Stress - Causes and Effects

Stress - Causes and Effects

"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."

—Thomas Jefferson

Do you feel satisfied with your daily life all the time? Are you always full of energy for your work and family? Is it the true that you have never experience any boredom and tiredness in this modern world? If the answers for these questions are “Yes”, I am sure that you will be considered as a “hanh tinh”. According to World Health Organization, an estimated 98% of adults living in big cities all over the world currently suffer from depression. Do you find enough confidence to be one of 2% left who are very lucky not to have been in that confused situation?

In this hustle and bustle life, being stressed seems to be the tendency of city-dwellers. To some extent, it has made itself to become an unevitable aspect in the life of each person. Knowing the causes and its effects can help you not only minimize harmful impacts it gives you, but also protect your family and even yourself from trouble unworthy of having.

Stress is defined as a feeling of tension or strain that can be caused by many different things. People differ from one another in many aspects; so do problems causing stress for each one. It's quite hard to identify exactly what are the causes of stress, because what can make this person stressed might not cause stress in another one. However, psychologists in Harvard Medical School divided the causes of stress into 2 main fields: personal and social–job causes.

Personal causes are those which connect with your own, not from something outside. Emotional matter is one of them. You can observe it very easily in real situations since it obtains the chance to appear frequently. It is the major cause and rather hard to avoid. Each of you has a close friend to share your feeling, to be happy and upset with each other. But how many of you have a friend who can understand thoughts and confidences even when you cannot expose? Do they always be by your sides whenever you feel sad, or despair? At that time, you cannot express yourself directly, you feel as if everyone is out of your reach. The anger, depression or guilt you cannot confide are firmly sticked in your mind. It’s just the time for you to “explode”, in the same way that a dormant volcano begins to erupt.

The relationships in your daily lives that cause stress also are a part of personal matters. Sometimes a conflict with another person is inevitable. The other person may even have a conflicting agenda against your own objective. Breaking with your girl friend, having quarrels with your friends, or being lack of support from family appear to be the most frequent things that throw you into stress. The more isolated you feel, the more stress you have to bear. Perhaps no one can overcome those stresses easily.

Contrary to personal causes are social causes. Social problems relate to quite a large number of smaller problems. Job affair used to be considered as the biggest threat to mental illnesses, including stress. In this developing era where talent is equal to gold, many companies and employers require their employees facilitated with skills and qualifications as many as possible. Also, society is believed to be very competitive. Being a citizen in it means that you have to try a lot to catch up with your colleagues, finish all the tasks assigned, and cope with unpredicted difficulties. You must make decision yourself what to be the most effective way to deal with problems and how to solve subtly. It needs you to exert yourself to make ends efficiently. The feeling of being exhausive and overloaded becomes a haunt to you. In some cases, you like to bang your head against brick wall. Moreover delicated tasks add to you stress very much. The pressure of work takes you into the tunnel you don’t know the way to get out of.

When you are too ambitious, stress finds it easy to come in your mind. To fulfil your own dreams, there is a need for you to plan and fix the goals beforehand. Nothing seems to be bad. However, if you fail to achieve what you have scheduled, it will be very dangerous. The most hazardous enemy of yours apparently does be yourself. And it’s you, not someone else, causes you stressful.

Nonetheless, stresses are not all negative. Some scientists said that “The words 'positive' and 'stress' may not often go together”. But, there is still surprise in real life where stress plays a key factor to the success of people. To be under stress sometimes stimulates you to do work better. A considerable number of achievements have been obtained throughout the pressure of stress. Scientists put themselves in high stressed level to bring mysterious phenomena into light. Business men work together with stress to produce the profit for their companies. Even students like us, although we dislike doing jobs piled up, feel that stress can inspire us to do our best and perform better.

Sudha Chandran, an Indian danseus, lost both of her legs in an accident. But, the physical and social inadequacies gave her more impetus to carry on with her dance performances with the help of prosthetic legs rather than deter her spirits.

According to stress researcher Hans Selye, stress in moderate doses, are necessary in life. He claimed that stress responses are one of the body's best defense systems against outer and inner dangers. “In a risky situation (in case of accidents or a sudden attack on life at all), body releases stress hormones that instantly make you more alert and your senses become more focused. The body is also prepared to act with increased strength and speed in a pressure situation. It is supposed to keep you sharp and ready for action”. Many people believed that the faster speed of stress can motivate and support the health to have much better mental and physical ability to confront obstacles in life. In addition, it is able to wake up latent power, if it reaches the suitable level.

Stress is not a trivial matter to face up to. In other words, it takes time, much time to deal with. Even though stress influences your lives very much, and you can imagine its causes in your mind, it is still a major hindrance to predict and avoid. Once you cannot make changes of it, the only thing you should do is to adjust yourselves to unforeseeable matters. Hope you to be strong enough to experience and overcome stress happily and less distressingly.