How is chronic stress diagnosed?
What is acute stress?
What is acute stress disorder?
What is chronic stress?
What is the difference between acute and chronic stress?
Lately, stress has received a lot of bad press causing a lot of people to believe that all stress is bad. This simply isn’t true. While stress can be bad, or at least perceived as bad, it’s not necessarily bad. Some stress is actually positive and can be helpful, depending on the situation.
All stress is not the same. The type of stress you are experiencing depends on the situation you find yourself in. Let’s take a look at the different categories and classifications of stress and how they affect you.
Acute and Chronic Stress
Psychologists tell us there are two categories of stress. The first category is known as acute stress. Acute stress by definition is temporary stress. It is also known as the flight or fight response. The second category of stress is known as chronic stress. This is also known as long-term stress and is the stress that can cause you the most harm.
What is acute stress?
Acute stress happens when something happens to excite your brain and body. This is your body’s immediate reaction to a significant threat, challenge or scare. That’s why it’s called fight or flight. Your brain and body are getting ready to either run away or fight a perceived threat.
Example of the flight or fight response
Let’s say you are driving along peacefully, minding your own business when a red flashing light comes up suddenly behind you. Immediately your heart starts to beat faster, your breath becomes shallower and your muscles start to constrict. You pull over and the police car speeds past and you begin to breathe easier again. You have just experienced the flight or fight response
The purpose of the flight or fight response
When you are experiencing the flight or fight response your brain produces chemicals that tell your body to speed up, making it perform more effectively. This was a very important factor for your ancestors living on the savannah thousands of years ago, because it gave them the clarity and energy to escape or fight people or animals that were hunting them. The fight or flight response is actually the reason you are here today, it kept your ancestors alive.
Eustress and Distress
In addition to having two categories of stress there are also two classifications of stress. These are known as eustress and distress. Eustress is the positive form of acute stress. On the other hand negative stress is known as distress.
Distress
Distress is the type of stress you’ll experience when someone sneaks up behind you and yells “boo” or another car pulls out in front of you causing you to curse and suddenly hit your brakes. This is the most commonly-referred to type of stress and the kind of stress you read about in the news. That’s because it is the type of stress that affects you negatively, causing that weird feeling in your stomach, raising your blood pressure and sending all kinds of chemicals into your brain and body.
Eustress
Eustress is the stress you experience during positive events in your life. These are events like receiving a well-earned _________ , __________. While you would define these events as desirable they, just like distress, can be equally taxing on your body because some of the same chemical reactions occur. When added together with other stressors, eustress can also have a negative effect on your health.
Chronic Stress
The second category of stress is known as chronic or long-term stress. Chronic stress is abnormal in that it is long lasting. The biological design of stress is for short term energy and focus. Stress has a good intention, keeping you safe. It is when this flood of chemicals continues flowing through your system for long periods of time that the effects of the fight or flight response can affect you very negatively.
Chronic stress causes a nonstop release of stress hormones into your bloodstream and body. It is this continuous release of chemicals that puts your body in perpetual overdrive, ready at every moment to fight off that wild animal or attacker. This is when you simply can’t or won’t let go of stress. This is when stress is no longer your friend.
Your body wasn’t designed to work this way
There is strong scientific evidence that chronic stress actually damages the brain, heart and immune system and sometimes results in anxiety or even depression. In fact, studies have shown that this continuous release of stress hormones can actually kill nerve cells in animals and can probably do the same in humans.
What you can do to control chronic stress
As you read above, there are many ways that chronic stress can affect your health negatively. So learning to control your stress is imperative to your health and longevity. Simple changes like exercising more and taking more breaks at work can be very beneficial to your overall health and stress levels. If you find that you are having difficulty finding ways to control your stress by yourself then look for help.
For more information about the fight or flight response follow this link…
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Hypnosis and NLP to relieve stress
One method that many people use to relieve stress is hypnosis and NLP. These methods have been shown to not only help people relieve stress in the moment, but also to keep it under control when they most need it.