Stress can be defined as the “fight or flight” response. This response makes you aware of your surroundings and increases your heart rate.
The fight or flight response is of immediate attention to situations that require instant attention. It prepares you for any threat of danger, whether it is actual physical danger or psychological threat.
The fight or flight response has other functions besides triggering physical problems. They also serve to prepare your body to face possible threats to your health. Stress not only triggers physical problems but also slows down your reaction time and inhibits your cognitive abilities.
Other than causing physical problems, stress can also cause emotional problems and affect a person’s well-being. This will in turn lead to an increased level of tension in the person’s mind and body, which in turn leads to a prolonged condition of tension.
The effects of such biological stressors can vary from person to person. Though the symptoms of stress can be just the same in everyone, the individual response to the stress will vary from person to person, and hence the anxiety level or amount of stress.
Stress is an unwholesome response. Unwholesome means “bad.” It refers to actions or reactions that are impulsive, erratic, irrational, or self-destructive.
Stress can be acquired or it can be inherited. The person can acquire it from the environment, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and also from television programs.
Stress can also be acquired by the person through his own reaction to stress. It is however different from what one feels when he is in stress due to external conditions.
People who have excessive levels of stress will not be able to cope up with it. They will become self-destructive and deteriorate mentally. They will behave irrationally and become moody.
They will also be experiencing physical problems like headaches, aches, stomach aches, chest pains, and also insomnia. When people experience these physical problems, they feel that the pressure of the situation is growing and thus try to relieve themselves of it.
