Factors Influencing Reactions To Stress

Reaction to stress

Getting expose to a stressful situation your brain will immediately send signals to your body to do a specific reaction to prevent any kind of injury, mental tension, or physical attitude. There are different types of reactions for every situation:

1. Fight-or-flight also known as the stress response. A chemical reaction occur at the point when you feel threatened. Usually this reaction occurs when you are dealing with a harmful event either physically or mentally. What happens during the fight-or-flight? The body nervous system suddenly release hormones that contain adrenaline and noradrenaline. This will eventually increase the heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate. This will set your body to either stay and cope with the situation or run away and feel safe. After this hormone are released into your body it will take from 20 – 60 min for your body to get back into its normal level.
2. General Adaptation Syndrome also known as GAS is the first stage that occur when you are experiencing a stressful situation. A process of three different stages. First of all is alarm reaction stage is the initial warning the body experience when under stress. Basically a reminder to your body that refers to a stressful situation. Resistance stage the second stage after a stressful event. The body starts releasing lower amount of cortisol and your high blood pressure and heart rate begin to decrease and adjust. Although the body enters the recovery phase it stays on high cautious level for a while. Staying for a long time period in a stressful situation. Your body will eventually adapt to the high stress level. In this process the body goes through changes that you are unaware of it. Some signs that show that you are experiencing a resistance stage is: frustration, poor concentration, and irritability. If the resistance stage stays for a long time this will eventually lead you to the third and final stage. Exhaustion stage this stage is characterized by the chronic stress which means the body is experiencing a long time period of stress and it can be exposed to any kind of stress easily. Which lead to physical, emotional, and mental stress to the point your body can’t handle it or fight it. Some signs that show that you reached the exhaustion stage is: fatigue, burnout, depression, anxiety, and decreased stress tolerance.
3. Emotional and Cognitive Responses cognitive or cognition is the process of thinking or a mental process. Emotions is a feeling caused by certain situation for example happiness, anger, excitement, fear, love, or hatred. Emotional responses is the reaction the body takes in certain situation given by an outer aspect such as individuals, groups, things, creatures, texts, and songs. Emotional responses include two policies first is known as ‘’Grief’’ a common and painful reaction to a death of a loved one, family member or a friend. This generally occur right away or after a while. Usually the person suffering from grief will feel sad, lonely, anxious, depressed, anger, and shock. A way of dealing with it is by talking to someone or meditating if necessary. The second policy is known as ‘’ Stress reaction’’ a reaction caused by a life disaster or a highly stressful situation. The affection of this policy occurs immediately for example feeling week, hesitant, headache, and sleeping problems. When the person feel comfortable he or she should continue to go back to normal life and usual routine. Cognitive responses is the thought that come to your mind while listening to someone talking. When you decode the massage the thoughts that comes into your mind is the cognitive responses. Cognitive responses may be irrelevant if the topic isn’t interesting. On the other hand it can be relevant if he or she find the topic interesting. This usually happens during reading, listening to someone, listening to a radio, or watching the television.
4. Behavioral and Physical Reactions physical reactions is when your body experience a physical change due to stress. For example headache, pain, infections, or dizziness. It can also lead to fainting. Some ways to deal with these changes is by managing your time, relaxing your body, or to stop taking things personal. Behavioral reaction is when specific behaviors change without noticing due to stress. These behaviors can be social for example dealing with bully, feeling inferior, or feeling unwanted may lead to social avoidance. It can also be aggressive behaviors. A stressed person can’t handle any types of conflict it can be a small one but when a person is experiencing a stressful event anything can trigger his anger and at any point it will lead to huge conflict that end up with either a fight or an unpleasing results.

Factors influencing reactions to stress

There are many factors that can influence a reaction it can be direct by a stressors or it can be natural by an individual. Some of the factors that influence the reaction can be personality, age, genes, and the maximum stress level that a person can deal with.

Any reaction can be determined by personality difference or spirituality. A reaction influenced by personality difference can be mental, physical, or emotional. Mental reaction in a stressful situation is characterized by your genetic background or how important this event is to you.

Any mental reaction can cause low concentration, anxiety, depression, or mood swings. Physical reaction can involve the nervous system for example: headache, stomach pain, chest pain, dizziness, or shaking. Emotional reaction is characterized by your coping skills or your spirit for example: your reaction when you tell yourself ‘’ I can do it ’’ will be completely different than your reaction when you say ‘’it’s impossible ‘’. In addition individuals differ in their reaction to a conflict or a stressor according to their personality. For example a company needs a sales man but in order to get accepted you need to pass the interview and a specific qualification needed. A hesitant person will be more stressed than a confident one. During the interview every individual will be rated. Some can deal with this situation perfectly because they are confident, sociable, and flaunt. While others can deal with it incompletely because they are hesitant, and insecure.

