Thanks for this post. I have a degree from the university of life in stress and stress management. I think most teachers have acquired a few stages of this in some form or other.

I would add to Medina’s list that one of the key symptoms of severe stress is inability to prioritise, which of course impacts directly on the ability to concentrate – hence the learning connection.

Having suffered clinical depression as a result of severe stress in my life, I can confirm that the ‘snap out of it’ and the ‘you shouldn’t feel that way’ approaches are definitely not only counter productive (as you say simply reinforce rather than dispel) but are also an explicit admission of denial by the deliverers.

Though I’ve been stressed and depressed as a result, I’ve never reached the critical stage that some do in being suicidal (oops that’s almost a taboo subject in some circles – tut tut!) But I mention it here for not only is it related (and you alluded to this when you said “victims convinced that there is no way out of their current state”), but the denial of it as a practice within society is as common as the ‘snap out of it’ approach to the depressed and stressed out.

Empathy not apathy towards those who bear the burden of stress and display its symptoms goes a long way though. A ‘sorry’ or even a sincere ‘thanks for that’ when people, stressed out their minds proffer a candid indicator of how they feel about something, goes a long way to ameliorating some of the effects of stress.

While these may be seen as tokenism they and their equivalents are nevertheless among some of the most powerful words in the human language.

Ka kite