The Persistence of Stress: Negative Life Events in the Recent and Distant Past

Abstract

This chapter, like its predecessor, concerns those elements the person adds to the equation to convert stressful times into personal distress. This chapter addresses the way events in the immediate or distant past shaped responses to unemployment in our study. Each builds upon earlier chapters. Chapter Three laid out the overall dimensions of the unemployment that followed the 1987 GM plant closings and Chapter Four traced the patterns of individual and family distress. Just as Chapter Five concentrated on the roles and statuses to which identity is attached, Chapter Six concentrated on the self. Chapter Five pointed out that workers did not really talk about their identities in terms of race or gender. Similarly, except for the closing of the GM plants, they also tended to talk about ongoing conditions rather than events. For example, the quote earlier from a closing plant worker describes some of the way a bad situation is made worse when a blow like unemployment is coupled with previous or ongoing stress. The bad marriage referred to here is a chronic Stressor; a separation or divorce, in contrast, is a stressful event. Both are important. The events are easier to ask about. Because chronic Stressors also play a role in the stress process (Pearlin, 1989), it is important not to assume that the questions we asked tapped everything about workers’ pasts that would be relevant to their stress responses to unemployment.

Don′t get me wrong, my home life wasn′t always very good. When I worked, I wasn′t around very much. I didn′t think of myself as a big family man, but i did see myself as a work–every–day kind of provider. Then I wasn′t a provider. I was suddenly home all the time with a marriage that was never any good to start with. At least work had kept me out of the house and the pay check kept things kind of even. Nothing about what I was seemed to be there anymore. I felt down all the time, but I was the kind of guy who got his mind off his problems by getting busy. When I was out and not sure I′d get back into GM, I was just in a fog, you know, I wasn′t sure about anything. As time went on i found out what it means to be depressed. I don′t think I′ll ever tell anyone who′s down to “snap out of it” anymore—that′s not the way it is in reality. —a closing plant worker