Psychology of Stress

The psychology of stress - why is it important to know as much as possible about it? Everything is simple. The pace of life has recently become much higher; the loads - both physical and psychological - are constantly growing. Not surprisingly, being in a permanent state of stress has become almost standard for many people.

The concept of stress

What is stress? Stress is a non-specific response of the body to any change in conditions that requires adaptation. Simply put, some changes in the external environment require us to adapt. If it got colder or warmer outside, if we moved to different climate, if we met other people - all this requires physical and mental effort from us. In general, this phenomenon can be described as stress. If adaptation occurs, there is stress.

The concept of stress is described as load, tension, pressure, a state of increased tension, and this is really so. But not every state of tension is stressful. It’s only when you need to turn on the body's reserves for adaptation.

Stress is our internal adaptation mechanism of the organism and the way of its survival.

If a person stepped on the glass with his heel, a stress response will begin in his body. That is, stress is the mechanism of adaptation itself. The body begins to make some changes in order to adapt to this situation. It notices that there is glass in the heel, thickens the blood so that it begins to clot and prevent blood loss.

But if the system of reactions to stress and attempts to adapt to it remain turned on for too long, this leads to diseases.

Stress is anything that disturbs our homeostatic balance. Homeostasis is the body's self-regulating system, which allows us maintain constancy within our systems. Usually here we are talking about maintaining body temperature, blood glucose levels, approximately the same blood pressure and various other processes inside the body.

“You are what you eat” – only people who were completely indifferent to their lifestyle didn’t think over the meaning of this catchphrase of Hippocrates, as well as the direct impact of the quality of nutrition on health. The food we eat directly affects our vital activity, well-being and quality of life.

Now eating healthy is very popular and any person knows that you need to give up junk food. But few people know what to add to the diet, except for pure cereals, vegetables and protein.

It is important to diversify your diet so that every calorie eaten is filled with vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients - those substances that are vital for your health.

When stress interrupts our balance in some way, the body uses neurotransmitters, hormones, and the nervous system to adapt to it and restore the balance back.

If we speak of animals, stress is only a violation of the homeostatic balance that already exists at a given moment in time, i.e. this is a factor that affects the animal right now; but everything is more difficult with a person. When a wild dog Dingo grabs a jerboa by the spine, this is a stressful factor for him. In the case of a person, everything is different, it can also be the thought that the homeostatic balance can be disturbed, that is, this is not stress itself, not the stress factor itself, but thoughts about what can happen.

For the first time in 1915, the American psychophysiologist Walter Bradford Cannon spoke of the state now associated with the concept of stress, and called this reaction "fight or flight". And he even described this phenomenon in the book "Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Anger." It can be considered the beginning of the European and American approach to this topic in 1915.

However, eastern scientists found themselves in the same topic in the same years, Professor Korenchevsky in 1913 already described the adaptation syndrome and said that it was not a pathological, but a physiological response to cell damage, tissues, damage to some external environment.

The Austrian doctor Hans Selye graduated from the Prague Medical University. After moving to Canada, he studied the effect of the secrets of hormonal glands, which he received by crushing organs isolated from animals and injected into mice (then not yet hormones, because they were not isolated in their pure form).

He noticed a very interesting thing: no matter which hormone extract he injected into mice, the reaction was very similar. There is a legend that once he made some kind of technological oversight and forgot to untie his experimental mice, left them for the night.

Both those mice that were injected with substances the day before and those that were not injected gave the same reaction in the form of ulceration of the gastric mucosa. The next day, some of the test subjects even died. And that's when he first started talking about the General Adaptation Syndrome. Actually, this was the beginning of the history of stress.

Selye made very interesting conclusions that what really matters is the intensity of the need for restructuring or adaptation. And the irritant itself and the changes that led to the formation of this adaptation syndrome practically do not matter. The second conclusion that Selye made is that adaptive energy is available in a limited amount given from birth.

Later, the American researcher Goldstone in 1952 entered into a debate with Selye and began to talk about the fact that adaptive energy can be produced regardless of how much of it was given to the body at birth. It, of course, declines with old age, but may be retained in the form of adaptation capital.

Gradually, this theme began to develop from the concept of the bodily and cellular, with which Selye began, into the concept of the social. From one experiment on mice, entire areas in biology, medicine, sociology, and even politics related to the topic of stress have developed.

