A Theory of Psychological Inflammation-Reduction
Battling uncertainty, inefficiency, and non-alignment
We know what biological inflammation is — flare-ups of pain and swelling running the gamut from quotidian activities like skinning your knee to hospital-plopping ailments like pneumonia. The word ‘inflammation’ surfaces in medical offices with doctors scrunching up their faces in benevolent concern as they catalog its dangers to their patients.
It shows up in the advertisement-sphere — these emotive depictions of radiating, scarlet splotches on blue skeletons rotating on our screens. It crops up in health magazines as this wholesale menace embedded in the ancestry of our various grievances and actively aggravating them to boot.
Body inflammation triggers that primal fight-or-flight response, provoking infusions of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. And psychological stress and inflammation are tightly twined, with the former a common guilty culprit of the latter. Keep your stress levels down or you could end up heart disease or diabetes! is the chilling reminder, arguably exacerbating our angst.
In any case, while we understand that biological inflammation is best alleviated by minimizing our stress levels, that psychological piece is sometimes less straightforward. Sure, we know the…
