Why Do I Worry All the Time? Regulation of Anxiety Caused by Stress
What is the Definition of Stress? The definition of stress is a mentally or emotionally disruptive or upsetting condition occurring in response to adverse external influence.
It is capable of affecting physical health, usually characterized by increased heart rate, a rise in blood pressure, muscular tension, irritability, or circumstances causing such a conditions.
If you ask people to define stress, or explain its causes stress or how stress affects them, you would likely get as many answers as the amount of people you ask.
In other words a definition of stress is as varied as people from different walks of life.
The reason for this is that there is no definition of stress that everyone agrees on.
What is stressful for one person may be pleasure for another or at least have little effect.
We all react to stress differently.
Persistent stress can cause the development of various diseases such as heart attacks, stroke, kidney disease and rheumatoid arthritis.
For a long time, it was believed that most diseases were caused by specific but different pathogens.
Tuberculosis was due to the tubercle bacillus, anthrax by the anthrax bacillus, syphilis by a spirochete and so on.
One scientist believed that the opposite was true, that many different pathogens could cause the same disease, in both humans and animals.
As stress began to attract a lot of attention the popular definition of stress soon was associated with such things as the effects of an overbearing or bad boss or some other unpleasant situation they were subjected to.
For many, stress was their reaction to chest pain, heartburn, headache or palpitations.
Others used stress to refer to what they perceived as the end result of these repeated responses, such as an ulcer or heart attack.
Because of this one physician concluded in a British Medical Journal that, "Stress in addition to being itself, was also the cause of itself, and the result of itself.
" In other words there is no definition of stress that is universal.
There is of course, stress that is applied to metals and other forms of material that require force or strain.
For the purposes of this article it must be made clear that the stress we are referring to is that which applies to humans and the human condition such as "physical, mental, or emotional strain or tension or a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the are able to mobilize.
" Thus, even though stress is put in a negative light and its positive effects ignored, stress can be helpful and good when it motivates people to accomplish increased productivity - up to a point, after which things can go rapidly downhill.
However, that point is different for each of us, so we need to be sensitive to and aware of early warning symptoms and signs that suggest a stress overload is starting to push you over the edge.
Of course such warning signals also differ for each of us and can be so subtle that they are often ignored until it is too late.
Any definition of stress therefore should also include good stress, such as winning a race or a large sum of money.
Those can be just as stressful as losing.
Even more so.
So in any attempt to find a definition of stress expect to find that there really is no definition and so we can conclude that good stress is desirable and bad stress can lead to physical or mental disorder.
It is capable of affecting physical health, usually characterized by increased heart rate, a rise in blood pressure, muscular tension, irritability, or circumstances causing such a conditions.
If you ask people to define stress, or explain its causes stress or how stress affects them, you would likely get as many answers as the amount of people you ask.
In other words a definition of stress is as varied as people from different walks of life.
The reason for this is that there is no definition of stress that everyone agrees on.
What is stressful for one person may be pleasure for another or at least have little effect.
We all react to stress differently.
Persistent stress can cause the development of various diseases such as heart attacks, stroke, kidney disease and rheumatoid arthritis.
For a long time, it was believed that most diseases were caused by specific but different pathogens.
Tuberculosis was due to the tubercle bacillus, anthrax by the anthrax bacillus, syphilis by a spirochete and so on.
One scientist believed that the opposite was true, that many different pathogens could cause the same disease, in both humans and animals.
As stress began to attract a lot of attention the popular definition of stress soon was associated with such things as the effects of an overbearing or bad boss or some other unpleasant situation they were subjected to.
For many, stress was their reaction to chest pain, heartburn, headache or palpitations.
Others used stress to refer to what they perceived as the end result of these repeated responses, such as an ulcer or heart attack.
Because of this one physician concluded in a British Medical Journal that, "Stress in addition to being itself, was also the cause of itself, and the result of itself.
" In other words there is no definition of stress that is universal.
There is of course, stress that is applied to metals and other forms of material that require force or strain.
For the purposes of this article it must be made clear that the stress we are referring to is that which applies to humans and the human condition such as "physical, mental, or emotional strain or tension or a condition or feeling experienced when a person perceives that demands exceed the personal and social resources the are able to mobilize.
" Thus, even though stress is put in a negative light and its positive effects ignored, stress can be helpful and good when it motivates people to accomplish increased productivity - up to a point, after which things can go rapidly downhill.
However, that point is different for each of us, so we need to be sensitive to and aware of early warning symptoms and signs that suggest a stress overload is starting to push you over the edge.
Of course such warning signals also differ for each of us and can be so subtle that they are often ignored until it is too late.
Any definition of stress therefore should also include good stress, such as winning a race or a large sum of money.
Those can be just as stressful as losing.
Even more so.
So in any attempt to find a definition of stress expect to find that there really is no definition and so we can conclude that good stress is desirable and bad stress can lead to physical or mental disorder.
