Stress related illnesses caused by bullies, narcissists and psychopaths can be serious and life threatening.
Stress is defined in Wikipedia as a person's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition or a stimulus. Stress is a body's way to react to a challenge. According to the stressful event, the body's way to respond to stress is by sympathetic nervous system activation which results in the fight-or-flight response. Stress typically describes a negative condition (distress) or a positive condition (eustress) that can have an impact on a person's mental and physical well-being.
The degree of suffering can vary from victim to victim. It is not the stress that kills or makes a person ill, it is the way the victim reacts to the stress that makes the victim ill, or even die.
This is a brief summary of the psychology of stress theory.
1. Primary appraisal: The victim assess the stressful situation to determine if it is a threatening event. That is, whether the event is harmful.
2. Secondary appraisal: The victim decides if he/she can cope with the stressful event. (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).
Selye’s (1956) first stage of reaction is the alarm reaction, which involves excitation of the autonomic nervous system. The hypothalamus receives signals of fear, the sympathetic nervous system activates the adrenal gland, which secretes the stress hormones epinephrine (adrenaline) and norepinephrine (noradrenalin). In a matter of moments, heart rate increases, breathing becomes rapid and shallow, hands clammy, mouth dry, pupils dilate, and the heart pumps blood to vital organs. The whole body and mind go into high alert and readyness in what is called the fight-or-flight response (Cannon, 1929).
The victim then decides whether to deal with the stressor (bully-narcissist-psychopath) cognitively, i.e. engage in problem-focused coping, a coping strategy in which the stressor is challenged head-on (Carver & Scheier, 1999; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), or, adopt an emotion-focused coping, a coping strategy in which attempts are made to reduce any painful emotions (Carver, Scheier, & Weintraub,1989; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).
The end result of the interaction with the stressor (bully-narcissist-psychopath) is possibly feelings of depression, hopelessness, and hostility, especially if the stressor persistently engaged the victim.
If the victim has a way of escaping the situation then the victim exhibits the flight response. Flight can be leaving the room, leaving the office, quitting the job, moving out to escape the stressor.
When there has been no solution or resolution and the stressor continues, the victim may reach the last stage which is exhaustion when they can no longer cope and has no more strength or resistence. Then the victim could break down and suffer long lasting physical and psychological damage including depression, suicide, heart failure and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Comijs et al., 2008;Meichenbaum, 1994; Yehuda et al., 1993).