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Psychology

What Stress Actually Is – Behavioural Psychology

Stress, in its most basic meaning, denotes and represents the pressure or tension that is exerted on a material object.

In psychological terms, stress is defined as a state of emotional or mental strain resulting from a perceived adverse or above normal levels of demanding situations.

This psychological stress can be emotional, cognitive and outer perceptual.

In behavioural psychological terms, the stress response can be compared with an alarm for awareness, and sustained over time can cause health harm.

Types of Stress

Acute Stress

The less damaging and the most common of the types of stress. It is experienced immediately after the perception of threat, either emotional, psychological, or physical danger.

The physical reaction to acute stress is the shunting of blood from extremities to big muscles to rapidly prepare the body to action into a corporal state of something called fight or flight response.

Acute stress can be especially dangerous to people with pre conditions like heart diseases.

Episodic Acute Stress

Acute stress becomes episodic acute stress when it presents itself suddenly and triggered easily becoming an ordinary event in the life of the individual affected by the condition.

Chronic Stress

A stress condition is considered chronic when the feeling of stress is long-lasting and constant.

Some causes of chronic stress can be challenging times, in terms of relationships or financial situation, or high-pressure daily activities.

Stress Management

Stress can be relieved, managed, prevented and even avoided, using relaxation techniques, developing stress coping skills, changing the situation, environment, and implementing habits to manage the influence of stress in our health, behavior, mood and sense of well-being.

Acute stress is the easiest to manage because it doesn’t long after it is triggered by the perception of threat.

Other Kinds Of Stress

There are additional kinds of stress that can affect your wellbeing and daily life, and some are easier to cope, to prevent, or to manage than others.

In psychosocial terms, we can consider stress as the outcome of personal relationship difficulties, professional relationship challenges, job and opportunities loss, material loss, personal loss, lack of resources, lack of satisfactory amount of social interaction, and social values crisis.

In physical terms, stress can denote a trauma, intense physical labor, environmental impact, illness, fatigue, hormonal or biochemical imbalances dietary, substance abuse, lacking, dental, and musculoskeletal imbalances.

The word ‘stress’ can be used in a sentence to emphasize and denote certain and distinct value and importance to a statement that someone makes in a given speech or writing.