conversations on the fringe

Understanding Stress 

Stress is our response to thinking or judging that the demand of an event or situation goes beyond our being able to cope with the situation.  Coping is the key word.  Stress is based on our automatic thoughts about inside or outside events.  Our ability to manage stress well depends on many factors, factors such as; Personality Traits, Health Habits, Coping Skills, Social Support, Material Resources, Genetics and Early Family Experiences, Demographic Variables, and Pre-existing Stressors.  We will focus on the four following underlying causes of stress in this post:

• Expectations: You expect (worry about) something bad will happen to you because of the outside events.
• Appraisals:  You judge that the demands of the event go beyond your abilities or resources to meet those demands.
• Attribution: You blame the causes of your stress on the outside events or to on upsetting memories of past events.
• Decisions:  You decide you cannot handle the demands of the outside world.

The Roots and Sources of Stress

Your inside world:  We call these “internal stressors”: the memory of past experiences/events that are negative of difficult, such as divorce, loss of a loved one, or childhood trauma.  These are now “internal” but are “triggered” by on-going life experiences.

• The stressor event may be inside you if you cannot tie the mental, physical or emotional responses to something outside.
• Such “internal events” could be a memory of a past trauma or losses, high need to be successful, having failed at something you deemed important.
• Internal stressors will be based on outside events that have happened sometime in the past.

Your outside world:  There are three major outside root causes of stress.

• Major negative events such as death of a loved one, divorce, loss of job or major illness.
• Daily negative or difficult life events such as demands of family and work.  Theses are “external”.
• Major and minor positive happenings such as a new job, getting married, having a baby or a salary raise.

Stages and Effects of Stress on the Body

Long periods of exposure to stress can hurt the body.  It can cause us to become physically ill.  Research has shown that we go through three steps when faced with stress:

• Alarm:  The body steps up its inside resources to fight the stressor or cause of stress.
• Revolt:  The body resists and fights the stressors.  Body chemicals are released to help us cope.  For awhile, these chemicals help keep the body in balance.
• Exhaustion:  The body gets tired.  We might collapse.  We are more likely to get sick or emotionally upset.  Now, because of ongoing stress, the chemicals that once helped us now make us weaker.

Signs of Stress and Efforts to Cope

Stress can throw us out of balance.  We call this homeostasis.  The body and mind work at keeping balance through coping responses.  These are the efforts to control or cope with the stress reactions inside of you.  But they are also signs of stress.

• Mental:  Mental worry is a major cause of stress.  Worries are thoughts and views of what might happen.  Your thoughts are the key.  When we manage stress this comes first.  If our thoughts fail to give us self-control we lose control over the body, emotions, and behaviors.
• Physical:  Our body becomes upset.  Our hearts beat fast, we get sweaty, feel weak.  We breathe hard and lose control of our breathing.  We hunger for air or oxygen.  Being in control of breathing helps us to be in control of our stress response.
• Emotional:  These are your efforts to cope with stress.  They are signs of stress.
  • Anxiety:  We feel uneasy, anxious.  We can’t pin down why.
  • Panic:  A sudden intense fear or anxiety with body symptoms – hard to breathe, tight chest, heart beats fast.
  • Emotional stress syndrome:  Guilty, angry, or depressed.  Managing anger, guilt, and depression helps us manage our stress.
• Behavioral:  You may drink, go running, distract with a movie, gamble, view pornography, masturbate, smoke, talk with a friend, etc.