Introduction

Nearly everybody experiences stress at one time or another. In this article, some common questions about stress are addressed. Namely: 1) what causes stress? 2) what happens if I have too much stress for too long? 3) what can I do to lower my stress and cope better with stressful situations?

When some people use the word "stress" they are referring to difficult or demanding events happening around them (for example, work deadline, family crisis, being caught in a traffic jam, etc.). Others may use the term stress to describe their emotional and physical reaction to these situations. A definition of the term stress used by researchers describes psychological stress as occurring when you perceive that the demands of a particular situation exceed your ability to cope. In short, you feel stressed when you feel overwhelmed or threatened by your current situation. While the events that trigger this feeling are termed stressors, the physical changes that occur in response can be called the stress response.

The Fight or Flight Response

What happens when you experience the stress response? Physically, your energy is directed away from normal activities like digestion and you become primed for immediate action. Your heart rate goes up, which increases the supply of blood to your muscles. Your liver channels extra sugar and your adrenal glands secrete adrenalin into your bloodstream. Your breathing becomes faster, increasing available oxygen to your muscles. This fast, shallow, breathing can create symptoms such as dizziness and a further increase in heart rate. Your hands and feet may feel cold and tingly due to pooling of blood in large muscles and away from extremities. Muscles tense up. Your pupils dilate and you may become hypervigilant to your surroundings, looking for the source of the perceived threat. Emotionally, you may feel aggressive, on edge, and filled with a powerful urge to run away, yell or hit someone. This is why the stress response is often referred to as the "fight or flight" response.

Why do we react this way? Basically, we react this way because quickly being primed for immediate action in the face of life threatening situations helped our ancestors survive. Survival meant dealing with environmental threats such as attacks, quickly and effectively by fighting well or escaping. The stress response evolved as a mechanism that changes the priorities of your body from "business as usual" to "emergency fight or flight." While the stress response was quite helpful in the distant past when the environmental demands were severe and there were many sources of life or death threat, this response is no longer helpful as we now rarely face such dangers. Most of the stressful situations we experience today are not life threatening nor are they helped by fighting or running away. Today's stressors - overload of paperwork, financial difficulties, personality conflict with a co-worker, traffic, computer failure, etc. - do not put us in mortal peril, nor are they helped by doing what the stress response physically prepares us to do: fighting or fleeing. Still, when we feel threatened, the stress response gets activated even though the actions it prepares us for may not be required.

Consequences

In the short term, the stress response can impair our performance. Except for very rare instances, for example walking in the middle of the road with a car bearing down us or being attacked by a mugger, being prepared to fight or run away does not help us in today's world. Many of the stressful situations we face today require a calm, careful and creative problem-solving response. Such problem solving, for example, resolving an interpersonal conflict or overcoming a professional dilemma, is made more difficult by the stress response. Emotional responses related to the stress response, such as anger, fear, and anxiety make such a calm, reasoned approach to a situation more difficult.

In the long term, frequent activation of the stress response has a number of serious negative effects on our health and well-being. The stress response puts considerable strain on your cardiovascular system. Chronic stress increases your risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke. Since stress directs energy away from day to day functioning such as digestion, chronic stress is associated with gastrointestinal problems. In addition, stress has been linked to reduced function of the immune system which makes the body more susceptible to infection. The physical problems worsened by stress are numerous and can be caused both directly and indirectly, such as through effects on behavior that effect health such as smoking, poor diet, caffeine and alcohol consumption. In addition, excessive stress can negatively impact on psychological health. Virtually all psychological conditions are worsened by stress, and the result of prolonged excessive stress may be helplessness and depression. Sleep may be disturbed, sex drive may be reduced, appetite may decrease, and the chronically stressed person may become more susceptible to depression, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse. Problem behaviors may emerge in response to repeated activation of the stress response in specific situations. "Road rage" exhibited by commuters, stressed by heavy traffic on a daily basis is one example.

To summarize: The stress response prepares us to run away or attack. Today, acting on this impulse is usually extremely counterproductive. In addition, frequent activation of the stress response can have serious consequences for health and well-being.