What is spirituality? An open idea with a space for any point of view. In other words a lifestyle that an individual chase his or her true nature. Spiritually can help with stress curing. Some spiritual strategies that help curing stress is: connecting to the world, the more you feel you have a reason in the world the less lonely you may feel. Releasing control, majority of people have a strong desire toward feeling in charge of their lives. When they don’t satisfy their desire they can feel stressed and depressed. Individuals who chose to let go won’t feel the kind of stress or depression others may suffer from. Expanding your support network, sharing spiritual expressions whether with a family member or a friend can help with dealing with stress.

Leading a healthier life, people who view themselves as spiritual can experience clinical preferences.

Coping with stress

Coping with stress is not a simple task. We can’t stop stress form our life but we can overcome the bad effects that we can experience. Overcoming stress can be achieved by several ways.

Some can experience specific techniques that can happen unconsciously and some can uses specific methods that can reached by every day resources or chosen activities.

There are different methods for coping with stress such as self-control, looking for social help, accepting facts, escaping from stressful events, relaxing, taking care of yourself, sleeping, and therapies if needed. However there are three main strategies to cope with stress more effectively. Defensive coping strategies a defense mechanism are methods the unconscious mind use to avoid any kind of stress. Defense mechanism are characterized into five main mechanisms. First of all repression, putting stressful ideas or thoughts into the unconscious mind. For example a child suffered abuse from his or her parents if he or she are experiencing repression this person will repress the memory and becomes unaware of it.

Regression, getting back to a specific behavior an individual used to do in an early stage while facing stress. For example you failed an exam so you got into bed and start hugging yourself and getting into a specific shape you used to do when your where young then you started crying. Projection is dealing with unacceptable traits or behavior by projecting these behaviors to others. For example you are a complex person. Reaction formation, people who use this mechanism hide their true feeling by showing the opposite. For example when someone is attracted to another person will treat this person meanly to hide his or her true feeling.

Sublimation is when you face your stress or negative vibe by letting it out into a positive or useful activity. For example when you feel sad or lonely you start painting or when you are angry you start boxing.

Active coping strategies are either social or mental reactions. In this type of strategies individual relay on their own resources. For example using alcohol to forget some of your stressors or using sleeping pills to help with your sleep which will increase you depressed mood the next day. A study has shown that individual who uses active coping strategies over time experience a decrease in their bad mood.

Physical and social strategies some physical strategies that help with coping with stress is: Practicing good sleep hygiene. Lack of sleep can cause stress. To cope with this situation you need to start practicing into a comfortable state and avoiding caffeine or alcohol when you are going to bed, and reducing the daily usage of electronic devices before bed time. Give yourself regular breaks. Giving your mind some time to rest is an effective way to cope with stress for example going for a walk, talking to a friend, listening to music, or meditating.

Taking break actually help making you more energetic and efficient. Regularly practice self- soothing techniques. Think about the five sense and this will give you clues to know what works for you. For example singing, drawing, cooking, and writing. Exercising regularly. Excursing is an effective method to cope with stress. Focusing in other activities will help your mind to forget the mental tension you are experiencing. Maintaining a healthy diet. Eating fruits and vegetables increase the happiness rate. A group of researchers proved that individual who follow a healthy life style feel better than those who are eating almost no vegetables or fruits. Limiting your consumption of alcohol and other mood altering substances. Drinking can make you feel better for some time but after a while it can increase depression, anxiety, or sleep disturbance which will eventually lead you to a high stress level.

When you are stressed your way of acting differs from your normal behaviors (shaking your legs, hitting your hands, or walking very fast etc.) However there are two basic strategies that help dealing with these behaviors. Routine, routine, routine managing your time is one of the best ways that can overcome stress caused by disorganization or overload. For example every day in the morning you can start planning your day. Saving time for the things that can cause you mental tension and the things you can do to oversee these events. Writing things down. Overthinking is one of the main reasons that can cause stress. Responding to these thoughts that go through your head can be managed by writing. Setting for ten minutes and writing down all the thought that you are afraid of will help show your mind that you have every one of your concerns recorded and that you will get to them the following day.

In conclusion, stress is a common way of life it can be positive or negative. If individuals can handle stress effectively this can lead to some great advantages but in any case, if individuals won’t handle stress effectively this may lead to a bad consequences. So people have to know how to cope and mange it.