Stress Essay Example for Free

Stress Essay 1.0Introduction We generally use the word stress when we feel that everything seems to have become too much, we are overloaded and wonder whether we really can cope with the pressures placed upon us. Anything that poses a challenge or a threat to our well-being is a stress. Some stresses get you going and they are good for you, without any stress at all many say our lives would be boring and would probably feel pointless. However, when the stresses undermine both our mental and physical health they are bad. In this text we shall be focusing on stress that is bad for you. Stress is your body’s response to change. It’s a very individual thing. A situation’s that one person finds stressful may not bother someone else. For example, one person may become tense when driving; another person may find driving a source of relaxation and joy. Something that causes fear in some people, such as rock climbing, may be fun for others. There’s no way to say that one thing is bad or stressful because everyone’s different. Not all stress is bad, either. Speaking to a group or watching a close football game can be stressful, but they can be fun, too. Life would be dull without some stress. The key is to manage stress properly, because unhealthy responses to it may lead to health problems in some people. Many people experience stress as they combine busy lives and the demands of study while trying to also save time for friends and family. For some people, stress becomes almost a way of life. We all experience episodic stress, getting ready for a major exam, completing and important paper, perhaps getting ready for an important a way of life. We know that stress prolonged period of time, can have increase certain health risks, to say nothing of the way and tear that happens to relationships and general wellbeing. The simple guide use materials adapted from several college campuses with active stress reduction programs. It explores the origin of stress and provides some basic ways to assess the level of stress you may be feeling and than suggest some easy to incorporate ways to decrease the level of stress. Although we all talk about stress, it often isn’t clear what stress is really about. Many people consider stress to be something that happens to them, an event such as an injury or a job loss. Others think that stress is what happens to our body, mind, and behavior in response to an event (E.g. heart pounding, anxiety, or nail biting). While stress does involve events and our response to then, these are not the most important factors. Our thoughts about the situations in which we find ourselves are the critical factor. When something happens to us, we automatically evaluate the situation mentally. We decide if it is threatening to us, how we need to deal with the situation, and what skills we can use. If we decide that the demands of the situation outweigh the skills we have, then we label the situation as stressful and react with the classic stress response. If we decide that our coping skills outweigh the demands of the situation, then we don’t see it as stressful. Stress is not something strange to our daily life nowadays. Everybody may feel stress when they are facing bad situation. Generally, word of stress has been used in social science research since a well known medical expert; Selye pioneered the research for psychological stress in 1950’s. Cox Brockley (1984) stated that stress is a perception phenomenon which exists from a comparison between the command given and ability of a person to execute he task successfully. Unbalanced situation in this mechanism will lead into stress experience and ultimately into stress reaction. Beside that, stress is a pattern of negative (physiological, psychological) responses occurring in situations where people perceive threats to their well being which they may be unable to meet (Lazarus Folkman, 1984). Selye (1978) define individual stress as the stated of pressure or tension when the individual reacts to a stressor. 1. Background of the study 1.1.1Reading (types) Basically, stress is a state of individual in a response to the stimulus of a stressor (anything that potentially leads to change because changes are stressful for an organism) and resulting hardship (Boss, 1987). Stress is normal and neutral (neither positive nor negative) (Boss, 1988; Selye, 1956). It is a continuous outcome variable in that there are degrees of stress (Boss, 1988) as well as a categorical variable. Types of individual stress based on degrees of stress included deprived, optimal and excessive (Selye, 1956). A derived degree of stress may result in a lake of motivation while optimal stress tends to lead to motivation. Excessive stress may lead to crisis. Stress can come from any situation or thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, or anxious. Everyone sees situations differently and has different coping skills. For this reason, no two people will respond exactly the same way to a given situation. Additionally, not all situations that are labeled stressful are negative. Facing the mid-term test, completing the thesis and doing the assessments work for each subject may not be perceived as threatening. However, we may feel that situations are stressful because we don’t feel fully prepared to deal with them. Stress is a normal part of life. In small quantities, stress is good; it can motivate you and help you become more productive. However, too much stress, or a strong response to stress can be harmful. How we perceive a stress provoking event and how we react to it determines its impact on our health. We may be motivated and invigorated by the events in our lives, or we may see some as stressful and respond in a manner that may have a negative effect on our physical, mental, and social well-being. If we always respond in a negative way, our health and happiness may suffer. By understanding ourselves and our reaction to stress-provoking situations, we can learn to handle stress more effectively. In the most accurate meaning, stress management is not about learning how to avoid or escape the pressures and turbulence of modern living; it is about learning to appreciate how the body reacts to these pressures, and about learning how to develop skills which enhance the body’s adjustment. To learn stress management is to learn about the mind-body connection and to the degree to which we can control our health in a positive sense. Stress is believed to be caused by the various problems that exist such as problems at school, financial problems, family problems and problems in their surroundings. Teenagers also experience stress because they are sometimes trapped between making decisions which is to follow rules and orders or to be free and discover the world like they should. Teenagers in the previous days were trained for things that were suitable with their age so that they can use it to manage their lives. According to Zulkifli (1988), teenagers always face problems in adjusting. Teenagers especially those who are students always face learning problems, career management and also problems in solving personal and social matters. These are the factors that contribute to stress in life. Students are starting to shift from a life that is dependent on others to a life that needs them to release the dependency and start carrying their own responsibilities. Morris (1990) stated that teenagers always face stress in school and they compete with each other to get better grades. Levine, 1970 (in Dobson, 1980), explained that stress have a relationship with a specific situation like a learning environment in school and the inability to do work perfectly and the failure to achieve anything that is desired. The issues of students doing things like punching teachers, cursing, slandering and hurting teachers, prostitution and others calls for researchers to see the mentioned phenomena is connected to the stress situation among teenagers. Adams (1983, in Kamaruddin, 1997) stated that the biggest problem among schooling teenagers is the matters associated with their schooling. Other than that, problems that female students have to deal with are communication and family problems. For the male students, their side problems are problems with getting involved in sports, recreation and also financial problems. The many responsibilities and pressure cause stress to the teenagers like the need to achieve good academic grades, character building and also good attitude besides trying to comprehend with their personal needs. For many young adults, college is the best time of life. These critical years of adjustment can also be under minded by depression, anxiety, substance, abuse and eating disorder. Stress exists from the change in an individual’s thinking and their lifestyle nowadays. Now, individuals have changed in their perceptions and the way they interpret this life. Students in their teens are the ones who are going through the transitional phase, which is an intermediate of childhood and adulthood. During the teen years, a lot of biological, physical, mental and emotional changes are happening, as well as the changes in responsibility and role. In order to stabilize these changes, the students are always confronted with problems and conflicts (Asri, 2002). For some students who are not capable of dealing with it, the changes will create stress and tension to them. If it is not dealt with in the early stages, the student may experience mental problems (Newman, 2005). As a UiTM KBM students, study itself is potentially very stressful with many different and sometimes conflicting pressures (reading complex technical or theoretical material, writing assignments for deadlines, working part time, having a ‘successful’ social life, family demand) perhaps peaking near the exams, which themselves explicitly test your performance under pressure by setting strict time conditions and removing potential resources such as books, colleagues, notes and etc. Study can also challenge your ideas of who you are, who you think you are or who you want to be, lead you to compare yourself with others, who maybe look like they have everything under control. Any change or transition, even a welcome one is stressful and study involves lots of transitions in addition to other life events for example, moving to another country, or another part of the country, meeting new people, different expectations from lecturers, and each academic year brings changes depend s on different topics, lecturers, perhaps new housemates, which should not be underestimated.