This chapter explores the sources of stress, the factors that can make the experience of stress easier or more difficult, and the ways that stress influences someone's physical and mental health. The difference between distress and eustress will be explained. It will be explained what stressors are, and some stressors will be mentioned. Health psychology will be described. This chapter will also explain how personality types and attitudes can influence people's reaction to stress. Lastly, this chapter will focus on ways to cope with stress through social-support systems, cultural differences, and religious beliefs.
Stress is the term used to describe the physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses to events that are appraised as threatening or challenging. There are a lot of different symptoms of stress, such as fatigue, sleeping problems, frequents colds, chest pains, and nausea. There are also behavioral symptoms of stress, such as eating too much, crying a lot, smoking, and drinking. Emotional symptoms can be anxiety, depression, anger, and frustration. Mental symptoms of stress include problems in concentration, memory, decision making, and sense of humor. Most people experience some stress on a daily basis.
Stress-causing effents are called stressors. There are two kinds of stressors:
- Stressors that cause distress. These are unpleasant stressors.
- Stressors that cause eustress. These are positive events that still make demands on a person to adapt or change.
Stressors can come from within a person or be external. External stressors are for instance environmental stressors, major life changes, but also hassles. Hassles are the daily little annoyances. We think of causes of stress as big events, but most of the time, our stress comes from little frustrations, delays, irritations, or disagreements. There are different reasons for why something is a stressor/gives us stress:
- It puts pressure on us. Time pressure is one of the most common forms of pressure.
- It is uncontrollable. Lack of control increases stress.
- It frustrates us. People are frustrated when they are blocked or prevented from achieving a desired goal or fulfilling a perceived need.
- It brings us in conflict between two or more competing and incompatible desires, goals, or actions.
When the human body is subjected to stress, the sympathetic nervous system reacts. This system is better known as the 'fight-or-flight' system. Endocrinologist Hans Selye studied the sequence of physiological reactions that the body goes though when adapting to a stressor. This sequence is called the general adaptation syndrome (GAS) and
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