Basic Concepts of Stress
BASIC CONCEPTS OF STRESS
HANA SUHAIL MASOOD
STD. XI A
I. MEANING AND DEFINITION:-
We generally use the word "stress" when we feel that everything seems to have become too much - we are overloaded and wonder whether we really can cope with the pressures placed upon us.
Anything that poses a challenge or a threat to our well-being is considered as stress.
Stress is defined as our response to events that disrupt, or threaten to disrupt our physical or psychological functioning. It is an internal state which can be caused by physical demands on the body or by environmental and social situations which are evaluated as potentially harmful, uncontrollable, or exceeding our resources for coping.
Like pain, stress is a common human experience. We are all familiar with stressful events: your heart races as you sit down to write a test; or the boss wants to see you now about the last quarter’s sales figures; or you go to bed, only to hear a neighbour’s stereo blaring away. The pulse-pounding, gut-wrenching sensations that result from such moments are common in modern life, and are definitely very stressful.
It is important to consider the impact of individual differences in the creation of stress because we all have different definitions of what we consider to be a stressor – a cause of a stress. Stressors are also defined as any event, real or imagined, cognitive, environmental or biological, that leads to stress. Stressors vary for different people (e.g. dogs are warm and friendly for some, for others they are a source of anxiety) but the body can also respond to stress of which it is not conscious, like suppressed memories. Stress, therefore, is a deeply personal experience, and it shares with emotion the three components of subjective interpretative experience – physiological reaction, cognitive reaction and behavioural expression.
Despite the wide range of stimuli that can potentially produce stress, it appears that many events we find stressful share
HANA SUHAIL MASOOD
STD. XI A
I. MEANING AND DEFINITION:-
We generally use the word "stress" when we feel that everything seems to have become too much - we are overloaded and wonder whether we really can cope with the pressures placed upon us.
Anything that poses a challenge or a threat to our well-being is considered as stress.
Stress is defined as our response to events that disrupt, or threaten to disrupt our physical or psychological functioning. It is an internal state which can be caused by physical demands on the body or by environmental and social situations which are evaluated as potentially harmful, uncontrollable, or exceeding our resources for coping.
Like pain, stress is a common human experience. We are all familiar with stressful events: your heart races as you sit down to write a test; or the boss wants to see you now about the last quarter’s sales figures; or you go to bed, only to hear a neighbour’s stereo blaring away. The pulse-pounding, gut-wrenching sensations that result from such moments are common in modern life, and are definitely very stressful.
It is important to consider the impact of individual differences in the creation of stress because we all have different definitions of what we consider to be a stressor – a cause of a stress. Stressors are also defined as any event, real or imagined, cognitive, environmental or biological, that leads to stress. Stressors vary for different people (e.g. dogs are warm and friendly for some, for others they are a source of anxiety) but the body can also respond to stress of which it is not conscious, like suppressed memories. Stress, therefore, is a deeply personal experience, and it shares with emotion the three components of subjective interpretative experience – physiological reaction, cognitive reaction and behavioural expression.
Despite the wide range of stimuli that can potentially produce stress, it appears that many events we find stressful share