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Copyright 2002 Wilderness Peacemaking The Role of Stress Being in the wilderness can create significant stress. People without wilderness experience can be stressed by the absence of their usual support systems – telephones, electric lights, neighbors, ready assistance in an emergency. Even experienced wilderness travelers can find themselves confronting serious life threats, such as forest fires, lightning storms, and avalanches, and exceptional stressors such as the critical injury or death of a member of the team. And, when stress occurs in the wilderness, many of the normal coping mechanisms are unavailable, including the coping mechanism of withdrawing from the situation. In the wilderness, you are stuck in a stressful situation until it is resolved. The normal stress reaction is a protective reflex common to all mammals and mediated by adrenaline. This well-known flight-or-fight syndrome manifests as anxiety, fear, rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms and forehead, rapid shallow breathing, nausea, trembling, and dilated pupils, all of which help the organism increase its alertness, vision, strength, and speed. The reflex abates when the emergency is over. But sometimes wilderness stress lasts longer than a relatively brief time. Extended survival situations, long-term care for a seriously injured teammate, or being lost with a group in the wilderness – even such mundane events as four days of nonstop rain – can impose almost continuous stress. Such stress can have both adaptive and dysfunctional effects. The stress can help increase a team member’s alertness, strength, endurance, tolerance to hardship, sense of purpose, and loyalty to the team. It can also lead to fear, panic, loss of hope, apathy, carelessness, impaired performance – and, ultimately, disruptive, violent, and out-of-control behavior.6 Dysfunctional stress reactions can range from mild to severe. At the mild end of the spectrum, a team member may complain of aches and pains; be jumpy and anxious; become startled at sudden sounds or movements; tremble, fidget, or fumble with things; have cold sweats, dry mouth, pale skin, or a pounding heart; have difficulty concentrating; appear distant and haunted; or complain of shortness of breath, fatigue, diarrhea, vomiting, constipation, or frequent urination. More severe cases may show significant personality changes; rapid, pressured talking or, alternatively, complete withdrawal and total silence; memory loss; visual or auditory hallucinations; complete lack of interest in food or drink; or panic or hysteria. Under conditions of long-term stress, team members may easily become angry, irritable, tearful, argumentative, or belligerent; have difficulty paying attention, remembering details, or communicating with their teammates; have trouble sleeping or complain of nightmares; or constantly complain, expect the worst, and express loss of confidence in the team. At its worst, stress in the wilderness can result in disruptive or assaultive behavior toward other members of the group. Even relatively low levels of stress can cause disruptive behavior in a person who already lacks coping skills and self-control, as when leading groups of adjudicated or at-risk youth in wilderness therapy programs, or in a person already under the stress of significant life transition, as among trauma survivors seeking healing on a wilderness journey. Even normally well-adjusted and competent people can lose control of their behavior under conditions of extreme environmental stress, such as a lightning storm, days of continuous rain, a forest fire, becoming lost, a serious injury to a group member, or overwhelming challenges to their physical strength or endurance. Notes 6 An episode of disruptive, violent, or out-of-control behavior in the wilderness would seem to fit the criteria for a “reportable injury or illness” under the guidelines promulgated by the Wilderness Risk Management Committee of the Association for Experiential Education; that is, such an incident meets one or more of the following criteria:
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