How Madonna and Guy Have Fallen Victim to The Greatest Cause of Stress in Life: Relationships

(photo: www.charlotteobserver.com)

Madonna and Guy Ritchie have announced their divorce after much denial. The Daily Mirror gleefully claims to be ahead of the 'competition' in knowing that they were about to break up. But what is there to be smug about when any relationship breaks? The pain is probably even more because everything is played out on the public stage, robbing them of the privacy other members of the public take for granted. So the couple are likely to focus, initially, on how they are a perceived than on the real issues they need to sort out. There will now follow a severe time of stress for them, especially where young children are involved - and there are three in this case.

Stress affects everyone to some degree, but severe stress is a feeling of being unable to cope and is a reaction to excessive demands and pressures made upon the individual. It is most likely to be maintained by a feeling of personal rejection, insignificance and worthlessness. If it was an amicable mutual split, then the stress won't be too much.However, if one of them wanted the split more than the other, that's where the main problem will lie: dealing with that sense of rejection, and that could be pretty stressful. Stress robs you of your good looks, your disposition, your health, your youthfulness, and can even take your life. It is particularly unpleasant and harmful when pressures build up or are prolonged indefinitely; when we are unable to control the demands placed upon us, when we are constantly anxious, and when support is not there when we need it.

Most of the focus has been on reducing stress in the workplace. However, what has escaped everyone’s notice is the lethal level of stress caused by simply moving between relationships, especially where the desire for a break is not mutual, or where one is stuck in a relationship which makes one or both parties feel impotent, unhappy or simply miserable. These situations occur on a regular basis, often taken for granted as a necessary part of life, yet causing incalculable emotional damage in their wake.


Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
With many relationships lasting only between six months and a year, most people can expect some additional resulting trauma on at least three to four occasions in their lifetime. These are problems which most people try to avoid without ever quite succeeding, because the mere notion of expecting relationships to fail ensures that they do, in a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. Stress from a break-up is thus the worst kind of stress because it contains personal rejection, momentary insecurity and loss of status/esteem for at least one party, not to mention the financial costs which may be attached. Yet it has been underestimated in its effects and overlooked by government provisions.

When we feel rejected, controlled or unappreciated, everything else in our lives pales into insignificance because we lose our sense of belonging, joy and worth. This affects whatever we do until we feel better. Bereavement of any kind and moving house might come top of the list of any stress-inducing activities, but being stuck in an unwanted relationship, which affects at least 20 per cent of couples, or being momentarily rejected by a partner, should go right to the top of that list because of the ongoing consequences they have for everyone involved.

Madonna and Guy are going to need all the emotional support they can have over the next few months because being a celebrity does not make them immune from the effects of a break-up. In fact, that actually makes them more exposed to its consequences as they come under increasing scrutiny.

The Key Reason Why Soldiers Commit Atrocities

An American army sergeant, Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, 24, has been sentenced to 100 years for raping a young girl and murdering her family in Iraq. It is put down to stress by his defence and he is very remorseful, wondering how he could have behaved so much 'out of character'. He told the judge he didn't 'have an answer' and wished he hadn't done it. He wanted to apologise to the family for all of the 'pain and suffering' he caused.

Five soldiers who served with Cortez in Iraq confirmed that his actions were 'out of character' and described the war's hardships. Even a psychologist testified that Cortez and the other soldiers had probably suffered stress brought on by fatigue and trauma, which was 'not unique', with wars being so bloody.

But I believe that stress is only partially responsible for such despicable behaviour. If stress were really a major factor, many more soldiers would have succumbed to vile deeds by now. It would have been very difficult to contain them because war is a very stressful business. Imagine living every day wondering if you are going to be killed that day or not, whether you'll be ambushed or kidnapped, whether someone from your team or unit will go down, or what awful tragedy you'll be witnessing that day. It is no fun and games out there and it does take its toll on our soldiers.


Absolute Power
However, the mere fact that many soldiers do not use their stress to commit evil deeds shows that something else is also in operation; something much more stark. And it is naked, absolute POWER. The power to have the life of someone in your hands and be judge, jury and executioner at that precise time; the power to enjoy the authority invested through your uniform and your rank; the power to do virtually anything you like at that given moment so long as your discretion warrants it. After all, your life is worth more at such times and you have to defend yourself. In that moment of madness, power is an overpowering kind of aphrodisiac. It makes one dizzy with the thought of having it and being able to use it. Add some vulnerable, defenceless humans to the tinderbox, like 14 year olds and women, and the realisation of such power and the use of it becomes dangerous and hypnotic.

So why isn't everyone affected by such use of power?

Simply because the greater its use, the lower in esteem the users are. People relying upon their power to maim and hurt are unhappy beings, very low in self-esteem and self-love; who need someone to BLAME. Those soldiers most likely saw the helpless Iraqis in front of them as responsible for them being far away from home, from their families, from the things or people they cherish; responsible for the crap way they felt. And someone, those victims, had to pay. I doubt if they were killed out of sheer malice. They were killed because someone had to pay for their captors' loneliness and stress and the victims were vulnerable enough to be sitting ducks. Yet, the real tragedy is that they were supposed to be protecting that family. And if your protectors turn on you, what hope or life have you got?

Those innocent Iraqis were killed because their captors had the power and the authority to do their worst and snuff out their lives, especially when people in groups tend to behave much worse than on their own. But, far more disturbing, those soldiers killed that family at that moment quite simply because they could.