Are there differences in the way different nationalities deal with stress? There are obviously personality differences between nationalities so it stands to reason that people of different nations cope with stress in vastly different ways.
Is it true that Germans are perfectionistic? Are Asians really stoic? Are Americans always aggressive? Do Hispanics really like music and dancing as shown in “West Side Story?” I’ve been interviewing folks from different countries recently to find out how each nation copes with stress. There is very little literature which attempts to take an international view of coping. We now live in a global village. Every neighborhood in Nassau County has an intermingling of nationalities from Africa, South America, Central America, Asia, and India. It’s time to think about these differences in character and personality.
Book publishers are now global in nature and they naturally seek to sell books internationally in order to expand their market share. Along those lines, my book publisher (Routledge) asked me to be sure to include sections on how athletes from different countries differ in the way they handle competitive stress. In case you didn’t know, I’m a sport psychologist and the book I am now writing grapples with the crucial area of how athletes cope with stress by using their defense mechanisms.
I recently explored the way Central American soccer players cope with stress by asking a former soccer player from El Salvador his thoughts about the subject of mental health in his country. He is a thoughtful guy and paused before answering. Then he said, “I think the biggest problem is intergenerational trauma. We have all seen so much violence, murder in the streets and domestic violence that it’s hard to escape from it. We all worry about our parents, our kids and our siblings. That’s the way it is.”
He then went on to say “By the way, soccer has stagnated in El Salvador because of our poverty and our history of trauma.” I told you he was a thoughtful guy. His remarks highlight how a nation’s history influences the way its citizens feel, function and relate to each other.
The traumatic nature of the war in Gaza highlights the issue of mental health in Israel. Anyone who is of the Judaic faith has a history of traumatic anxiety that is hard to fathom. According to the Library of Congress Viktor Frankl’s classic “Man’s Search of Meaning” is one of ’the 10 most influential books in America” and has been translated into 24 languages and sold over 10 million copies.
This memoir is about Frankl’s 2 ½ year Jewish experience at Auschwitz. His book is so valuable because of the way it emphasizes that one must find meaning in life, no matter what the circumstances. Similar to the Oscar-winning film “Life is Beautiful,” Frankl explores the way humans can use imagination, asceticism, dissociation and humor to overcome anything. Frankl’s work outlines and delineates the power of the most mature and adaptive of human defenses.
I have also interviewed many Japanese, Chinese and South Korean athletes and the most outstanding character trait of the Asian athlete is their unusual ability to withstand pain without complaint. I did research years ago with a Japanese sport psychologist and we discovered that the Asian athlete uses very few words to describe pain. I recall working with a young South Korean golfer headed for the tour and when I told his father before one event that his son had bad back pain, the father said “No… he does not. He has no back pain.”
This can be described as the defense of either suppression or repression and I have always felt it stemmed from the centurys-old tradition of foot binding which many young girls had to endure in Asia. I believe that the traumatic memory of what young girls had to manage instilled a stoic attitude in the entire continent. I think Asians use suppression and repression to manage many of their feelings.
This leaves us with the question of American defense mechanisms and the way we traditionally cope with stress. One can easily see that whatever defenses Americans used in the past to manage their stress, these mechanisms seem to be shattering. Evidence of this defense mechanism breakdown is seen weekly with mass shootings, the latest of which took 18 lives and wounded dozens of others in the staid town of Lewiston, Maine.
Ever since Columbine the world has been aware of the epidemic of mass shootings taking place in American schools, bars, music festivals and malls. This suggests that underlying feelings of alienation, shame and anger are boiling over and that former inhibitors of restraint are no longer able to contain our rage. America is noted for its sense of freedom, creativity, entrepreneurial drive, and for its money which are the primary reasons that people still flock to our shores.
Each nation has a characteristic manner of dealing with stress. The Central Americans I know are creative and decent but may be encumbered by the weight of tragedy in their past. Israelis and those who practice Judaism have been a chronically targeted group and have emerged with profoundly mature defenses of humor, asceticism, and imagination. Asians have learned how to suppress and repress pain, but Americans over the last 25 years seem to be losing defensive control over their impulses and we see endless occurrences of mass shootings, the latest of which comes from Maine.
We all need to have defenses which help us to cope with our anxiety and it is worthwhile and interesting to see which nation uses what defense and why.
