defined, stress is the language of abstract mechanics rather than of persons and relationships. Stress is more concerned with the pressure on an individual than with the relationships of that individual. Whereas emotions reflect the diversity of our relationships, stress reflects an increasingly more individualistic culture.
| Category | Era | Feelings as: |
| Passions/Affections | Pre-Modern | Soul in relation to God |
| Emotions | Modern | Body in relation to object |
| Stress | Post-Modern | Strain in relation to stressor |
Each subsequent row is less about God and more about me.
‘Since stress is a product of the individual, the solutions to the stress “problem” are also reliant on the individual … The workplace is reduced to being just a source of stressors, and requires little further analysis since stress is chiefly about the individual. Notions of workplace reform or societal change are also therefore largely peripheral.’ 6
After all, our emotions can be both a blessing and a curse.
| Curse | Against ← | Emotion | → For | Blessing |
| Retribution | Anger | Forgiveness | ||
| Inertia | Anxiety | Courage | ||
| Death | Despair | Hope | ||
| Destruction | Envy | Gratitude | ||
| Possession | Jealousy | Generosity |
The course is structured around six 30-minute sessions:
Watch the accompanying video for this session:
