What is Stress?

the 20th Stress Management Technique

In Your Relaxed-and-At-Ease
Guide to Stress Management Techniques

"What is stress" was not one of my original (19) favorite stress management techniques because, quite honestly...

...I've always been more interested in learning how to use techniques to decrease stress rather than understand it.

However, while writing the content for this site, I've learned a lot about stress - how it works and what it's doing in our bodies...

... I've become more motivated to decrease stress because I better understand how it can affect my health.

So what is stress? Here's what I've learned...

There are many types of stress. In the past, people used to think of stress as the strain on the body-mind and its physiology that is caused by change, upsets, or difficult situations.

In addition to this, now we know stress is not a figment of our imagination and that when we're stressed, there are physiological things happening in our bodies that affect our health.

It is measurable.

These days when scientists talk about stress, they're usually referring to the stress response - also known as fight or flight.

When the fight or flight response is activated, our bodies produce hormones to tell our systems we need to fight hard or run fast in order to save our lives.

If we do fight somebody or run away, the hormones stop producing and our bodies relax.

If we don't physically work it through and we stay stressed... the hormones will keep telling our bodies to be ready to fight or flee... so...

Over and over...

• Our hearts beat more rapidly.
• Our blood pressure and respiratory rates stay elevated.
• Our blood supply doesn't circulate through our digestive system - so it doesn't work as well.
• More blood goes to the muscles of our legs and arms.
• We maintain a heightened state of alertness.

As a result, a chronic state of stress develops and affects our health - physically and emotionally. The stress response then becomes more of a problem then the initial things that caused the stress.

We may experience symptoms of stress such as difficulty sleeping, fatigue, or a change in eating habits...just to name a few.

If this continues...

• It can lead to heart disease because of the strain on our hearts.
• The telomers at the end of our chromosomes shorten which decreases our life span.
• Our immune system will no longer work optimally.

Understanding "what is stress," what causes it, and how to decrease it is important.

So, I encourage you to read about what causes stress and take on one or more of the stress management techniques like mindfulness, movement, and stop worrying by changing your thinking.

Unfortunately, stress is a human problem because we have the ability to anticipate and imagine. The good news is imagination helps us activate the Law of Attraction...

The bad news is with it we can imagine bad things happening - at some point in the future - and so the fight or flight response keeps the stress hormones floating through our bodies.

Go from What is Stress to How to deal with stress