4 types of stress conditions

Psychological stress conditions
We are constantly in psychological and sociological stress factors, especially people living in megacities. Psychological stress means information overload, which is now ubiquitous in children from the very early age, competition, threats to social status, threats to self-esteem, and so on.
Physiological stress conditions
The ancient, understandable mechanisms at which our defenses are directed are physiological stressors. This is excessive pain, loud noise, exposure to extreme conditions, temperatures, stress. By the way, physical loads are just the same conditions of constant stress for athletes.
Chemical stressor
This means taking medications, coffee, alcohol, smoking, drugs, ecology, heavy metal poisoning.
Biological stressor
These are bacteria, viruses, pathogens. The constant exposure to some kind of slow, latent inflammation associated with a pathogenic object in our system, whether it be the intestines or the ENT organs, is a constant slow stressors that cause extreme damage to the body.

Psychological causes of stress

Stress can have a variety of causes: biological, chemical, physical and, of course, psychological. The last one is a difficult one. The psychological causes of stress are so diverse that it is simply not possible to list them all. Each person is unique: with his way of thinking, habitual patterns of behavior give together a unique picture of personality and a set of possible reactions to stressful situations. There are many such reactions.

Stress is provoked by internal and external problems. External ones - these are various life situations that a person has the ability to control. These can be financial difficulties, moving, difficulties at work or in personal life, etc. The internal causes of stress originate in the depths of the human mind and often have nothing to do with reality, a person invents them himself. This may be due to constant blues, pessimistic attitude, unfulfilled desires, lack of self-love, self-esteem, self-rejection.

eight causes of stress

Death. When a loved one passes away, few people can keep their presence of mind and continue to live a normal life. This is the most powerful psychological cause of stress. The expectation of death (for example, a sick relative) is also the cause of powerful emotional stress.
Finance. For a huge number of people, material difficulties are the main cause of stress.
Lack of self-expression. Most people strive to express their own "I", but not everyone can do it.
Lack of control over the situation. This can apply to both your own life and the lives of your loved ones. The inability to control everything puts pressure on some people and plunges them into the state of stress.
Illness and insecurity. Fear of getting sick, experiencing pain, fear of death - all this leads to loss of peace of mind, a person ceases to feel safe.
Job. For a huge number of people, work is a powerful source of stress. Difficult responsibilities, management pressure, difficult clients - all this keeps you in suspense, makes you constantly think, analyze, make plans.
Friends and relatives. Communication with loved ones, relatives, friends is always emotionally colored, which means it can provoke stressful situations.
Family. If not everything is going smoothly in relations with relatives, a person is unlikely to feel comfortable.

Any event can serve as a starting point for stress. Both women and men can become hostages of their psychological difficulties. It is important to remember that the primary task in a situation of constant emotional stress is finding out the cause of the uncomfortable state. Eliminating it or looking at the situation from a different angle, a person begins to feel much better. Without it, life can turn into a constant struggle with windmills.

3 stages (phases) of stress

Anxiety stage

The shock phase is characterized by shock changes: hyponatremia, hypotension, increased membrane permeability, blood thickening, leukocytosis, negative nitrogen balance, that is, the manifestation of catabolic processes, tissue destruction processes, hypoglycemia, muscle hypotension, and so on. All this happens against the background of activation of the production of glucocorticoids, mineralocorticoids and catecholamines - our internal biogenic amines.
The countershock phase is characterized by countershock changes to smooth it all out. That is, the state is reversed: hypernatremia, hypertension, activation of the sympathetic nervous system, sympathetic-adrinal nervous system, and what all nutritionists are most afraid of - activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and everything that follows from this. In this phase, along with motor reactions, auxiliary, visceral auxiliary systems of respiration are activated, which are activated through the central nervous system.

The stage of resistance or adaptation of the body

transitional stage

2. The second stage is resistance. It is characterized by some normalization of the activity of the endocrine glands, the thymic-lymphatic system. The body must adapt, because it cannot constantly live in the "alarm" mode. At the feedback level, some moments are turned off, and, let's say, the body stops responding so actively to stressors.
The main features of this stage are the mobilization of energy resources and the body's immune system, an increase in the synthesis of structural and enzymatic proteins.

Exhaustion stage

This is a stage which in no case should a person reach. Here the reaction of all endocrine glands occurs, it is again close to the reactions of the first stage: glucocorticoids predominate over mineralocorticoids, the function of the thyroid gland, sex glands decreases, the thymic-lymphatic system, the connective tissue system, and immunity are inhibited - that is, it really leads to the complete destruction of the body.

In fact, the onset of the exhaustion stage is not the only outcome of stress. In case the stress effect is moderate in strength and duration, the resistance stage can last a very long time. The body is adapted to new factors, it is quite viable.

What does it mean?

The body lives somehow. We understand that the hypothalamic-pituitary axis, the production of thyroid hormone, sex hormones, has already been disrupted, but we live, if it can be called that, or we exist in a not very good condition.

Against this background, the action of an additional stressor and a further increase in resistance is possible. What does it mean? Against the background of collapsing systems, when endocrine destructive mechanisms are already involved, diabetes can also form, serious problems with the thyroid gland can arise, and this will grow like a snowball. Therefore, in no case should such an effect on the body be allowed.

Proper health care starts with prevention. Even if a person feels well, he cannot be sure that he is absolutely healthy. To identify problems at an early stage, when symptoms are still absent, you need to regularly undergo a complete examination of the body in an express format - a basic annual checkup.

The check-up differs from the standard medical examination procedure precisely in that the examination is carried out as soon as possible, within 1-2 days. This is very convenient for the lifestyle of a modern busy person.

Early diagnosis can save thousands of lives. For example, the success of treating cancer in the early stages is about 90%, depending on the type of oncology. Therefore, regular monitoring of the state of your body can save not only health, but also life.

Many diseases can be prevented by adjusting habits, physical activity and dietary habits. Therefore, the basic check is the minimum that every person needs to hand over annually.

Stress symptoms

Stress symptoms by appearance
The person has puffiness, watery eyes, slightly bulging eyes, may be sweaty, sweaty on the face, emaciated or overweight in what is called chronic distress. The presence of these criteria may indicate that a person is in the first phase of stress.
Stress symptoms by somatic complaints
A person complains about his health. He can talk about high blood pressure, which increased suddenly after some event or experience. He may complain of a sudden palpitation, shortness of breath, constipation, a feeling of bloating, pain in the middle under the ribs, or a sharp increase in appetite, the feeling of insatiability - “here, I can’t eat, I eat, I eat, but there’s the feeling that I’m not full.”
Signs of stress can also be frequent respiratory viral infections, urge to urinate, episodes of urinary incontinence that suddenly began to happen after events or experiences, decreased erectile function in men or sexual desire in women, muscle and joint pain.
Stress symptoms by behavior
By behavior, we will notice some desire to reduce the area of support, the area of contact is a manifestation of post-traumatic stress disorder.
“You-statement” is very typical for a person who is in a situation of stress and physical trauma too.
Family history
In the family system, a person who seeks help may be found to people who have committed suicide. Perhaps the person will say that he was not breastfed at all, or his mother refused to breastfeed early. This is a family history factor that leads a person to tendency to react with distress to external circumstances. This is prematurity - the more profound prematurity a person has in history, the more he is prone to distress reactions.
The presence of a dysfunctional family in which violence is practiced, alcoholics and drug addicts, people who were in prison can also be a sign of stress. These are panic disorders in the client or his family members.
Predisposing personality traits
This is hyper-responsibility, pedantry, the so-called perfectionism - the desire to do some action ideally, this is some mental rigidity - the unwillingness to adapt to circumstances, the desire to do it your own way, insist on your own. This is alexithymia - the inability to understand, express one’s feelings and basic anxiety.
Mental complaints
This is changeable mood - from irritability and anger to complete apathy, the feeling that a person is not interested in anything.
This is insomnia, impaired memory and attention, anxiety higher than in the usual conditions, the appearance of panic attacks, asthenia, when there is not enough strength for some simple actions; when you don’t want to get up, drink water, brush your teeth, go to work. This is hyperinhibition, when a person suddenly slows down and stops responding in the usual way to familiar situations. And these are psychotic breakdowns, when suddenly a person begins to take offense, cry, scream, swear, which was not typical for him.

Events

In general terms, these are events associated with changes in life. Here it is important to understand what is important for a person and what is not very important, what kind of event can bring him out of balance so much as to cause stress.

Let’s summarize

If a moderate emotional load keeps a person in good shape and is even useful in some ways, constant internal stress affects health in the most negative way. Knowledge of the psychology of stress, information on how to deal with it correctly will help solve numerous problems and make life much easier.