What makes us stressed?

In the first part of the series “All this stress” I told you about what stress is, how the stress reaction works and in what circumstances we can experience difficulties related to stress. You can read the entire article “What is stress”.

Now we will go a step further and deal with stressors.

Often when talking about stress I hear “what reasons does she have to be stressed”, “where does this stress come from”, “nothing stresses me out”. And yet. So many people struggle with excessive stress, so many people experience difficulties, one of the causes of which is certainly excessive stress. And it seems that the only way to deal with it is to understand – what stressors are and how they can affect our functioning.

To tell you about this, I will return for a moment to the definition of stress.

Stress is the body’s physiological response to a stimulus (stressor). When a stimulus appears, our body quickly recognizes – what it is for me – is it safe or threatening, is it familiar to me, can I handle it? When the stimulus is classified as “threatening”, the stress response is automatically triggered – the fight and flight response that you are probably already familiar with. And with it, a series of physiological reactions in the entire body. In this way, our body mobilizes itself to action and accumulates the energy necessary to cope with the challenge it has faced. Energy is needed to survive.

Such a stimulus that triggers a stress reaction can be both a psychological and physical event. It can be real, it can also be a thought or a prediction. All this is very individual and we need to consider it in our lives in a very individual way.

The more stressors – the more often the stress reaction is triggered – the more often the stress reaction is triggered – the more stress in our body and life – the more unattended stress in our life – the greater the chance that we will experience difficulties or diseases related to it.

In the literature you will probably find many possible divisions and types of stressors. In my opinion, it is not at all about how we divide them. However, I have noticed that when I talk about possible stressors, it makes it much easier for me to divide them into certain categories, and it makes it easier for the people listening to understand what they may be.

Why is it important? Because stressors are our areas to work on. They allow us to observe in which areas I need changes in my life. And this will be a signpost to better well-being and reducing the level of stress in our lives. Determining which stressors occur most often / too often in my everyday life will also allow us to choose specific actions and tools that will help us work with them.

This is my (your) assessment of a given situation. This is the answer to the question: what do I think is threatening me? what irritates me? what pisses me off? what am I afraid of? how do I react to the world and people around me? This is the answer to the question: can I cope with this situation and how? This is my personal reaction and the emotions and feelings associated with it to a confrontational situation, an aggressive boss, an alarm clock ringing in the morning, traffic jams, public speaking, exams, etc. This is everything that is born in “my head” in response to the world around me and everyday events. And this is where we differ greatly.

Psychological stressors are one of the largest areas for exploration and effective coping with stress.

Why? Because your life is what you perceive it to be.

How often and to what extent you experience stress depends to some extent on how you perceive the world, people and things around you. And what you do with these beliefs every day. How they affect your decisions, behaviors and actions every day.

Therefore, the secret to transforming the stress you experience is to change how you see life.

Many years ago, researcher Richard Lazarus discovered that stress begins with interpreting a situation as dangerous or difficult and quickly deciding what resources you have to deal with the situation. If you interpret an event as dangerous or difficult and you believe that you do not have the resources to deal with it, you experience a stress reaction.

Psychological stressors are a huge area to work on. For some reason, we are afraid of the future, of our children, we are afraid of the boss’s reaction, of people who raise their voices, of confrontation, aggression, of sharing our feelings, of showing our true selves. For some reason, we are stressed by traffic jams, public speaking, leaving the house or meeting new people. For many years, I have been asking myself this question and looking for an answer, because we have it somewhere. In psychological work, we can find an answer to almost any of these questions. And it is hidden in the history and experiences of our lives, our loved ones and ancestors. After all, we already know that we can inherit fears and traumas from our parents and ancestors. We already know how events in our lives and those of our parents can affect us and our behavior. Answer these questions It is hidden in the culture and society or religion in which we grew up and live.

We can work with it. We can become aware of these thoughts and the beliefs that accompany them, we can name and feel the emotions and sensations in the body that accompany them. And then we can work with them. We have more and more effective tools that allow us to change limiting beliefs, heal traumas and fears. And it is really worth doing. Because psychological stressors are a huge area to work on.

Everything that directly affects our physical body and its balance, and because we are a whole, will of course also affect our mental and spiritual body. And here I may surprise you. It is a fast pace of life, lack of or problems with sleep, long working hours, irregular meals, many hours of work, lack of greenery, concrete surroundings, traffic jams, noise, a large amount of visual and auditory stimuli, sudden changes in temperature, changes in time zones, phones always on, long hours scrolling through social media, long hours of work and in the car, a sedentary lifestyle, too much training, illnesses, accidents, injuries, contusions. All these factors, but also many others, can negatively affect the balance in our nervous system.

When we take a closer look at these factors, we can see that we are stressed by what is related to a lifestyle that is unnatural for our human species, a lifestyle that is detached from nature, our natural rhythm, in a biological context. I will tell you about this in detail in the next parts of the Course for a Good Life.

We also have chemical stressors. These are hormonally active substances, chemical food, stimulants (e.g. caffeine, sugar, etc.), polluted environment, contact with chemical substances, etc.

These are also all vitamin deficiencies (such as D3, iron, magnesium, etc.) and minerals, inflammatory processes or organ dysfunctions (such as thyroid problems). Anything that causes our body to not function in balance will be a stressor for us.

such as wars, disasters, accidents, attacks, illnesses, loss of loved ones, loss of job, property and other difficult events that we can experience in the course of life. I list them separately, although they can contain elements of both psychological, physical and chemical stressors. They are an extremely important group, and their experience can directly affect our health and well-being. Of course, here too, much will depend on our “interpretation”, the strategies we adopt to deal with them, as well as our resilience, i.e. resistance to stress. I will also talk about this in the next parts of this module and the entire course.

We can also look at stressors from a different perspective:

We can also divide stressors into those that come from within us (from our thoughts, feelings and automatic reactions to events that we or our loved ones have experienced), and stressors that come from the outside world: noise, unhealthy food, excess stimuli, traumas, etc. Although it is worth emphasizing that in every “external” situation there are many of our internal feelings, thoughts and emotions that additionally influence our perception of a given event, and thus become an additional stressor in themselves. And we can work with that too.

We can also look at stressors from a different perspective, dividing them into acute short-term ones – those that appear and disappear, e.g. deadlines at work, an argument, an accident, and chronic – long-term – which last for weeks, months or even years, e.g. long-term illness, caring for a seriously ill loved one, working in a difficult environment. And while an acute stressor appears, gives us energy and disappears, long-term stress is like a marathon – it requires a good distribution of strength, otherwise our resources will quickly run out. According to Elissa Epel (stress researcher), short-term stress often turns into chronic as a result of succumbing to intrusive thoughts, worrying or analyzing. We need to remember that when a stress reaction takes on a chronic form, it entails adverse health effects on the biological, psychological and social levels.

As you can see, almost anything can be a stressor. However, each of us lives completely differently. We experience the world completely differently. So on a psychological level, what could potentially stress me out may not affect you at all, and what stresses you out may not affect me. However, on a physical and chemical level, we are very similar. It is true that we differ in our resistance to stress, strategies for dealing with it, and the level of stress we can accept and still feel ok. However, there are certain environmental factors that affect us all, and I may feel them sooner and you later, I more, and you perhaps less. However, all of them will become our share, all of them will make themselves known sooner or later if we cross a certain boundary beyond which the stress becomes too much for our body. And it is worth remembering this.

Every day we experience many stressors and in most cases our body can handle them very well. However, it cannot handle too much of them. But how do you know when there is too much stress? For me? In my life? I will tell you about this in the next part – “How do you know when there is too much stress?”.

See you soon! 🙂