Soul Sustenance

Role Induced Stress (Part 2) 

It’s not at all wrong to treat what we do seriously, but it's a mistake to believe what we do is extremely extremely important and we are extremely busy people living an extremely busy lifestyle. This kind of consciousness makes us over-serious. A very common sign of this is carrying a lot of thoughts of one role into the other. E.g. Aarti, a young mother, switches roles from a software executive in the corporate sector, a role which she plays in the entire day, to a parent and wife in the evening. If she is over thinking about her day-role while playing her evening-role, it is a sign she is over-identifying with her day role and there is a lack of detachment. As a result she starts becoming over-serious and suffers from role induced stress as a result. There is a deep connection between seriousness and fear. E.g. In this case of Aarti, as a result of attachment to her role, there are lots of fears that she carries regarding her role of software executive – fear of loss of position; loss of love, respect and reputation – either in her company or in general in society, not succeeding, not getting promoted etc. because of which she is over-serious and she carries the role in her head almost all the time, even when she sleeps. That is why so called extremely busy people sometimes complain of sleep problems. 

This can happen with us, with any role we play. This kind of stress, just like in the case of the actor (explained yesterday) is generally made up sorrow, anger and fear – one of these three different negative emotions from time to time or more than one at the same time – phases of dejection or feeling low or a lack of enthusiasm or a general disinterest in life events; phases of frustration and experiencing a lack of control of events and people, due to which there are frequent outbursts of anger and phases of immense worry regarding the future, all of which affect our mind, our physical body, relationships and even success of our role; although it is our role itself (our over-identification with it) which is the root cause of this emotional turmoil inside us. So instead of benefitting our role, our over-concern for it starts affecting it adversely.