Stress can either be good or bad. Stress is good when it is experienced in small amounts. Stress can actually be a good motivator. In an online article, Jennifer Parmelee claimed that instances such as being stuck in traffic or in the subway can be used as a motivating factor instead of wearing people down. She said, “You need stress in a certain degree. You just try not to let it take control of you”. When the body encounters stress, the brain starts pumping cortisol, epinephrine or adrenaline, and norepinephrine into the body.
Instantaneously, the heart beats faster, an increase in blood pressure, the senses sharpen, and glucose in the blood rises, enabling man to do high energy actions such as leaping off a car (Weaver, 2006). According to Dr. Melissa Conrad Stoppler, stress is simply a fact of nature. It is a force from the environment that greatly affects individuals. In return, individuals react or respond to this force in a way that it affects them and the environment. Stress is therefore an interchange between beings and their environment or the ecosystem. It affects them both physically and behaviorally (n.
d. ). Dr. Stoppler further states that stress is related to both internal and external factors. External factors include the physical environment such as a person’s job, relationship with others, home, challenges, difficulties, and expectations that come and go on a daily basis. The internal factors include the body’s ability to respond and deal with the external factors. Internal factors also influences one’s ability to handle stress through his nutritional status, overall health and fitness levels, emotional well-being, and the amount of sleep that one gets.
Brief History of Stress The term ‘stress’, as a psychological concept, is famously attributed to Hans Selye in 1936. After 20 years, he developed this idea by establishing a three-stage process known as the general adaptation syndrome (GAS). He stated that people react to external stressors first by mobilizing the physical resources to escape it and he called it the ‘alarm’ stage. Afterwards, one would involve ways of reversing the effect of the alarm stage. Selye calls this the ‘resistance’ stage.
Finally, when the individual is repeatedly exposed to the stressor and is unable to escape, then the ‘exhaustion’ stage occurs. Selye, however, avoided the term stress in his works until 1946 because he had difficulties in avoiding his critics saying that his use of the term was inaccurate. The person who actually developed the term stress was Walter Cannon in his work regarding the flight-or-fight response in 1932 (Kennard, 2008). Today, the term ‘stress’ is used in many different ways.
It has become so popular that it has been attributed in many fields of human knowledge. People have used the term as a negative experience and are often associated with fatigue, anxiety, and other negative effects of excessive human activity. Symptoms and Causes of Stress Dr. Harold Burke defined stress as a feeling of tense and being on the edge. Along with these feelings are a number of other symptoms. These include the experience of muscular tension or chronic pain. An example of this is the headache. Stress also involves unusual hyperactivity, irritability, or anger.
There is also difficulty in sleeping as well as a feeling of being burned-out, overwhelmed, or mentally exhausted. A person experiencing stress also has a diminished ability to think, concentrate, or recall information. He also has the tendency to feel depression or anxiety (n. d. ). Burke emphasized that the symptoms of stress may represent more specific mental illnesses and should be checked by professionals. Stress also has the potential to worsen any present illnesses. Even illness itself can be considered as a stressor.