Living with Stress

Six months after a woman's husband dies, she develops cancer. A man wins $15,000 at the race track. While collecting the money, he col­lapses and dies of a heart attack. A high school senior has to give a speech to the student body. The morning of the speech she wakes up with a headache after a sleepless night. Another stu­dent can't keep still right before he's about to play an important football game. During exam week more than the usual number of students come down with the flu.

All of these people may be victims of stress. They have had to face a stressful situation—or one that seemed stressful to them. Stressful situations are ones that present a challenge to a person's ability to adapt to them. A student facing an exam, a football game, or a first date is undergoing a challenge. In one way or another, the student feels pressure and the need to adjust to it. The student feels stress.

People react to stressful situations in different ways. Some high-strung, or very nervous, people react strongly to stress. They routinely come down with illnesses or suffer accidents in stressful situations. Others are able to adapt to similar situations without undue difficulty. Still others have learned to control their reactions to stress and to lessen the effects of stress on their physical and emotional health.

Yet stress is also a normal part of life. It can, in fact, be crucial to people's well-being. With­out the challenge of stressful situations, human beings might never feel the need to develop their potential.

This chapter discusses the paradox that stress can both help you and cause you harm. It also deals with the causes of stress and how people respond to it. It explains the body's stress mechanism and discusses the relation­ship between stress and disease. Finally, it explores how you can learn to cope with the stresses of life.

What Is Stress?

The word stress can be confusing because it is used in different ways. For example, we might talk about the stresses of city living. By that we mean such factors as noise and traffic that cause us to feel strain and tension. Or we might say that a person is suffering from stress. In this case, the word is used to mean the strain or tension itself.

For clarity, in this chapter we will follow the practice of stress researchers. They use the word stress or when they refer to situations or things that cause stress. Examples of stressors in a city might be rushing crowds, wailing si­rens, traffic jams, and the like. The illness of a parent or a separation from one's family can also be stressors.

Researchers use the word stress to refer to the individual's reaction to stressors. Thus, in this chapter we will use the word stress when we are talking about the body's internal re­sponses to a stressful situation—to a stressor.

Positive Effects of Stress

Stress can have positive effects too, though. If you've ever watched any major sporting event, you may begin to understand. Picture Chris Evert Lloyd before a Wimbledon championship or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar before an important basketball game. Both of them are under stress to do their best. They will have to "get up" for the stressor—the match or game. Stress can, then, help people to meet a challenge. Think of a challenge in your life such as getting up the nerve to talk to someone you've been wanting to meet for over a month. That anxious feeling could be just the push you need to make the first move. Stress is often useful in pushing you to do your best. The trick is to develop the ability to use stress positively rather than to be defeated by it. By understanding what stress is you can minimize its harmful effects.