Stress, Anxiety, and Depression: “Stress-Freely” Used, Heavy Words Losing Their Weight
Recently, I found my friends exclaiming, “I am extremely stressed!” —but was she truly? It wasn't a crisis that would change her life, and she wasn't drowning in toxic pressure. She was merely managing several tasks simultaneously. It occurred to me that contemporary discourse often employs terms such as 'stress', 'anxiety', and 'depression' so casually that they have nearly forfeited their genuine significance. Here, ‘losing weight’ doesn’t mean physical weight—it means words like stress, anxiety, and depression are losing their weightage, their true significance, because of casual overuse.” We use them "stress-free"—without reflecting on their true significance. It's particularly crucial to pay attention to this informal usage of strong language in the classroom. Envision an educator lamenting, “I’m disheartened by the examination outcomes,” while ...