Modern age brought many novelties to a human civilisation.
One of these certainly pertain to the constant rise of the tasks we are expected to accomplish each and every day as well as to the number of interpersonal connections we have to manage, which straines our minds harder than ever before.
So, what is stress?
One thing is for sure. There isn’t a common definition of stress.
Our bodies naturally react in an event of a certain change. The response of the body in answer to these changes can be named as stress. Types of the response can go from physicall over mental and all the way to emotional.
When put in these terms, stress represents a normal part of human’s life and can be caused by positive as well as negative inputs.
A similar approach highlights the pressure our minds and bodies are exposed to, focusing on the level to which we are exposed to that pressure, which may in return cause our percieved inability to cope with the pressure or to manage it in a desired way.
Therefore, a stress is something that is trigerred as a feedback to a certain event in life or a certain situation.
This response or feedback can sometimes be appropriate and can serve us to endure these events and situation we deem as difficult or unpleasant.
However, this is mainly not the case. Rather, the stress in the contemporary society tends to have feature of excessiveness, which in return diminishes our possibility to properly answer to the challenges we are faced with.
The main purpose of stress is to motivate and essentialy to keep as alive, moving and to survive.
This is done through the autonomic mechanism built up in our bodies, which triggeres a fight or flight response to a danger, in its broadest sense.
The undermining of our ability to answer to this danger sets in when this mechanism is put to work to often or if the triggers of stress are too numerous or too frequent and it manifests itself in lowering a person’s physical and mental well-being.
An interesting thing about stress is that there is no common medical definition of „what is stress“. However, modern medicine can accurately describe the processes our body goes through when exposed.
With that being said, stress as the health psychological notion, represents the combined somatic and psychological reaction of a human being for a situation or an event which cannot be mastered.
In this sense, it is an imbalance between the demands form our environment and our personal prerequisites, abilities as well the resources (like time or knowledge) we possess.
It is a biochemical process that happens in our minds, which is initiated by the fear that something cannot be done or overcome.
Hence, even though the factors that trigger stress may come from within us as well as from our enviroment, the process which initiates stress reaction always incurs as our personal reaction to this triggers and happens automatic.
Who is exposed to stress?
An even better question would be who isn’t exposed to stress.
This answer takes us into the content of what is stress.
In some part of our lives stress will with a high level of certainty hit each and every one of us, becuase the feeling of being overwhelmed is already deeply present.
However, we may claim that some people are exposed to stress more frequent and more severe. But, in the end it all depeds on our personal ability to handle different kinds of pressure.
The Covid era we live in has actually highlighted some of the main factors which contribute to the genesis of stress, which deserves a few lines of elaboration.
Namely, we are starting to see yet hollow contours and shape of the world after the Corona crisis. It started with a huge amounts of lay offs of workers with a high probability that many of the jobs that existed are gone for good.
This, on the other hand, lays a path to a prolonged period of financial and social insecurity for a great number of people.
That goes hand in hand with the growing amount of debt.
The result is steep likelihood that the vast number of people who are experiencing money problems will also be severely exposed to a risk of permanent stress.
Racial discrimination and hatred or the lack of tolerance to the member of LGBT community on the global level are still burning political issues.
Inability to solve these questions effectively still represents the source of danger for these groups.
This leads to a higher probability that the members of this groups will (unfortunately) experience stressful situations more frequent.
(The author of this article condemns any behaviour which is not tolerant, that incites or represents discrimination.)
Furthermore, we have, sadly, witnessed that people with previous health issues succumb to Covid-19 virus more easily.
Therefore, it is an uncertain health environment, in which we do not know enough of the virus and all the complications it can cause.
People with already existing and persisent health issues may be exposed to stress more often because of the stigma that is associated with their state.
Is stress a mental health problem?
What is, therefore, stress?
Today, the discourse is no more being lead around the question have mental health problems increased.
It is much more discussed in which amount they increased and what can be done to effectivelly combat that issue.
Stres itself does not represent a psychiatric diagnosis, so it cannot be put in mental health issues.
However, what needs to concern us that stress is connected with some serious mental health problems.
This connection arises from the fact that stress, once triggered, can itself be the trigger and cause for further mental health problems.
That even more complicates the answer to the question „What is stress?“
It is rather common for people who struggle with stress for a prolonged period of time develop a mental health problem which can include anxiety and depression, to name a few.
Also, a person who is already suffering from a certain medical problem, on the other hand, may be exposed to stress, given the stigma, frequents visits to the doctor, prescribed medication and even social isolation.
Eustress vs. distress
In general we can say that we differentiate two forms of stress.
The first is Eustress, which is percieved as positive stress and connected with some pleasureable feelings.
The other one is Distress.
This one, we observe as negative and try to releave ourselves from it, because it represents a burden to our minds and everyday life.
