Types of stressors

Jump to section It’s coming. You can feel it. You felt it yesterday and the day before that, but this time it’s worse. Your body is tense and your hands are sweaty. Your body is feeling the effects of stress. But how and why does this happen? What are stressors, and most importantly, how can you deal with them? The first thing you should know about stressors is that they impact everyone. You aren’t the only one who deals with stressful situations. But you — and everyone else — can do something about it. Learning how to identify the sources of your stress and how they impact you is the first step to addressing and mitigating them. And, because What are stressors? A stressor is a situation or event that causes us to feel stressed. They can be internal or external factors, like our memories, environment, or the people around us. They’re also very personal; a significant source of stress for one person might cause no stress for another. To make this clearer, let’s talk about the different types of stressors and Our stress response happens when our brains recognize a threat. This can be any stressful event, like a natural disaster or an important budget meeting. Our amygdala, which processes our emotions, sends a signal to the hypothalamus to communicate with our nervous systems and release The rush of adrenaline triggers our fight-or-flight response. And while cortisol is great for reducing inflammation, helping us act under pressure, helping to control our blood sugar levels,...

Learning Objectives • Describe different types of possible stressors, including major life readjustments and the connection between stressors, job strain, and job burnout For an individual to experience stress, he must first encounter a potential stressor. In general, stressors can be placed into one of two broad categories: chronic and acute. Chronic stressors include events that persist over an extended period of time, such as caring for a parent with dementia, long-term unemployment, or imprisonment. Acute stressors involve brief focal events that sometimes continue to be experienced as overwhelming well after the event has ended, such as falling on an icy sidewalk and breaking your leg (Cohen, Janicki-Deverts, & Miller, 2007). Whether chronic or acute, potential stressors come in many shapes and sizes. They can include major traumatic events, significant life changes, daily hassles, as well as other situations in which a person is regularly exposed to threat, challenge, or danger. Traumatic Events Some stressors involve traumatic events or situations in which a person is exposed to actual or threatened death or serious injury. Stressors in this category include exposure to military combat, threatened or actual physical assaults (e.g., physical attacks, sexual assault, robbery, childhood abuse), terrorist attacks, natural disasters (e.g., earthquakes, floods, hurricanes), and automobile accidents. Men, non-Whites, and individuals in lower socioeconomic status (SES) grou...

Have you ever felt the sudden flurry of emotions because of an unexpected event? Have you ever felt worn out after continuous bombarding days at work? Have you ever just felt like every little thing was weighing you down, energy-drained every day, and slowly failing to see the wonder in things? We’ve all been there—we’ve all had stressful days. But it doesn’t make those moments any less difficult to deal with. Especially with the ongoing pandemic, everyone’s going through their own stresses in life. Be it through personal or professional affairs, individual or social concerns, situational or impending occurrences: we all experience some level of stress. But how exactly do we deal with stress? How do we even know we’re stressed? If we are, how do we alleviate it? It takes a combination of knowing your type of stressor, your lifestyle and/or personality, and the most appropriate coping mechanisms or strategies in order to effectively relieve stress. What is stress? It’s easy to say we’re stressed, but what exactly is stress? What does it feel like? Stress may be any form of change that induces physical, emotional, or psychological tension. It’s our body’s way of telling us something needs to be attended to or acted on. We all experience stress to some extent, but the ways we respond to them differ based on our situation and personal dispositions. Stress triggers a fight-or-flight response so you and your body are alerted about an incoming danger, leading you to either avoid ...