What Situations Cause Us Stress?

What causes stress? Part of the answer is a "stressor". The other part is "stress reactivity". A stressor is a stimulus with the potential of triggering the fight or flight response. The stressors for which our bodies were evolutionarily trained were threats to our safety. The caveman who saw a lion looking for its next meal needed to react quickly. Cavemen who were not fast enough or strong enough to respond to this threat didn't have any worry about the next threat. They became meals for the lions.

When you step off a curb, not noticing a car coming down the street, and hear its horn, you quickly jump back onto the curb. Your heart beats fast, your breathing changes, and you perspire. These are all manifestations of your response to a stressor, the threat of being hit by a car. Other stressors you encounter have the potential for eliciting the same fight or flight response, even though it would be inappropriate to respond immediately or with some action. These stressors are symbolic ones; for example, the loss of status, threats to self-esteem, work overload, or over-crowding. When the boss overloads you with work, it is dysfunctional to fight with him or her and equally ridiculous to run away and not tackle the work. When you encounter the stressors associated with moving to a new town, fighting with new people you meet or shying away from meeting them are both inappropriate means of adjustment.

The point is that our bodies have evolved to respond to stressors with an immediate action by altering their physiology for greater speed and strength. When we encounter symbolic stressors, our bodies are altered in the same manner, although we do not use the changed physiology by responding with some action. Therefore, we build up stress products. We do not use these stress products but rather "grin and bear" the situation. The results are illness and disease when the stress reaction is chronic, is prolonged, or goes unabated.

This need not be the case. We can learn to take control of ourselves and of our bodies to prevent the fight or flight response from developing when encountering symbolic threats. We can also learn how to use stress products once our physiology has changed to prevent them from resulting in illness, disease, or other negative consequences.

Now that you know what a stressor is and what stress reactivity entails, it is time to define stress itself. It is the combination of a stressor and stress reactivity. Without both of these components, there is no stress. A stressor has only the potential of eliciting a stress reaction. Imagine two people fired from their jobs. One views being fired as catastrophic, while the other views being fired as less severe. The stressor (being fired) had the potential of eliciting physiological arousal, but only the thought processes employed by the first person would result in such a reaction. By definition, that person experienced stress. The second person encountered the same stressor but perceived it in such a way as to prevent physiological arousal. That person was not stressed.