Idea of a good, positive stress is somewhat new to many of us, for we are accustomed to view stress explicitely as negative.
However, although we may not be aware of it, the existence and the experience of this good stress is an important issue.
That is, if we want to live happy and fulfilled lives and have a healthy motivation drive.
Eustress may be recognised by the source of stress and the feelings in our body to which this source gives rise.
Therefore, if we observe a challenge or an event that represent the source of stress as manageable of personally pleasurable which tend to produce the feelings such as an excitement, satisfaction, focus, motivation or inspiration, we are „hit“ with eustress.
So, the eustress is an important factor that greatly contributes to our mental as well as physical growth and which can make us more resilient.
Each of us reacts different to the sources of stress.
For that reason it is hard to find a common list of sources of stress which are without exemption able to cause eustress.
It is a hard task also due to the fact that consequently a certain source of stress can cause a eustress for one person and a distress to another.
This is dependent upon their behavioural and educational background, personal experiences, stability of their personality and so on.
Some of the examples of this sources may include pleasant personal engagement, starting a relationship (but also the ending of an unhealthy or unhappy relationship if this is viewed as an opportunity for a fresh start), taking up a certain task on the workplace which corresponds to the personal wishes of the worker, travelling or even reading a book.
On the other hand, if the events and situations from our environment tend to have a negative impact, then it is to be considered as a distress.
This usually happens when the demands we are encountered with present a burden which cannot be managed straight away or for which we even believe is unmanageable as a whole or in a significant part.
Similar to the sources of eustress, it may be said that the sources which drive distress may differ from a person to person, but unlike the sources of eustress there are some of the groups of the sources which will cause distress with a high probabilitiy rate.
These include factors like money and financial issues, work overload, time depprivation, bullying and lack of competence, which all may be percieved as a threat to us as persons.
Distress often gives rise to some unpleasant emotions and feelings like confusion, apathy, anxiety or diminishing our power to work and think in an organised manner.
To conclude, the source of stress, in most cases may not be, objctively speaking, viewed as good or bad by itself.
It is rather our subjective processing of each and every one of this sources which determines our attitute towards these sources as good or bad.
Let us rest for a moment. We will take some tea to relax. You are invited to join.
Accute stress and Chronic stress
Speed of life is gaining in an ever higher pace.
The amount of obligations is constantly growing.
The number of demands we are expected to please grow in a steep manner.
Becuase of this, we are now far more than ever before susceptible to distress.
Said even better, our bodies are more receptive to interpret various stimuli which represrent the source of stress as negative.
Distress may manifest itself in one of the following ways, as accute stress or as chronic stress.
Acute stress
Although harmful by its mere existence, accute stress is characterised by being shorter in term.
It may also be said that it represents a somewhat ordinary shape of stress.
However, we have to take account of recent developments due to COVID-19 pandemic.
Also there are upcoming financial issues related to possible loss of working places.
All of this is accompanied by more permanent emotinal instability that goes hand in hand with this issue.
The emotional instability may result in the dissipation of former healthy interpersonal, as well as intra personal relationships, some may claim that the latter claim is true no more.
Accute stress results from our personal perception of the event or situation we have experienced or from our delibation on the events in the future that we find as too demanding or challenging.
Accute stress may be recognized by its feature that it tends to vanish after the previous event is resolved or handled or when the future event finally arrives and is dealt with.
So, another feature of accute stress is connected with the fact that, although these situations represent difficulties which overwhelm us temporarily, they may be overcome rather fast and successfully.
Even if that is not the case, the possibility of a given person to see a difficulty produced by a certain situation or event as finite and not reccuring may restrict distress to accute stress.
Chronic stress
The more harmful shape of distress is known as chronic stress.
Chronic stress emerges as a result of the unproper handling of the accute stress and the sources that contributed to its occurence and continuos apperance during the longer period of time.
Chronic stress represents a higher and more serious level of danger.
Namely, it results in the abnormal hormonal activity.
This ir related with the impossibility of the body to function in a normal way therefore contributing or to even more severe problems of one or some systems in our body.
There are a number of reasons that may contribute to the development of chronic stress.
They may include continuous suffering due to violance of any kind, especially domestical violance.
One other represantative example are ongoing financial problems.
These are often related with ongoing health problems of a person or a person close to him or her and lenghty unhappy marriages or relationships in general.
Conclusion
This article strived to answer in a simplest way to a question “What is stress?”
This simple approach allowed us to concentrate on the forms in which Distress manifests itself most commonly.
However, the answer to the question “What is stress?” cannot be depleted in this one article.
Succinct definitions often do not suffice.
Such is also the case here.
To give a more comprehensive answer to this question, more articles are needed.
We invite you to join us on that road.
I you liked that tea we suggested, find it more here.