Stress and Me
It's almost impossible to live without some stress. And most of us wouldn't want to, because it gives life some spice and excitement. But if stress gets out of control, it may harm your health, your relationships, and your enjoyment of life. What is stress? Do you understand stress? Since most of us have suffered from stress at some time in our lives, can we prevent it? Does stress affect your health? Come on, from here let us understand what is stress...
As we know, stress is everywhere. People from different family, background, and place are stressed. Children are stressed, teenager are stressed, college students are stressed, even older also are stressed. To understand and manage our stress, we need to view in the context of stress. Besides that, stress is one of the most commonly referred to but least understood health problems. Firstly, what is stress? Stress is very individualistic and different from everyone. Besides that, stress would take issue with the notion of eustress (good) versus distress (bad). By the way, different type of stress and feeling to our, it also will bring effect to us. In the other words, eustress is not stress at all because it is associated with good feelings. According to Richard Blonna, Professor, Department of Community Health William Paterson University, he defined stress from two ways: stress as response, stress as stimulus.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, stress as response. The stress response does not occur in a vacuum. It is influenced by what is going on in our immediate environment and in the world environment. Stress also as a physical response going on within them such as stress is a tension headache or stress is a knot in my stomach. Scientist defined the concept of the body’s internal environment, such as how living things organisms attempt to maintain an internal constancy or balance and how this struggle goes on despite changes in the outside environment.
Second, stress as a stimulus. Pressures associated with work, school, relationships, family life, and other environment demands often cause people to describe themselves as “being under stress”. In fact, such stressors have been found to affect physical health. People who view stress as stimulus define stress as an outside force that puts demands on them: “stress is pressure.” Some of these events are joyous such as marriage, the birth of a child, a new job-and others are sad –the death of loved one, the loss of a job can also become a type of stress and stimulate our emotion. It can let our put more effort to do something and toward success.
When Ann Nee said that stress is very individualistic and different from everyone. I was thinking that she's exactly right. Stress is totally different from everyone including the way they define stress. If hundred people were interviewed and asked about stress, we are end up with hundred different definitions. Reason for that is simple, everyone of us looks of stress differently. Let’s back to the main point..what is stress??? The word "stress" is derived from the Latin word "Stringi" which means "to be drawn tight".
ReplyDeleteIn medical terms stress is described as "a physical or psychological stimulus that can produce mental tension or physiological reactions that may lead to illness". When you are under stress,your adrenal gland release corticosteroids,which are converted to cortisol in the blood steam.Cortisol have an immune suppressive effect in your body.
According to Richard S Lazarus,stress is a feeling experienced when a person thinks that "the demands exceed the personal and social resources the individual is able to mobilize".Your body tries to adjust to different
environment around you.In this process,the body is put to extra work resulting in 'wear and tear'.In other words,your body is stressed.Stress disturb the body's normal way of functioning.
However,stress is not necessarily harmful.Hans Selye said,"stress is not necessarily something bad it all depends on how you take it.The stress exhilarating,creative sucessful work is beneficial,while that of failure,humiliation or infection is detrimental".People often work well under certain stress leading to increased productivity.Many times you do not know in advance and the stress periods may be sudden.The situation may not be under your control.Too much stress is harmful.You should know your level of stress that allows you to perform optimally in your life.
Hey guys and girls, I find a website, a little bit about the stress. In this introduction, mainly explain the stress from the science view. Same as Aimi’s comment, it is stress leads to rapid change throughout the body. Furthermore, the differences between short term (acute) and long term (chronic) also be discussed. Before we go to understand and solve our stress, I suggest we need to understand what the meaning of the stress. Therefore, friends can look at the following link: http://www.umm.edu/patiented/articles/what_stress_000031_1.htm. I hope it is easier to let you all understand. Please take a look!
ReplyDeleteIdentifying Different Types of Stress
ReplyDeleteStress types that are listed below with a brief description attached to help us differentiate between the different types of stress. There are four main types of stress:
EUSTRESS
Have you ever (I'm sure you have) felt:
- The thrill and excited feeling while watching a horror movie
- The feeling of excitement when you won a game or race
- The excitement when you bought your first car
- The accomplishment of a challenge
- The proud feeling of being a first time parent
- The happy feeling of being loved
- The excitement of going for a holiday
These feelings sure make us feel good and they are the so-called "good stress" or "positive stress". They are able to exert a healthy effect on you. It gives one a feeling of fulfillment or contentment and also makes one excited about life. Unfortunately, it is a type of stress that only occurs for a short period of time.
Eustress is also often called the curative stress because it gives a person the ability to generate the best performance or maximum output.
DISTRESS
Just like everything in life, when there are good or positive stress, there are also "bad" or "negative stress". These types of stress is the opposite of Eustress and it's called Distress
Distress is a “negative stress”. It is a stress disorder that is caused by adverse events and it often influences a person’s ability to cope. Some events leading to distress are:
- Death of a loved one
- Financial problems
- Heavy work responsibility and workload
- Strained relationship
- Chronic illnesses
Distress can be classified further as acute stress or chronic stress. Acute stress is short-lived while chronic stress is usually prolonged in nature.
HYPERSTRESS
When a person is pushed beyond what he or she can handle, they will experience what we called hyperstress.
Hyperstress results from being overloaded or overworked. It’s like being stressed out. When someone is hyperstressed, even little things can trigger a strong emotional response. People who are most likely to suffer from hyperstress are:
- Working mothers who have to multi-task, juggling between work and family commitments
- A wall street trader who are constantly under immerse tension
- People who are under constant financial strains.
- Generally people working in fast pace environment.
and the extreme opposite of hyperstress is
HYPOSTRESS
Hypostress stands in direct opposite to hyperstress. That is because hypostress is one of those types of stress experienced by a person who is constantly bored. Someone in an unchallenging job, such as a factory worker performing the same task over and over, will often experience hypostress. The effect of hypostress is feelings of restlessness and a lack of inspiration.
Just to add up to what anne and aimi have said,stress is not something strange to our daily life nowadays. Everybody may feel stress when they are facing bad situation. Generally, word of stress has been used in social science research since a well known medical expert, Selye pioneered the research for psychological stress in 1950’s.
ReplyDeleteCox & Brockley (1984) stated that stress is a perception phenomenon which exists from a
comparison between the command given and ability of a person to execute he task successfully.
Unbalanced situation in this mechanism will lead into stress experience and ultimately into stress reaction.
STRESS AT A GLANCE
-Stress is a normal part of life that can either help us learn and grow or can cause us significant problems.
-Stress releases powerful neurochemicals and hormones that prepare us for action (to fight or flee.
-If we don't take action, the stress response can create or worsen health problems.
-Prolonged, uninterrupted, unexpected, and unmanageable stresses are the most damaging types of stress.
-Stress can be managed by regular exercise, meditation or other relaxation techniques, structured timeouts, and learning new coping strategies to create predictability in our lives.
-Many behaviors that increase in times of stress and maladaptive ways of coping with stress -- drugs, pain medicines, alcohol, smoking, and eating -- actually worsen the stress and can make us more reactive (sensitive) to further stress.
-While there are promising treatments for stress, the management of stress is mostly dependent on the willingness of a person to make the changes necessary for a healthy lifestyle.
Here is a link to get more information on stress. I find it very informative and interesting to explore so i would like to share it with all of u.. =)
http://www.medicinenet.com/stress/article.htm