Abstract
Prolonged physiological stress responses form an important risk factor for disease. According to neurobiological and evolution-theoretical insights the stress response is a default response that is always “on” but inhibited by the prefrontal cortex when safety is perceived. Based on these insights the Generalized Unsafety Theory of Stress (GUTS) states that prolonged stress responses are due to generalized and largely unconsciously perceived unsafety rather than stressors. This novel perspective necessitates a reconstruction of current stress theory, which we address in this paper. We discuss a variety of very common situations without stressors but with prolonged stress responses, that are not, or not likely to be caused by stressors, including loneliness, low social status, adult life after prenatal or early life adversity, lack of a natural environment, and less fit bodily states such as obesity or fatigue. We argue that in these situations the default stress response may be chronically disinhibited due to unconsciously perceived generalized unsafety. Also, in chronic stress situations such as work stress, the prolonged stress response may be mainly caused by perceived unsafety in stressor-free contexts. Thus, GUTS identifies and explains far more stress-related physiological activity that is responsible for disease and mortality than current stress theories.
Highlights
Patient: “Doctor, I am scared of the unknown”Dr Sigmund: “Such as strange cultures or exotic destinations?”Patient: “I don’t know, I don’t know anything about it...”Peter de Wit, strip in De Volkskrant, 14 August 20141.1
As we will discuss in more detail below maternal stress during pregnancy leads to more chronic stress responses in adult offspring of both animals and humans, independent of stressors, and the same is true for several personality dispositions such as neuroticism and trait anxiety that are believed to be at least partly genetically determined and even earlier in the process
There are several very common situations in which the default stress response may be chronically disinhibited, because they share the following characteristics:. They are associated with chronic physiological activity that is similar to a stress response; Their associated chronic physiological activity is not caused, or unlikely to be caused by stressors; They are characterized by a reduced availability of perceived safety
Summary
Animals including humans are naturally, by default, afraid of the unknown [1,2]. As we grow up we learn to recognize the signals of safety, but from the very beginning we fear without a sign of threat— known as “intolerance for uncertainty” [2,3,4]. The default here is a state of generalized unsafety in which the stress response stays on [1,2]. Stress theories speak of a stress response as a response to a stressor, that is, as a direct response to a threat This idea of a default stress response determined by safety is firmly based on neurobiological and evolution-theoretical insights that we have explained elsewhere when introducing the novel Generalized Unsafety Theory of Stress (GUTS) [1,2,3]. We will argue that by far most of the prolonged responses occur in (chronic) situations without actual stressors, and that GUTS can explain this better than conventional stress theories, using the concepts of the default stress response and generalized unsafety
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