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Happy Filipinos after Typhoon Haiyan
by: Pharell Wiliams
 How do you feel about the slides?

What message can you get from the

video clip.
 Stress and the Filipino
 Filipinos do face many sources of stress, around work
and livelihood mainly.
- Farmers worry about drought and typhoons; -
urbanites go berserk with tyrannical bosses and vicious
gossipy office-mates.
 Rural or urban, we all face the stresses of family, we
like to say we are family-oriented, with relatives always
on hand to help out. But the extended Filipino family
can be stressful too, with all its obligations. Overseas
workers have a particularly difficult time with all the
expectations family members have back home.
 Stress and the Filipino
 Chinese Asiaweek once had a cover story
featuring Filipinos as the happiest people in
the world, unfazed by the most difficult of
circumstances. One photo had a group of
men drinking away in the middle of knee-
high floodwaters.
 Stress and the Filipino
 But the scenes of smiling and laughing Filipinos,
singing and dancing (and drinking) away can be
deceptive. Quite often, we deal with stress by
trying to be “happy.”
 Masaya is social camaraderie, it’s making cheer
and quite often we do it precisely because there
have been unhappy events, stressful events. The
best example is that of a death — our wakes are
notorious for its merry-making, but that, precisely,
is part of our stress-coping mechanism.
 Stress and the Filipino
 We have folk psychology, maybe even folk
psychiatry, at work here, Filipinos aware of how
dangerous it is to allow stress to consume us. We
warn people about excesses as a cause of illness,
and that includes the excessive emotions generated
by stress. The word dalamhati is graphic,
describing an inner sadness (from the
Malay dalam, inside and hati, the heart or the liver,
believed to be seats of our emotions) that slowly
consumes the person.
 Stress and the Filipino
 But for all the talk about our communitarian
orientation, of helping friends to overcome stress,
social pressures in the Philippines can also be
counterproductive with the way we sometimes
force people to repress the stress. “Enjoy!” we
urge them, not realizing there are limits to
resilience.
 Stress and the Filipino
 There are power dimensions to all this, such as
those found in gender. Contrary to stereotypes
about women being more expressive, Filipinas are
actually more prone to dealing with stressful
situations through tiis (endurance)
and kimkim(repression). Check out the local
scenes of merriment: it’s usually men having a
good time, bringing out the beer and toasting their
problems away, while their women look for ways
to make ends meet.
 Stress and the Filipino
 Men, too, are expected to keep their feelings in check, but
more out of masculine values of strength and stoicism.
Men are generally not allowed to cry, much less to go into
hysterics; and this probably helps to explain why more
men suffer from cardiovascular disease.
 Many Filipinos will express their stress by complaining
about recurring headaches, or abdominal pains,
accompanied by dizziness, nausea, fatigue. Doctors used
to dismiss these as being all in the mind, but it has
become clear the physical pain and distress may be quite
real, that the pent-up stress is expressed through the body.
 Stress and the Filipino
 These vague symptoms have been labeled as
“somatization syndrome,” and are often hard to treat,
partly because medical professionals still haven’t
figured out the biological processes involved.
Culturally, too, people may attach labels that don’t
quite reflect the actual part of the body that’s
affected, as when they say that they’re suffering from
nerbyos or “nerves.” Nerbyos doesn’t necessarily
mean being nervous; it’s often hypertension or high
blood pressure, for example, and a health
professional or caregiver may miss the problem.
 Stress and the Filipino
 There’s also a political economy of stress
involved, meaning power relations shape the way
one experiences and expresses stress. Common
sense tells us the poor suffer much more daily
stress, from battling the traffic while commuting,
breathing in more of the toxic fumes, dealing with
tyrannical bosses and snakepit offices. Poor
women are doubly burdened, having to deal with
the tribulations of work, as well as of the home,
running after the needs of husband and children.
 Stress and the Filipino
 Public health analysts in Western countries have produced
voluminous literature on how poverty interacts with stress to
cause illnesses and death. Earlier research tended to be
simplistic, explaining high illness and death rates among the
poor as being due to their lack of access to good health care.
But more recent research has shown that the problems of
poverty also relate to power and autonomy. The poor are less
healthy because they suffer more stress, not just from what I
described earlier, but also from the inequities in power. The
poor are more prone to feeling helpless and will have less
self-esteem — all that contributes to a more rapid
deterioration of health when confronted with stressors.
 Stress and the Filipino
 Men may be more prone to the problem of this “political
economy of stress,” since they have to live up to higher
expectations of gender. A jobless man, for example, may
be more adversely affected by stress because of a loss of
pride. Machismo also blocks him from taking up jobs
that he thinks are beneath his station. So he ends up
drinking with the barkada, which is then interpreted as
“resilience” and an ability to be happy. His wife,
meanwhile, will pick up odd jobs here and there, doing
laundry, mending clothes; ironically, that again generates
stress for him, as he feels his masculinity threatened.