Managing Stress

What can be done to reduce stress? First, stress experienced is not a simple result of the events experienced. Your individual evaluation of the situation is an important part of the process determining whether the stress response will result. Physical and psychological reactions to stressors are determined by individual factors such as personality and use of coping strategies. In short, the stress response doesn't depend on how much danger you're in, but on how much danger you think you're in. If you perceive a situation as threatening, you will react to it as if it were a serious danger, when it may not, in reality, pose a threat. One simple strategy for dealing with stress involves changing one's thoughts about the stressor or the experience. For example, thinking of time stuck in traffic as time away from work where you can listen to music or think of other things may decrease the intensity of the stress response that heavy traffic triggers. In addition, making an extra effort to give others "the benefit of the doubt," may decrease the degree of threat you perceive during difficult interactions with others and decrease the intensity of the stress response. In short, the less you interpret a negative event (for example, disagreement with co-worker; car cutting you off) as being done intentionally by someone meaning you ill, the less threatening you will find the situation and less intense the stress response will be. There are a number of techniques for helping to change negative or distorted appraisals of situation that lead to the stress response. These strategies involve first becoming more aware of your appraisals and the thoughts that contribute to them, challenging these thoughts and substituting a more rational, less distorted interpretation.

An important step to a more effective response to a stressful situation is to calm yourself down so that you don't let your temporary fight or flight response trigger behavior that will make the immediate situation worse and pose a long term health risk. Once more relaxed, the negative physical and psychological consequences of the stress response are minimized and you are more able to react thoughtfully and rationally to the situation rather than acting while firmly in the grip of the "fight or flight" response. In short, learning techniques to calm yourself down can help you control the physical effects of the stress response. While many of the physical symptoms of the stress response (increased heart rate, etc.) cannot be consciously controlled, breathing can be. Controlling your breathing is one of the oldest, most straightforward and effective ways to relax your mind and body. Practicing paced diaphragmatic breathing, which may also be referred to as "belly" or yogic breathing, is simple and can be enormously beneficial. In addition, muscle tension can be reduced by other relaxation techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation.

General healthy behavior can improve stress management. This begins with ensuring adequate sleep, getting enough exercise, and having a healthy and balanced diet (including low consumption of caffeine, nicotine and alcohol). Regular aerobic exercise may also alter our physiological response to stress, in particular, improving the speed at which the body returns to normal after the stress response and reducing the risk of heart disease and stroke. Effective coping with stress also involves dealing with the problem itself. Useful problem-based strategies may include: assertiveness training, goal setting, and time-management. Problem focused methods of managing the stressful situation better may include: breaking down a large or overwhelming-seeming task into small manageable steps, time management, prioritizing, being assertive with people when warranted, refusing unreasonable requests, and avoiding needlessly stressful situations. For example, if you find traffic extremely stressful perhaps you could change your work schedule to avoid commuting at peak traffic times.

To summarize, the best overall approach for coping more effectively with stress would be to challenge threatening appraisals of situations, calm yourself down by learning and practicing relaxation techniques, and having a generally healthy lifestyle with regular exercise.

Stress management techniques like those described in this article are not difficult to learn, but they do take some time and effort. Stress management programs such as the one offered by UCounsel.com teach such skills and may substantially benefit your performance effectiveness as well as your physical and mental health well being.

Dr. David Aboussafy, Ph.D.
UCounsel Corporation

Further Information and Support
For more information, contact David Aboussafy, Ph.D. at [email protected] or [email protected] or see the Stress Response Course at UCounsel.com

References
Aboussafy, D.M. (2000). Stress Management Course. UCounsel Corporation. www.ucounsel.com

Goldberger, L. & Breznitz, S. (1993). Handbook of Stress. (2nd Ed). NY: Free Press.

Maier, S.F., Watkins, L.R. and Fleshner, M. (1994). Psychoneuorimmunology. American Psychologist, 49 (12)1004-1017.

O'Leary, A. (1990). Stress, emotion and human immune function. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3):363-382.