I used to think that we all had a set number of stress points which we could allocate to positive stressors or negative stressors. If I wasn’t riding my bike I would be stressing about my savings. I was wrong.
We are born with a genetic predisposition to higher or lower dvar, as well as a maximum capacity. Once that capacity is reached, we implode.
Abuse, violence or neglect in your childhood will raise your chronic dvar so you are coming out of school at 60% while someone else might be at 10%.
This means you will be more motivated, agitated, restless. This will predispose you to high-pressure jobs and heavy drinking and drug use. It will predispose you to abusive relationships, dangerous driving, and ironman world championships.
All these endeavours will crank your dvar higher. You will wind up drowning out one stressor with another until your life becomes so loud and chaotic that you are incapable of stopping. You will bounce from one addiction to the next, not realising that you are stuck in the d-hole and on the way to implosion.
Dvar tends to *increase* over the course of a life if left unchecked. Some of us never knew any other way.
Others came out of school with 10% and a happy world. They can have the flashing lights and drink a couple of beers then go home. They can spot the abuser and find rewarding jobs. They intuitively know when dvar is getting too high and just ‘go for a walk’ while we 60%ers will go and bench double our bodyweight at the gym before doing a 60 minute long hill sprint session.
One is heading for implosion and the other is not. The reason is regulation.
If you are a 60%er you need to intentionally lower your dvar on a daily basis to keep the chronic trend either horizontal or downward. Otherwise you are looking at a life of emptiness and craving and quite possibly checking out early.
The most important thing to remember is that there is no positive or negative to dvar. It is a magnet. If you strengthen one side then you strengthen the other and you will become so smothered with steelwool that you will become unable to hear yourself think, let alone connect with people and experience the world.
It’s not a good place to be. Make sure you have a regular regulation protocol. Dvar management is mostly preventative; once you’re in the d-hole it’s already too late.
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