My lower back is killing me. It could be that I’m sore from my workout on Tuesday (possibly too many declining situps). It might also be that I slept at an odd angle. Another possibility is that I’ve got bad posture when I sit at my desk all day.

Or… stress.

Its weird, but stress is both an imagined thing and a very real thing. I say ‘imagined’ in the sense that the triggers for it can be mere sights and sounds that do not, in fact, pose immediate physical danger. It can be our thoughts and reactions to concepts that provoke the most startling results (e.g. looking at the calendar and remembering a forgotten appointment).

It can also be a boss yelling, a family member crying, or the experience of other emotionally heightened moments that trigger a stress response. Again, it is merely our presence at the moment that results in stress (had we been at that appointment, we wouldn’t be with the person having the emotional melt down!).

Today I had amazing stress triggers. In the morning, I had an uncomfortable meeting with a manager, during which my goal was to convey my own dissatisfaction with the way my new job is turning out. After that, I sat through a long management meeting where the discussion was so distracted and unfocused that my blood began to boil at the waste of time and inefficiency of the thing. Then there was yet another meeting, and this time my colleague kept fooling with the projector and delaying the start of his presentation that I got annoyed by the long wait. Finally, at the end of the day Devin called to remind me that if I didn’t deposit my paycheck in person at the bank by 5 p.m. our mortgage payment would bounce. And I had another engagement that I was speaking at which began at 5.

And did I mention that on Wednesdays I work my part-time job during the lunch hour of my full-time job? And I don’t have time to go to the gym??

Its ironic because the stress response in humans is actually a self-preservation mechanism. If a cave man sees a lion coming, he has a split second to make the fight or flight decision, and must have the heightened adrenaline, shallow breathing, and movement of blood to the brain that it takes for this to happen. Humans can’t live in a perpetually high state of alert, so the stress response acts as a sort of early warning system to shock us into action if need be.

But did you know that during a stress reaction, our physical sensation is muted? So therefore are we less affected by the fear of imminent danger, AND our pleasure center is also muted . For the few seconds we need to snap into decisive action, pain and pleasure are unnecessary. And it can take thirty to sixty minutes before that state of alert is relaxed.

So its highly likely that my back was hurting because of the way I physically reacted to stress all day (getting triggered over and over again), but I didn’t notice it until I got home and calmed down.

At any rate, one thing I’ve learned is that even though food does ‘help’ in calming down the stress response, our pleasure in that food is diminished at that moment, so it takes a lot of it in order for us to react. So at least today I didn’t medicate myself with food.

Its funny, nothing earth-shattering happened to me today, and here I am feeling as if I just carried a ton of bricks a mile and a half. Imagined or real, it sure hurts.

And thus, its two ibuprofens and off to bed with me. Even if I’d rather have a carton of oreos.