Nature, Types and Sources of Stress

Stress: A Double-Edged Sword

Stress is not inherently bad. Consider waiting to cross a busy road on a Monday morning — you feel temporarily stressed, but that very stress keeps you alert, vigilant, and aware of danger, enabling you to cross safely. When faced with any challenge, we put in extra effort and mobilise all our resources and support systems. Handled properly, stress actually increases the probability of survival.

Think of stress like electricity. It gives energy, increases arousal, and affects performance. But if the electric current is too high, it can fuse bulbs and damage appliances. Similarly, high stress produces unpleasant effects and causes performance to deteriorate. Too little stress, on the other hand, makes one feel listless and low on motivation, leading to slow and inefficient performance.

Eustress is the term for the level of stress that is good for you — it is one of a person's best assets for achieving peak performance and managing minor crises. However, eustress has the potential to turn into distress, and it is this latter manifestation that causes our body's wear and tear.

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Nature of Stress

The word 'stress' comes from the Latin words strictus (tight or narrow) and stringere (to tighten). These roots reflect the internal feelings of tightness and constriction of muscles and breathing that many people report under stress.

Stressors are events that cause our body to give the stress response — noise, crowding, a bad relationship, or daily commuting to school or office. The reaction to external stressors is called strain.

Hans Selye's Definition

Hans Selye, the father of modern stress research, defined stress as "the non-specific response of the body to any demand" — meaning that regardless of the cause of the threat, the individual responds with the same physiological pattern of reactions.

Many researchers disagree with Selye. They argue that the stress response is not nearly as general and non-specific as he suggested. Different stressors may produce somewhat different patterns of stress reaction, and different individuals may have different characteristic modes of response.

The Cognitive View of Stress

Stress is not a factor that resides solely in the individual or the environment. Instead, it is embedded in an ongoing process involving individuals transacting with their social and cultural environments, making appraisals of those encounters, and attempting to cope with the issues that arise.

Stress is a dynamic mental/cognitive state — a disruption in homeostasis or an imbalance that gives rise to a requirement for resolution. The perception of stress depends on the individual's cognitive appraisal of events and the resources available to deal with them.

Primary and Secondary Appraisal

Lazarus and his colleagues distinguished between two types of appraisal:

Primary appraisal refers to the perception of a new or changing environment as positive, neutral, or negative in its consequences. Negative events are appraised for:

• Harm — assessment of damage that has already been done
• Threat — assessment of possible future damage
• Challenge — associated with confident expectations of ability to cope, overcome, and even profit from the event

Secondary appraisal is the assessment of one's coping abilities and resources and whether they will be sufficient to meet the harm, threat, or challenge. These resources may be mental, physical, personal, or social. If one thinks they have a positive attitude, health, skills, and social support, they will feel less stressed.

This two-level appraisal process determines not only cognitive and behavioural responses but also emotional and physiological responses to external events.

Factors Influencing Appraisal

Appraisals are highly subjective and depend on:

• Past experience — if one has handled similar situations successfully before, they become less threatening
• Perceived controllability — a person who believes they can control the onset of a negative situation or its adverse consequences experiences less stress
• Self-confidence or efficacy — determines whether a person appraises a situation as threat or challenge

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Types of Stress

The three major types of stress are interrelated:

1. Physical and Environmental Stress

Physical stresses are demands that change the state of our body — overexertion, lack of nutritious diet, injury, or failure to get enough sleep.

Environmental stresses are aspects of our surroundings that are often unavoidable:

• Air pollution, crowding, noise
• Heat of summer, winter cold
• Catastrophic events or disasters (fire, earthquake, floods)

2. Psychological Stress

These are stresses we generate ourselves in our minds — personal and unique to the person experiencing them. Important sources include:

• Frustration — results from the blocking of needs and motives by something or someone that hinders us from achieving a desired goal (e.g., social discrimination, interpersonal hurt, low grades)
• Conflicts — occur between two or more incompatible needs or motives (e.g., whether to study dance or psychology, whether to continue studies or take up a job; conflict of values when pressured to act against held values)
• Internal pressures — stem from beliefs based on expectations from inside us (e.g., "I must do everything perfectly"), which can only lead to disappointment
• Social pressures — brought about by people who make excessive demands on us, especially when we have to work with them or face interpersonal difficulties

3. Social Stress

These are induced externally and result from our interaction with other people. Examples include death or illness in the family, strained relationships, trouble with neighbours. Social stresses vary widely from person to person — attending parties may be stressful for someone who likes quiet evenings, while an outgoing person may find staying at home stressful.

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Sources of Stress

Major Life Events

Changes, both big and small, sudden and gradual, affect our life from birth. Major life events can be stressful because they disturb our routine and cause upheaval. If several life events — planned (e.g., moving into a new house) or unpredicted (e.g., break-up of a long-term relationship) — occur within a short period, we find it difficult to cope and become more prone to stress symptoms.

Sample items and their mean stress scores:

The mean number of stressful life events experienced over one year without producing overt physical or mental illness is approximately two. However, correlations between life events and susceptibility to any particular illness are low, indicating a weak association. The impact of most life events varies from person to person, and factors such as age at first experience, frequency, duration, and social support must be studied.

Hassles

These are the personal stresses we endure due to happenings in daily life — noisy surroundings, commuting, quarrelsome neighbours, electricity and water shortage, traffic snarls, and so on. Attending to various emergencies is a daily hassle for a housewife. Some jobs involve very frequent daily hassles. The more stress people report from daily hassles, the poorer their psychological well-being.

Traumatic Events

These include extreme events such as fire, train or road accident, robbery, earthquake, tsunami, etc. Effects may occur after some lapse of time and sometimes persist as symptoms of anxiety, flashbacks, dreams, and intrusive thoughts. Severe trauma can strain relationships. Professional help is needed to cope, especially if symptoms persist for many months after the event.

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Stress Reactions

Stressors result in a variety of stress reactions:

Physiological — The hypothalamus initiates action along two pathways:

1. The autonomic nervous system pathway: the adrenal gland releases large amounts of catecholamines (epinephrine and norepinephrine) into the bloodstream, leading to the fight-or-flight response
2. The pituitary gland pathway: secretes corticosteroid (cortisol) which provides energy

Emotional — Negative emotions such as fear, anxiety, embarrassment, anger, depression, or denial

Behavioural — Virtually limitless, depending on the nature of the stressful event. Two general categories are confrontative action against the stressor (fight) or withdrawal from the threatening event (flight)

Cognitive — Beliefs about the harm or threat an event poses and beliefs about its causes or controllability. These include inability to concentrate, and intrusive, repetitive, or morbid thoughts

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