Family Profile Project: Mission Statement

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I’m taking on a project concerning a subject that has long pulled at my curiosity so consistently that, in the end, I have no choice but to explore its implications and causes. The subject is stress, particularly stress as it manifests out of the gene pool of my family.

It has always been clear, not only to me and other family members, but many family acquaintances as well, that the Stout family temperament and personality is quite peculiar. It took my whole childhood growing up, hearing of the ‘Stout temper’ and then experiencing it first hand, to understand how biologically engrained this characteristic is to nearly every Stout. Though I have many individual instances that exemplify the ‘Stout temper’ perfectly, I will not, out of respect for my family, get into that. That is a story unto itself and essentially is not necessary to what I’m trying to accomplish here.

This subject is really quite personal for me, for in embarking on this project it is necessary to divulge not just some personal information concerning myself and Stout members (anonymously of course) but the ways in which the nature of the beast (stress) is essentially tied to these individuals in emotional, cognitive and self-identifying ways.

For these reasons, I will not reveal any actual names or relational ties to myself of the individuals used. My motivation behind this project is to better understand my own biology through studying my family’s, to understand how stress’s effects are genetically, environmentally and temperamentally variable, and to find viable methods of coping with stress effectively when it is unavoidable in our environment.

I hope also that this information is found useful to others. Stress is unavoidable to everyone and intensified in our modern environments. It is a silent killer and its tracks are often brushed off on genetic or behavioral conditions. Though, these have a heavy influence on how stress effects each of us, we are also in full control of managing stress in a healthy way.

I am in school right now, on track to becoming a DO. Though I am just in the midst of my undergraduate, I have a lot of passion in understanding health and disease. I have long been an advocate for healthy lifestyle changes as a way to support a healthy well-being. So, as a way to build my repertoire of understanding how health is a manifestation of many factors - genetic, behavioral, environmental, cognitive and emotional – this will formulate a foundational perspective to build new information on top of. Similarly, in beginning to talk to family members, whom I am close to, about health, stress and lifestyle changes, I am building communicative skills that will be crucial down the road.

I do hope you find this project interesting and hopefully enlightening.

Thank you for reading.