Stress Concentration

Physics, Physical and Pain

Physics, Physical and Pain

Three words

might not be making sense to you currently and they might not even seem connected to one another, but the following text is going to revolve around these three words, and by the end of this read, the connection will become more evident than you expect.

Hello Readers.

It’s 2 AM and raining heavily outside.

Today I am going to talk about a topic from mechanics that I studied during my engineering days, Stress Concentration.

Let’s go through the definition first, a stress concentration is simply a location in an object where the stress is significantly greater than the surrounding region. It occurs when there are irregularities in the geometry or material of components that cause an interruption to the flow of stress.

Irregularities could arise from including material defects, contact stress, thermal stress, holes, scratches etc. in material.

A simpler way to understand this is by an example of a bridge.

Consider a bridge having some defect in the middle of it and the bridge is used for commuting by all kinds of road vehicles. So, from the theory of stress concentration, the largest stress would be on the defective area that is the middle part, doesn’t matter whether the load is highest on the middle part or not.

And if in future bridge collapses the middle part would be the first one to trigger it.

And interestingly this theory is not just limited to mechanics and engineering. What I observed is that it is indeed true for our physical body as well.

Suppose you have an injury on your right shoulder and the rest of your arm is perfectly fine.

And accidently you got hit by something on your right elbow, forearms or wrist. Even though the impact occurs away from your shoulder, the most intense pain you’re likely to feel will be at your already injured shoulder.

or you can say that the pain on your shoulder will always be greater than the pain at the actual part where you got hit.

You can even try it on yourself to validate this.

And it is true not only for physical pain or feeling but also for mental and emotional feelings. May not sound intuitive for now but hold on with me.

Every person was once a newborn like an empty canvas ready to imprint things on it as life proceeds. You are raised by your society, the society includes your parents, siblings, later your early friends and classmates.

Although with different weightage (parents being the highest) they all are contributing to your foundation, canvas, the lens through which you are going to see the world rest of your life.

And humans being imperfect in many ways builds things imperfectly. The newborn is surely built with basics correct enough to think and act normally but with lots of hidden scars and imperfection, analogous to material defects in our example of the bridge earlier, which are not visible in plain sight.

So, we have an emotional body as well, different from the physical body. The difference here is that you can’t directly feel it physically or show it to others, and the scars here just live inside until you find it and most often, we only notice them when they are exposed.

That is the exact location where the stress/pain is significantly greater than the surrounding region i.e Stress Concentration.

Think about it

When someone makes a comment on your looks, it not the things in front of you i.e the comment or the person, it is the scar living inside you from your foundational years that is producing the reaction

The injured shoulder produces pain more than the finger that got hit.

Someone making a comment on your looks takes you back to the time where you were made to question or doubt your looks, or someone from your society made you feel bad about your looks, and it got imprinted on your canvas.

Someone talking about his achievements in front of you makes you envious not because its natural but because you already have an untreated scar living inside questioning the fairness or maybe people enjoyed something you wanted and didn’t get.

“Stress Concentration”

You hold on to people a bit more not because it’s the people you are holding are trying to run away but because the scar of people leaving you still lives inside waiting to be exposed governing your emotions and ultimately actions.

The bridge falls not because the load was high but because somewhere the material defect, when it was built, remained untreated.

Definitely shows and should be the biggest takeaway here that reacting and fixing the things in front of you won’t change anything, situations and the names of people will change but the outcome, the feeling you end up with, will remain the same.

Every such situation stands like a mirror in front of you, reflecting what’s within you and simply blaming the mirror for the unpleasing visual won’t change anything.

But the good news is, there is a solution. Awareness.

Awareness is the first and most important step to get over it. Once you are aware you are already halfway to the solution.

Unlike machines, where once you identify the flaw, it can often be fixed using predefined techniques, humans are far more complex.

You have to take yourself back to the scar, allow yourself to feel it, process it and build fallbacks and lots of internal battles to participate. And this is not a one time process.

Not a hard and fast rule but what I’ve shared here is simply what I’ve observed, experienced, and come to understand.

About the Author:

Shivang is a 22-year-old from India who loves observing people and sharing his thoughts on human behavior, relationships, and theories of life.

An avid reader, he recently began writing consistently as he believes writing is the most peaceful form of expression. Professionally, he is a product person who enjoys building things that create value.

Above all, he believes that life comes from you and not at you. Here’s the link to Shivang’s Substack:

---

a small note from people’s archive.

we want to apologize for the delay in guest postings. there have been a lot of personal things gor has been navigating within his family, along with other responsibilities, and while he is back, it’s still taking some time to manage everything as a one–person team and return fully to a regular posting rhythm.

we are open for august, september and october. you can send your pieces to gorsnewsletter@gmail.com.

for themes and guidelines, please visit the people’s archive homepage. everything is listed there, and if you’re unsure about anything, feel free to reach out.

thank you for your patience, your kindness, and for staying with us while we find our footing again.

---