Stress is the body’s reaction to the challenges and threats of the world around us. Back in our evolutionary past, stress had real survival value, enabling humans to flee from or combat threats from wild animals and enemies. Stress can still be crucial in an emergency, but usually, our stress responses merely produce wear and tear on the brain and body.
Stress is often talked about as if it were something outside ourselves, but psychologists use the term to mean our response to something that may threaten our well-being and stability. The external causes of stress are called ‘stressors,’ and practically anything can be one. It could be a truly life-threatening event, such as an out-of-control car coming towards you on the wrong side of the road, or it might be a nun or everyday irritation, like a dripping tap or the noise of an electric drill coming from the street. Whatever the disturbance, the brain takes in information from the stressor and, by a complex interplay of the
nervous and endocrine systems, produces a bodily response to deal with the threat. The effects of stress are mental, physical, and emotional. And if they go on for too long, they can produce ill health. In the short term, stress makes the heart race, the palms sweat, and the breathing fast and shallow. You may feel fear, anger, or even a strange sense of exhilaration. This is all part of the ‘fight or flight’ response first described by Walt Er Cannon in the 1930s.
Fight or flight
As the name suggests, the fight or flight response equips you either to run away from a threat or to stay and face it. Either way, you need extra energy, and so on. As the thalamus, the brain’s relay station is made aware of the stressor by the cerebral cortex, it puts the sympathetic nervous system on red alert by sending a message to the adrenal glands. The adrenals pour out two chemicals – adrenaline and noradrenaline – which increase both your heart and breathing rates to ensure the delivery of extra glucose and oxygen to the muscles. Your blood circulation alters too: blood is diverted away from m the digestive system, kidneys, and skin (which is why you may cum pale) and is channeled towards the muscles.
Cortisol, the stress hormone
The fight or flight response occurs within seconds of being faced with a stressor. It is followed by a second, slower wave of response that is caused by another stress hormone, cortisol. A brain circuit involving the hypothalamus and the pituitary – the brain’s master gland – sends a message to the adrenals, triggering cortisol production. Cortisol provides emergency supplies of glucose fuel for the muscles.
In the short term, this secondary response is useful. However, although the cortisol system is automated, it doesn’t work perfectly, especially under conditions of chronic stress. Canadian researcher Hans Selye, working in the 1930s, showed that laboratory rats exposed to chronic stressors such as overcrowding developed ulcers and impaired immunity. We now know that cortisol is responsible for much of this damage, acting as a slow poison to the body and brain.
Identifying stressors
If you made a list of all the things that cause stress in your life and then compared it with a list made by a friend, you would likely share some stresses while others would be different. For example, you might both be bothered by transport problems, noise, and crowds, but maybe you tend to get stressed by taking on too much at work, whereas your friend might find it difficult to cope with the demands of family life. What is stressful for one person may not be for someone else.
Although it can be hard to predict which situations and events will act as stressors for different individuals, it is clear that events that involve major adjustment – such as moving home, getting married, or changing jobs – tend to come to the greatest stress. In the 1960s, the US psychologists Richard Rahe and Thomas Holmes developed the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, in which they assigned different life events a rating depending on how much stress each produced. The values were measured in ‘life change units’ (LCUs). As you might expect, grief and divorce were high up the scale, but more surprisingly, even positive events such as going on holiday and the birth of a child were rated as producing. Ra and Holmes argued that people who accumulated a high total of LCUs over 12 months were more likely to become ill. Although there has been little hard evidence to support this theory, anyone experiencing a high level of change is certainly likely to feel stressed.
Another way of looking at stressors is in terms of’ hassles’ – a term introduced by the US stress expert Richard Lazarus in 1984. Hassles are daily annoyances – such as losing things or unwanted social obligations – that can, over time, build up and have a corrosive effect on your physical and mental well-being.
Unexpected stressors are often harder to handle than predictable stress. A sense of being out of control makes the body’s stress circuits go into overdrive. For example, during the Blitz in World War 11, the German Air Force bombed central London every night. Yet, according to a paper published in 1942 in the medical journal The Lancet, the incidence of ulcers in central London was lower than in the suburbs, suggesting that the uncertainty of not knowing where the next bomb would drop caused more stress.
White, it is widely believed that too much stress has a bad effect on health, but it has been hard to prove a direct link between stress and specific illness. But, it seems likely that undue stress leads people into unhealthy behaviors like smoking, drinking too much, and overeating, and this, in turn, causes health problems. Research has shown that adolescents who experience a lot of stress are more likely to start smoking, and adults who have to give up may lapse during a stressful period.
Managing stress
Whatever the cause, you can learn to lower the stress burden on yourself. Cannon and Selye viewed the brain and body as a machine, responding passively to life’s stressors, but the modern view of stress is more dynamic. Richard Lazarus puts great emphasis on the role of appraisal in stress management. First of all, he says, you should assess the stressor to understand what kind of threat it may pose to you. You may learn by experience, for instance, that a noisy neighbor will quieten down after half an hour or so. Then, you should assess what resources you have to deal with the stressor; for example, you could move to a part of the house where the noise is less noticeable or arrange to be out when the disruption is usually at its worst. Whatever response you choose, taking some control over a stressful situation reduces the perceived stress.
STRESS IN WORKING LIFE
Stress can affect you throughout your life: children who are bullied at school suffer enormous stress, and many older people carry the burden of caring for a sick relative. However, it is stress at work that we hear the most about today. The main factors increasing job stress appear to be the rapid pace of change and lack of control over overwork.
- The rapid pace of change: The concept of a ‘job for life’ is disappearing in today’s workplace, with a trend towards temporary and contract work. Some people respond well to the challenge, while others find the lack of security frightening and stressful. Technological change, with the widespread use of computers, e-mail, and mobile phones, means that opportunities for communication and contact are now limitless. The average office worker is said to be exposed to over 100 digitally transmitted messages a day. This has led to many people experiencing information overload. Also, mastering new technology presents unexpected problems and stresses for people who have managed without these tools for many years.
- Lack of control: Dictated by demanding superiors, busy schedules, and long, strict working hours, many people have little control over the work they do. People feel left out of the decision-making process in companies with a hierarchical structure that allows little room for individual input. Often, employees feel they are a mere cog in a big machine, with little personal value beyond their specific task. However, some more enlightened employers are trying to reduce this kind of stress on their workers by offering training, inviting them to meetings, allowing flexible working hours, and generally democratizing the workplace.
FOUR STRESS MYTHS
- All stress is bad for you. No. Without stress, we wouldn’t be able to cope with life’s problems and challenges. We have to respond to changes in the world, and that inevitably involves some stress. Without stress in our lives, we would never feel the satisfaction of overcoming problems and mastering difficult challenges.
- Everyone gets stressed out by the same things – noise, traffic, overwork. No. Although these stressors may well cause some annoyance to most people, the extent of the stress each person experiences will be different. We all respond to events in an individual way. Some people adapt to certain kinds of stress and become used to it, while others find even the slightest annoyance too much.
- People who complain about stress are just weak. No. Research shows that stress has genuine effects on mental and physical health. Excessive stress should be dealt with promptly before it creates serious health problems.
- There is a stress epidemic today. No. Humans have always suffered from stress. In fact, the stressors people faced in the past were probably far greater than they are today – at least in the Western world – including hunger, war, serious overwork, poor health, and so on. People today are more conscious of stress as an issue – they hear and read about stress far more, and this has raised awareness.