 Stress and the Filipino
 The macho imperatives around stress are inevitably tied to
alcohol and drugs. Younger male Filipinos are particularly
vulnerable, given their struggles with identity, masculinity
and self-esteem, unable to express their frustrations and
resentment. Drugs are one way of dealing with the stress,
with all its attendant problems. It’s significant though that
the most abused drugs are metaphetamines, which are
“uppers” or stimulants. Again, the Filipino response to
stress is to look for more stimulation. The nerve cells fire
away until, frayed and exhausted, the user develops
paranoia (borrowed into Filipino as praning) and then
psychosis.
 Stress and the Filipino
 Others take out their frustrations through violent
behavior. The phenomenon of the amok, favorite
fare for our tabloid newspapers, used to be the
subject of racialized descriptions from Western
anthropologists, who thought that those belonging
to the “Malay race,” including Filipinos, were
especially prone to going on a violent rampage,
sometimes with hostage-taking.
 Stress and the Filipino
 The racial angle is total nonsense of course.
Running amok has nothing to do with race. It’s,
quite simply, a person reaching the end of the line,
or put another way, the bottom of the heap. It’s the
poorest, most disempowered men, who tend to run
amok. A stressed rich man takes out his
frustrations on those lower in a pecking order; the
amok has no one, not even the dogs at home, to
vent his anger, so he turns to random violence.
 Stress and the Filipino
 ALL THAT discussion should have stressed you by now, and made you
wonder: given the deteriorating economic and political situation in the
Philippines, are we about to see an epidemic of stress-related ailments?
 I think we’re already in that epidemic, and too little is being done to help
Filipinos tackle stress.
 I’ve intentionally used the verb “tackle” rather than “treat” because there is a
tendency to medicalize stress, to look for drug treatments that could lead to new
dependencies. The drug companies push all kinds of “antidepressants” to
doctors, who are then quick to prescribe them to stressed patients.
 Sessions with psychiatrists or psychologists are more effective than drug
treatments, but again, low incomes may prevent many Filipinos from getting
the “talking therapy” they need. That is why we need to be able to tap what we
already have in culture, looking into how families and communities can be
mobilized to help people with their stress.
 Stress and the Filipino
 I feel community health workers are under-utilized
for mental health. Given some training, they can
learn to help their barangay residents with stress.
That includes essentials about counseling, for
example, not resorting to that notorious sulsol(“Oh
yes, your husband is really terrible, and mare, you
know I just didn’t want to tell you but we’ve all
known all this time that. . .”)
 Stress and the Filipino
 We have that in our folk therapies — note how, in bangungot,
we’re supposed to try to move a finger, a toe, any part of the body.
It’s not a symbolic act; it actually means taking control of one’s
own body, and the failing spirit. It’s a powerful metaphor that can
be used to explain other stress-related ailments and syndromes.
 I’m ambivalent about New Age therapies such as meditation and
aromatherapy, but mainly because the type offered by spas and
health resorts are just totally inappropriate. Since we’re a very
olfactory people, I think there is a place for aromatherapy. Sadly,
we’re importing expensive aromatic oils when there are local
plants that can be used; in fact, some of the most expensive
aromatic oils are extracted from local plants we take for granted,
like ylang-ylang.
 Stress and the Filipino
 But I do see a place for many traditional therapies
being rechanneled toward stress management.
The manghihilot can be “reinvented” so his or her
skills with therapeutic massage can be applied not
just for sprains, but also for broken hearts and
weary spirits.
 Stress and the Filipino
 Massage and aromatherapy, however, are only the
externals. Stress management is really helping
people to dissect their own feelings, to understand
where their distress is coming from. The solutions
may not always be easy — all the aromatherapy
and meditation in the world will not raise low
wages.
 Stress and the Filipino
 But community action can help to make the stress more
tolerable. Communities should be urged to create their
own safe spaces where people can seek some refuge.
Filipino-style, such spaces need not be totally quiet, but
they do need to give some sense of safety, of sanity in a
mad world. Filipino-style, too, we need to think of how
these therapeutic spaces might work out as places where
people can engage in social activities, without becoming
more agitated. Alternatives could be offered: gardening,
cross-stitching, bingo…anything that calms the mind.
You don’t need to be in the lotus position to meditate.
 Stress and the Filipino
 Ultimately, stress management is a matter of
helping people to recognize that the world, which
seems so stressful, can also be a source of joy and
pleasure, fulfillment and renewal. The therapies
being dangled around are really meant as
appetizers, ways of inducing the depressed the
person to garner enough strength and courage to
re-engage not just the world, but life itself.
 As a Filipino student, what is your
own way of coping with stress? Is
it effective?

 Do you need other ways of

coping? What might you try?
Experience.... Let's Relax
Guided Meditation
References:
 Stress and Filipino
Michael L. Tan is a medical anthropologist. He
is currently chair of the anthropology at UP Diliman,
Quezon City. He also writes an op-ed column,
“Pinoy Kasi,” for the Philippine Daily Inquirer.