We live in a world where stress is abundant. It has all shapes and forms. You can find it in the very moment. We are all stressed as individuals. Much is due to the social environment we live in. Price hikes, petrol prices, and a deteriorating lifestyle pattern to meet the basics is causing havoc.

Stress is real. Do realize that parents and grown-ups are facing the hardest moments. You can find them irate, abused, and feel that they have been cheated. Millions of our countrymen are moving out of Pakistan for these various reasons.

As a psychologist, need to update the members of society that stress can cause some serious problems. It starts small. Intermittent outages of the body. You get irate. You feel distressed. But smiles come through. As stress or the symptoms continue, it becomes more serious and can even turn into a leading cause of death.

Stress can also cause mood disorders. With continued stress levels you can adapt quickly and find your body into a physiological zone that is now nonrepairable.

Interestingly enough, there are issues in the environment that trigger permanent damage. I have a colleague who had his car robbed and was called to pay an additional 2 million rupees for the car. His brother-in-law is in the police and could do nothing. They had to get an insider from the KPK and settle the score.

Imagine living in a world where we must pay dacoits and become accepted to this norm. And that too from a police officer.

As a psychologist, this is not a norm. this is insanity. We are triggering stress as an acceptable quotient in society. Do you know the damage? Acceptance of stress is going to burnout, sadness and even ratelessness. Imagine that person moving into society as a father and a worker. He has accepted that the police cannot help him, and he has to pay 2 million for a car.

KPK Jirga ensured payment was made to them and they called the dacoits to release the car. I wonder why the jirga did not see the bloodless brutality of human violation.

I am writing this so that it can open a forum for discussion. Our police officers need to see that lack of processes and ownership is taking a greater share of our insanity in society. I spoke to the police team and they stated that was only money and the car is now recovered. Unfortunately, it is not about the money. It is about being the harbingers of safety and allowing these abnormal variances in society.

The impact is huge. You are creating a restless society. Much of our stress in Pakistan is not internal. It is external. You need to see this and create rules of engagement that create stress at lower rates. You will form a society of healthy minds and healthy hearts.

Stress if caused by personal vendettas can be easily controlled. It is the stress from the society that cannot be controlled and balanced. This is a reality pill we need to accept. I deal with patients suffering more from society stress-related factors than self-stress. There are no antiseptic therapies for this. You cannot accept stress due to poor governance and policing.

We keep on continuing to add stress as part of society. With this, we are decreasing years of life and creating manic societies at large. This is leading us to high volatile societies that can no longer survive on human instinct.