Semester Project Essays - Stress, Stress Management,

Semester Project 10-page paper 5/3/2000 STRESS!! Stress is a problem in life that has to be dealt with. It happens everyday to everyone. Different things make people irritated and cause stress. Stress causes many problems in everyday life. It could cause everything from a headache to a heart attack. Eventually a person could be so stressed out and lose all hope to actually commit suicide. There are also many ways to relieve stress. A person could do anything from going to the doctor to yoga. In the dictionary the word that is used most as the definition is pressure (New World Dictionary, 1409). Pressure from your job, family, and life all cause stress. Stress is also related to panic, anxiety, and depression. Some people work better under stress and pressure instead of a relaxed atmosphere. Others can't even function with stress put on them. Everybody is going to have stress. A person may have a high stress or low stress personality. They are not born with this; it is deveoloped throughout their life. A person with a high stress personality will become stressed out easier then a person with a low stress personality. How you live your life can change the way you look at stress and therefor change your stress personality. People who excericise and eat healthy diets normally have a low stress personality. Exercise and a healthy diet are known to reduce stress. Stress has many causes, and these causes are different for everybody. These causes of stress are called stressors. Everyday people have to deal with stressers. A stressor is the cause of stress, it is something that is threatening to a person. The threat may be physical or mental condition, and event, another person, or the person himself. Small things like having to wait in line can cause stress. They may not seem devastating at the moment but if you have to deal with enough of these small stressors everyday it can lead to long term stress. Stressors aren't the same for everybody. Stressors change over time, as we do. Children suffer stress the same as we do, although it doesn't normally last as long. A child may be afraid of the dark or may be afraid of going to school. This puts a lot of stress on children may cause them long term harm. A teenager experiences different stressors than a child. A teenager is developing from a child to an adult and is under extreme stress. This stress is overlooked by many adults because thery believe that they aren't under "real" stress. This could be no farther from the truth. A teenager may have family stress. This includes arguments between brothers, sisters, and parents. School is huge stressor in most teenagers' lives. A pressure to get good grades contributes to stress. The teenager may be pressured by parents, teachers, and the student himself. Peers cause as mush stress as anything does. Fitting in causes extreme stress. Fitting in may include anything from wearing the right clothes, telling the right jokes or playing sports. Teenagers strive to fit in and the more difficulty they experience the more stess there is. Teenagers also have to deal with changing bodies. The body changing from child to adult form may be a stressor. Sexual development, changes in height, weight, body shape, and self-image are all things a teenager goes through. More extreme stress in a teenegers life are things like a relative or friend dying, a change of schools, parents divorce, the use of drugs or alcohol, or being suspended from school. An extreme stressor or many small stressors will cause long term stress. Adults go through more stress than anybody does because the bear the most responsibility. The stressors for an adult are endless, they may be anything like loosing a job, starting a new job, having kids, a car breaking down, and of course bills. Stress is really nothing but fear. In the words of Frankling D. Roosevelt, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itslef". This applies to stress because stress is caused by the fear of the stressor. For example, some people will be scared of getting a shot days before they go. The pain if there is any will normally only last a few minutes.