It happens sometimes that stress disturbs our life greatly. Stress is not only some unpleasant situation that makes us feel inconvenient, stress can even cause harm our health. In this stress cause and effect essay we are going to discuss how exactly stress influences us, what forms it has and how we can fight it using different methods and strategies of stress overcoming.

Definition of stress

Stress is responsiveness of the body to overstrain, negative emotions or just monotonous routine. During stress human body produces hormone called adrenalin, which makes us find way out. Stress in small doses is needed to everyone, because it makes us think, look for solutions of the problems, without stress at all life would be boring. However, if there is too much stress, body weakens, loses energy and ability to solve problems.

There is a huge number of essays about stress devoted to this problem. Mechanisms of stress formation are studied in detail and they are quite complicated: they are connected with our hormonal, nervous and vessel system.

It should be mentioned that strong stresses influence our health. Stress affects immune system and causes many diseases (cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and other kinds of diseases). That is why we should resist stress state and give us positive life orientation.

Symptoms of stress

What is stress from practical point of view? To figure it out let’s study the main symptoms of stress.

• Constant feeling of irritation, depression, often without any obvious reasons.
• Bad disturbing sleep.
• Depressions, physical weakness, headache, tiredness, absence of desire to do anything.
• Reduced attention concentration that makes it difficult to study or work. Memory problems and slower thinking process.
• Impossibility to relax, to forget for a while about your business or troubles.
• Absence of interest to people who surround you, even to best friends, relatives and close ones.
• Constantly arousing desire to cry, tearfulness that sometimes turns into sobbing, melancholy, pessimism, pity to yourself.
• Reduced appetite, however sometimes people start eating too much, uncontrolled food intake.
• There are often nervous tics and obsessive habits, such as a person bites the lips, nails and so on. Person often shows mistrust to everything and everyone.

If you are in a stress state, it means only one thing: your body has reacted to some external irritant.

Kinds of stress

In some cases the term “stress” is used to define irritant itself. For example, physical stress is strong cold or unbearable heat, high or low atmosphere pressure.

• Chemical stress means influence of different toxic substances.
• Psychical stress is strong negative or positive emotions.
• Traumas, virus infections, muscle overstrains are biological stresses.

According to result in psychology there are the following types of stress:

Eustresses (“useful” stresses). Everyone needs some dose of stress for successful existence. It is the moving power of our development. This state can be called “reaction of awakening”. It is similar to awakening from sleep. You need to wake up and leave your bed to go to work in the morning. To reach work activity you need a push, a small portion of adrenaline. Eustresses carry out this function.

Distresses (harmful stresses) appear at critical overstrain. This state corresponds to all beliefs that we have about stress.

Causes of stress

Almost everything can cause stress, everything that concerns an individual, that irritates him. For example, to the external causes we can include anxiety or worrying on any reason (change of work, death of a relative and so on).

Internal causes of stress are life values and beliefs. Personal self-esteem of a person also belongs here.

Men as well as women equally suffer from stresses. However each organism has its own features. If you start noticing the signs of stress overstrain of your body, the first thing you should do it to figure out what has caused the stress. It is obvious that it is much easier to fight the causes of stress than its consequences. People say that all the diseases appear because of nerves.

Clinical observations have shown that small stresses are not harmful for the body, but even useful. They stimulate man to find way out of the difficult situation. Not to let depression transform into more serious constant state, each of us should take care of self-education and development of will.

Many people used to fight depression with the help of antidepressants, drugs or alcohol. They think, why they should spend time on will development if there are easier ways. They do not think that they may become addicted and later their will need the help of specialists to fight the addiction.

Treatment and prophylactic of stress

It is well known that there is no better medicine than sound sleep. So think of how you sleep. Here are some tips that will make your sleep better.

• Regular physical exercises are very helpful for good sleep. It is more preferable to do it outside couple hours before sleep.
• Before going to sleep you can take warm bath, listen to quiet, calm music. If you have such an opportunity, combine bath taking with music. Try to do it every day.
• To have sound deep sleep, body needs hormone called melatonin. Our body produces it when we take vitamins of group B. Rise, wheat, barley, sunflower seeds, dried apricots are rich with these vitamins. The vitamins of group B are almost absolutely absent in refined products, so try to eat only natural foods, preferably with high content of carbohydrates.
• It should not be too hot, noisy and too much light in your bedroom. All this does not contribute to calm sleep.
• Calm breathing can also help to overcome stress state. You should take a deep breath through nose. Then breathe out slowly through the mouth.
• Healthy nutrition is also very important when you have stress. Food should be light and easily digested. Eat slowly in small portions. After meal you should have a little rest.
• There are also natural ways of stress fighting. Camomile is considered a very good means for stress overcoming. It helps to fight headache, insomnia, it has calming effect. Oregano (or herb marjoram) and clary sage oil also have effective relaxing quality. Melissa (also lemon balm) is a great means for overstrain. It is used to release tense, anxiety, it helps to fight even serious stress. Melissa teas are very useful for insomnia and depression.

Learn to fight stress!

Each of us one way or another can experience stress state. Also each of us has already developed mechanisms of its fighting, because there is no one unique receipt that helps everyone to overcome stress.

Mechanisms of stress state fighting are individual and depend on certain situation. Something that perfectly helps one person, can be unacceptable for other. Something that works in one situation, may not work in other. It is known that there are several options of stress fighting.

First of all, this is method directed on the fighting of the stress causes. It implies problem oriented strategy of long action that changes either situation, or person. You find the cause of stress and eliminate it. This method can be used only in the case when you exactly realize what cause your stress, you want to get rid of them, and fast but temporary solution of the problem does not satisfies you, or you feel that stress state is coming and you want to be prepared for it.

Second of all, there are so called fast methods that can easy the situation for some time. In this case you try to reduce the level of stress reaction you already have and you try to avoid their worsening. These methods are acceptable for the cases when you can not (due to different reasons and circumstances) eliminate the cause of the stress.

Stress fighting strategies

In fact, there are many ways to relax and have a rest. It can be a walk, reading of a book, listening to or playing music, going in for sport or just doing nothing. Choice depends on you only.

Learn to plan your time. Think of how much time you spend uselessly and maybe you will find ways to spend it with much more use.

With the help of systematic planning you will learnt to find any solution very fast. The main points here are problem formulation (causes, goals, barriers), development and choosing of a right way of solution, its implementation, and efficiency evaluation. It is also important to understand that problems are absolutely normal phenomenon of our life. Your own behavior and too high insistence may lead to stress. Try to change your position, think over the demands, and evaluate your abilities. It will keep you from mistakes and as a consequence from stressful situations.

Now you know that some small amount of stress is even useful for us, but when stress is serious, we need to fight it because it affects the body and life in general. I hope there was something new and informative for you in this essay on stress. Anyway, if you look for really good essay writing service, then the best option for you is Puressay.com. Our website has at its disposal numerous essays on various topics written by team of professional essay writers. Of course, you may try to search for something else, but my advice is do not waste your time and contact us.