STRESS AND ITS CAUSES
Over 50 years ago, Hans Selye suggested that stress was a common factor in causing disease. In our time, his theory has been studied and confirmed.
Leaders in high positions, professionals, executives, children, teenagers, labourers and even animals experience the effects of stress.
Technically speaking, stress is defined by the way in which we react to it, not by the cause of the distress.
Stress factors or agents come from four areas of life:
The physical, the mental, the social and the spiritual.
The result of not knowing how to react appropriately to stress factors is demonstrated in these four areas of life.
Stress leads to specific diseases, worries and anxiety. These could flow into other areas causing mental disease,, family and social disorders and loss of the spiritual dimension that is important and necessary in order to survive and overcome life’s problems.
Stress does not take its victims by surprise because the human being is blessed with the ability to detect a series of signals which indicate danger.
Stress goes through three stages from the time it appears until it reaches its most acute level.
(1) The Alarm stage
This stage consists of a clear warning that a stress agent is present. Physical reactions are the first to appear, warning the person to be on guard. Once the person is aware of a potentially stressful situation e.g too much work, or difficulty in completing a complex task, the person can take measures to face the problem and to solve it. In this case, the stress never materializes.
When however, the stressful situation becomes overwhelming and the individual realizes that she has no more strength left; he or she becomes aware of the existing stress and may be classified as being in the alarm stage.
Things which produce alarm may be single in nature; that is, there is only one source of stress or, multiple in nature, that is, several circumstances combined to create stress.
(2) Resistance stage
When stress extends beyond the initial alarm stage, the person enters into the resistance stage.
(3) The Exhaustion stage The exhaustion stage is the final stage of stress. It is characterized by fatigue, anxiety, depression. These three things may occur simultaneously or sequentially.
&
middot; Fatigue has nothing to do with the way a hard worker feels after a day of work; in this case, this hard worker does not feel relieved by a good night’s sleep. Rather it is normally accompanied by irritability, tension, anger, nervousness.
· Anxiety does not occur only when faced with a stress factor but in moments which would not normally produce any anxiety.
· Depression means when a person lacks the motivation necessary to find pleasure in his or her activities.
It takes a great deal of effort to escape from this stage of stress.
A moderate amount of tension is vital and certain levels of stress are actually healthy. Stress helps one attain higher goals and solve difficult problems. Hans Seyle writes in his article “The stress Concept Today”: “A complete absence of stress means death”.
Some people do not “
suffer” from stress. Instead, they seem to benefit from the spark which it adds to their lives. They seem to produce more and better.
Generally people who are naturally calm and laid back have very low level of stress. If such people find themselves in dead-end jobs where there is no opportunity to set goals, they may become bored, lack motivation and suffer from too little energy.
On one hand, they will never suffer from a heart attack; on the other, they will always lack the energy and drive needed to succeed.
More abstracts about the stress