If a person is affected by some too strong external factors, the body’s reaction to this will be stress. Under psychological stress, adrenaline starts to be produced and released into the bloodstream. In small doses, it’s even good for us, but constant and too much exposure can have a devastating effect on the nervous system. This means that we have to notice the symptoms of stress in time to prevent its depletion.
Psycho-emotional stress exhausts the body. When stressed, it seems that we do everything we need to do and can’t stop. And often it takes a chronic form, leading to feelings of unmotivated anxiety, depression. Stress has a particularly strong effect on women. Noticing dangerous symptoms, you can timely seek help and avoid the development of psychosomatic diseases and mental disorders. How to recognize that a person is stressed and not just in a bad mood?
What Is Stress and Why Is It Dangerous?
Stress is a state of increased tension that results from the body’s defensive response to some unpleasant factor (it may be physical or psychosocial).
Such a condition occurs to almost everyone. And many people do not even suspect that there is a problem, because stress can manifest itself in the form of unobvious somatic symptoms that appeared after the stress.
Not only a loved one’s illness, a job interview or an important meeting, but even a punctured car tire or a crack in your favorite mug can become a stressful situation. And stress is not always something negative, because it helps us to find our own ways of solving problems, making us more mature, resilient and reasonable.
A stressful situation is defined as a circumstance in which the body needs to begin to adapt. But if the level of stress becomes too high and prolonged, it can, on the contrary, reduce a person’s vitality and drive him or her into a state of depression.
Two types of stress can be distinguished:
- Distress (extreme stress) is a condition that negatively affects a person. As a rule, this is what is meant by stress. Distress is more powerful than a person’s ability to adapt, it impairs defense mechanisms and can lead to the development of physical illnesses (reduced immunity, skin diseases, depressive disorders, problems with the cardiovascular system and more).
- Eustress is a positively affecting condition that increases the body’s functional reserve, helping a person adapt. It can appear when you try something new but joyful, like betting at 22Bet or parachuting. A low level of stress doesn’t lead to the development of diseases and has a stimulating effect.
Differences in Symptoms of Stress and Bad Moods
People regularly have mood swings, it’s quite normal and habitual. But because of habitualness, a person may not notice some signs and symptoms of stress that signal the emergence of a problem.
How to understand that what is happening is stress and not just an unimportant mood, what are the symptoms of stress? The first signal is usually the duration of the bad mood, which can last for 2 or more weeks. Moreover, a bad mood can be quickly lifted by removing the adverse factor, whereas in the case of stress, the mood may only improve for a while and then it drops again.
Types of Stress and Their Reactions
Depending on the localization of the causative agent, duration and external manifestation, distress can be divided into several types.
Emotional
It appears after an acute experience, which can be both positive and negative. The arrival of a child, career advancement, a trip, an acquaintance or parting with a person, the loss of a loved one – all these can lead to emotional stress. It manifests itself in the form of sharp and rapid reactions, for example, a person may become irritable, cry often or enter a sharp state of anger, and his mood is constantly changing.
Physiological
It has a direct effect on the human body. It can be caused by climatic, chemical and physiological factors. For example, it may be too hot weather, lack of oxygen in the air, or excessive physical activity. All this can gradually lead to physiological stress, the consequences of which are usually unhealthy blood pressure, chest discomfort, severe headaches, problems with appetite, apathy, and weakness. Moreover, such symptoms of severe stress as apathy and fatigue may be present for some time even after the normalization of the general condition.
Chronic
This type is the most malignant and dangerous. It occurs as a result of a prolonged adaptive reaction of the body to adverse external influences. It can arise for a variety of reasons, including overexertion and relationship problems. The consequences are the development of various psychological and somatic diseases, including structural changes in the brain. A person with chronic stress may experience sleep disorders, be irritable, stop enjoying various things that used to be enjoyable, start taking less care of themselves and generally feel bad about themselves.
In this case, it’s better to seek medical help, otherwise you cannot avoid a weakening of the immune system, which ceases to properly fight viruses and infections. Therefore, the frequent occurrence of colds can be one of the symptoms of chronic stress.
Nervous
In this case, the person finds it difficult to control his emotionality, he becomes aggressive and quickly loses his temper. Frequent conflicts are another symptom of this type of stress, which is sometimes called sociological. Moreover, even the closest people often suffer from this.
Reactions to stressful conditions can take 3 different forms:
- The person becomes overexcited, his nerves seem to tighten, and he plunges into a state of readiness for a fight. The psyche goes into “fight mode.”
- The man is marked by withdrawal, depressed mood, he begins to distance himself from people into his own world. In this case, the psyche is in “run” mode.
- The person is paralyzed and is unable to take any action due to internal ambivalence. In some cases, the previous two modes may be combined.