Essay about Stress

Stress and anxiety in the average college student. Selye (1936) defined stress as “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change” (The American Institute of Stress, 2017). Stress can lead to feelings of anxiety. Anxiety is a normal part of life, but can be considered a type of worry or fear that can inhibit everyday life. College students show higher stress/anxiety than average individuals. Major sources of stress are from new responsibilities, campus living, money issues, and classwork (Ross, Niebling, & Heckert, 1999). There have been a number of studies circled around how stress can affect college students. Females and males show differences in anxiety/stress in college. (Misra and McKean (2000)) found that females

Stress affects health in a number of ways. It is defined by James (2011) as pressure or tension that comes in many shapes and forms and furthermore the body and mind in particular reacts psychologically and even emotionally.

Our bodies are in homeostatic balance and the addition of stress causes an imbalance. Recall the issues that arise when our bodies deviate from homeostasis.

Stress is your body’s way of responding to any kind of demand; it can be caused by both good and bad experiences.

Health - complications from a current illness, aging, diagnosis of a new disease, relationships - Problems between members of your family or household, personal beliefs - religious or political beliefs, emotional problems - Mental health disorders like depression, unable to express emotions, life changes – job loss, death of a loved one, moving house, sending children to university, divorce, getting married and money – financial difficulty like debt, providing for your family.

Stress can get bad enough to where it starts to affect your body system. Things like depression, heart attacks, diseases, rashes and a low immune system can all occur to people dealing with stress bad enough. The number of common signs and symptoms is outrageous and is depressing to see that there are so many people dealing with this and how it’s such a common thing in this world. On stress.org, they talk about the different body systems and how they’re affected. The nervous, musculoskeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular, endocrine, gastro and reproductive systems are all affected in some way and in many ways to say the least. If your stress ever gets so bad, I consider seeing a doctor or specialist seeing how dangerous this can get.

To try to understand stress better, we need to consider the psychological factors involved - emotional and cognitive (thinking) factors. Research has suggested that major stressors in our lives are life changes, for example, moving house, marriage or relationship breakdown. Work-related factors, including unemployment and boredom, are also common causes of stress. Differences in personality may also play a part.

Studies show that the person who is having a lot of bad stress shows symptoms of using non-prescribed drugs or medicine, aging quicker, gaining more body fat than you ever had, and a lot of other ways to see who has stress or not. When you start to have bad stress you slowly start to look more depressed, and start to slow things down. Theres a lot of different types of stress, one of the main ones in this generation is emotional stress. A lot of people walking around could feel insecure and not feel good about themselves and because of that they create space for emotional stress and how they think people would feel about them. Sometimes stress may lead to an illness and make you more stressed. Making your body work harder than it normally does could be another source of stress, because you aren’t capable of the extra work you're pushing yourself to do, and that could lead to illness and more stress. Puberty could be another source of stress because that is the age where our body, voice, sexual organs change and also new hormones are released in this time period and its stressing because how people start to look different from what they thought and so they start to stress about little things that they find to bother them and worry and stress about those

Stress can be caused by many different situations, listed are some of the common situations:

Stress affects the body in many different ways. Many doctors estimate that stress is involved in more than half of all illnesses (Sapolsky, 21). Stress may cause or prolong an illness or increase its severity. Epinephrine and norepinephrine are hormones that are released during a stress reaction that affect organs throughout the body. As a result from the hormones being secreted, the heart begins to beat more rapidly, muscle tension increases, blood pressure raises, and heavy breathing may occur. This reaction is known as the fight-or-flight response. The fight-or-flight response energizes the body to either confront or flee from a threat. Heredity, learning, and injuries all play a role in determining where or when a stress related illness may occur in a particular individual (Sapolsky, 22).

So what is stress? Stress is a normal physical response that happens when you feel threatened or upset. When you feel that you are in danger whether it is real or imaged. Your body has a response when stress occurs and it is a way of actually protecting you. Many times, stress helps people stay more focussed and energetic.

Some people have higher levels of stress because they might have a very stressful job. Police officers, fire fighters, soldiers in a war zone, health care providers, long distance truck drivers, and yes, even educators (think of a classroom full of students where you are responsible for making sure that they are learning the skills they need to succeed) have very stressful jobs.

    Stress today can be described as "that which disturbs a person's mental and physical well-being" (Morrison 1).  Common symptoms of stress include chronic fatigue, changes in appetite, drug and/or alcohol abuse,  difficulty sleeping, body aches, and changes in emotions (Cooper 1-2).  And although stress is something that is inevitable, it can be controlled.  Just about everything we do today creates stress, both good and bad.  In the face paced and technological world we live in, stress management is key to survival as well as sanity.

Stress is a combination of physical, mental, and emotional feelings that result from pressure, worry, and anxiety. These pressures are called stressors. Some examples of common stressors are, divorce, death in the family, job change, pregnancy, marriage, and retirement. In medicine stress is a physical, chemical, or emotional development that causes strains that lead to physical illness.

Stress is also linked low fertility in one’s reproductive organs, and can cause problems during pregnancy or one’s menstrual cycle (www.everydayhealth.com). This happens when one is overwhelmed with the stress he or she is going through in their lives. No one person is the same, meaning stressors as well as stress levels differ for each individual. This is why it is hard for scientists to reach the core because it is a subjective sensation related with a variety of symptoms that differ for each of us. Because of this, stress is not always a synonym for distress. Situations like a steep roller coaster ride that cause fear and anxiety for some can prove highly pleasurable for others (www.stress.org). Each person also responds to stress differently. There are numerous physical as well as emotional responses to stress. Stress can cause an ocean of different emotions that are often times unpredictable. It can have wide ranging effects on people’s emotions, mood and behavior (www.stress.org). Stress has said to have been America’s number one leading health problem. It has been shown that stress levels have escalated in children, teenagers, college students and the elderly for reasons that of which have lead to: increased crime, violence, and other threats to personal safety; pernicious peer pressures that lead to substance abuse and other unhealthy life style habits; social isolation and loneliness; the erosion of family and religious