Stress KILL...

What is stress?

Have you ever wondered whether certain people or personalities are more susceptible to stress? It seems that no one type of person is more at risk than another.

What exactly is stress?

Stress is the physiological, psychological, emotional and behavioural response of a person seeking to adapt and adjust to internal and external pressures or demands.

Stress is the physiological, psychological, emotional and behavioural response of a person seeking to adapt and adjust to internal and external pressures or demands. It is basically a physical survival response leading to a ‘flight-or-fight’ reaction. All living organisms - from plants, to animals, to humans - have a stress response. That’s why certain species have survived to this day.

Stress is not a condition made up in the 20th century. Stress is powerful because it’s been around so long. It is our stress reaction that allowed us as a species to survive. The humans who responded best to the stress of survival, are the ones still around today.

Flight or fight?
The acute adaptation of the ‘flight-or-fight’ reaction was great for prehistoric man who fought mammoths, meteors and man-eating sabre-toothed tigers. Cavemen lived on the physiological edge. Today, we get the same unconscious reaction to stress. The response is engraved deep inside the old reptilian part of the brain we share with amphibians and reptiles.

Confronted with a real physical threat to survival, the response is great. But faced with psychological threats often created in our own minds, is not so great. We take all these frequent little (and often not so little), daily stresses and we internalise them. There they accumulate, stew and erupt in destructive volcanoes of ‘dis-ease’ after months or years of unrelieved stress buildup.

We need to learn how to use our ‘new’ brain or neo cortex (actually also a few billion years old) more effectively to help us manage our stress and use it appropriately.

While many people associate the term ‘stress’ with psychological stress, scientists and medical doctors use the term to describe anything that impairs the stability and balance (homeostasis) of the body.

We are all sensitive to various stressors. There are no predetermined standards to apply in predicting an individual’s response tostressors and it is a very subjective response.

The degree to which we experience stress in our lives is highly dependent upon individual factors such as our physical health, the quality of our interpersonal relationships, our self image, our resilience, our coping mechanisms, our upbringing and education, our habitual thought patterns, the number of commitments and responsibilities we carry, the degree of others' dependence upon and expectations of us, the amount of support we receive from others, and the number of changes or traumatic events that have recently occurred in our lives.

Some general guidelines, however, may be used as a rule of thumb to identify certain high risk groups. People with social support networks tend to cope better with stress and have better mental health than those who try to do everything by themselves. People who are not well nourished tend to cope poorly with stress, as do those with lack of sleep, those who lead a sedentary lifestyle, or who have existing disease.

High stress levels are predominantly associated with certain age groups or life stages. Children, teenagers, working parents (especially working moms), and retired seniors have the specific stress triggers associated with life transition periods or demanding lifestyles.

According to the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (Holmes & Holmes, 1970), which rates the impact of stressful events, the top five most stressful experiences are as follows:

·       Death of a spouse

·       Divorce

·       Marital separation

·       Jail term

·       Death of a close family member

·       Personal injury or illness

·       Marriage

·       Fired at work

·       Marital reconciliation

·       Retirement