Stress is an unavoidable experience. Trying to get rid of all our stresses creates more stress for us. Despite all of these, whether they pose adverse effects on us or prove useful, each of our stresses can be minimized/managed. Before we can understand how to manage our stress, we must first understand the science of stress, what it constitutes, and its several sources.
What then is Stress? Stress is the reaction of your body to demand or challenge. It is a physical or emotional tension that can come from any event that makes you feel nervous, angry, or frustrated. Whenever you experience a stressful event, the part of your brain that processes emotions, the amygdala, sends a signal to the brain's command center, i.e., the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus then uses the nervous system to dictate how to react to the rest of the body. This brings about what is termed a 'stress response'.
Experiencing stress activates two body systems: the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis (HPA) and the sympathetic adrenal medullary axis. Looking at the above explanation, we understand that even though stress originates in our brains and affects our behavior and mood, its impact is felt all over our bodies. The stress you have is a normal feeling; it can be positive in cases of helping you avoid danger (fight or flight response), but when the stress becomes long-term, it becomes detrimental to our health. There are two main types of stress:
a. Acute stress- Everyone has had acute stress at one time or another. It is a kind of short-term stress that goes away quickly. You usually feel this kind of stress when you do something new or challenging. They don't exact a heavy toll on your health since they are short-lived; therefore, our body has the chance to recover immediately, and then we get to move on with our lives. Acute stress simply entails those responses to short-term stressors such as writing a difficult test, throwing a party, or giving a speech. As this type of stress can make you feel challenged or excited, it is also capable of creating anxiety and other symptoms such as headache, etc.
b. Chronic stress- Sometimes, we are so choked by our current situation or activity that we can't see our way out of it despite our best efforts; this, in turn, makes us depressed and worried. Chronic stress is that kind of stress that lasts for a very long time (it could be a couple of hours, days, or more). Such stressful events could be having to meet a deadline, not feeling competent or comfortable with your job, money problems, or an unhappy marriage/family.
Chronic stress can negatively impact your health, particularly if you feel helpless to change your circumstances. In other words, people with chronic stress tend to feel overwhelmed and do not always see a quick way out. Whenever we experience this stress, we are at a greater risk of losing hope of getting solutions to our stressors, and most of us even give up on trying. It is a tricky and persuasive kind of stress that sometimes we fail to realize the extent of the stress on our lives and the changes that have occurred because of stress.
In reality, chronic stress goes beyond the coping ability of our bodies. Although this stress response is designed to help us ward off dangerous predators, motivate us to make changes, and pull ourselves together to do away with things that jeopardize our lifestyle. When we face them for too long or experience them with much intensity, they can cause damage to our bodies and cause changes in our minds.
