What causes stress and how to avoid its effects?

A common experience for everyone due to the pace of modern life: stress. Stress is an inevitable reality of our lives; it is all natural and not dangerous if we know how to cope with it. Stress can be defined as a natural defense against danger; it emerges from thoughts or events that make a person feel emotional and insufficient. In other words, stress is the body’s fight-or-flight mechanism. When people face a threat, which we can call a stressor, the body gives a physical response to help them either stay and solve the situation or get to safety as soon as possible, according to the fight-or-flight mechanism. Everyone undergoes stress, but knowing its sources, understanding stress, and learning ways to cope with it improves a
person’s life quality.

Stress is considered a reality of life, so why do we feel stressed? What are the motivators behind it? There are many causes, but the most influential factors in a person’s life are work or school and relationships; therefore, academic pressure and relationships can be considered two of the many sources of stress.

Even though school is a place of education, sometimes it can create tension in students with tasks, deadlines, heavy projects, and endless exams. The increase in stress has reached high school; students reported higher stress levels than adults in the US. When it comes to college students, 1 in 5 say they feel stressed all or most of the time; stress levels among them have increased by 30% over the past three decades. Students in the academy feel
overwhelmed by their studies. 30% of American teenagers reported feeling sad or depressed due to excessive academic pressure. These feelings trigger anxiety, depression, and even suicidal thoughts in students.

Sometimes stress is caused by people in our lives; unhealthy relationships with family, bosses, or partners can improve aggressive behaviors as well as anxiety and stress. If you have unstable relationships, your mood is certainly affected due to feeling insecure. Hidden tensions like being snappy and defensive, long silences, and lack of communication are clues that relationships are becoming toxic. But what causes these actions? What makes a relationship unhealthy? Due to the rush of working life, people cannot find time even for basic needs like sleeping, eating, and socializing, resulting in spending time together and
giving enough attention to each other or sharing responsibilities of life seeming impossible. As a result, the stress of toxic relationships is added to the stress of daily life already caused by work or academia and affects the person even more negatively.

Stress affects not only mental health but also physical health. For example, if a person is exposed to constant stress at the mildest symptoms, they may experience problems sleeping, eating, and with immunity. In more advanced stress levels, heart attack and stroke may occur. The first physical symptoms are sweating, pain in the back or chest, cramps, fainting, headache, tingling, and pins and needles. In addition, emotional reactions such as anger, burnout, fatigue, feelings of insecurity, forgetfulness, and sadness can be included. There are ways to deal with the stress that creates all these negative effects; these are called stress coping techniques.

The first technique is the easiest to apply: having a healthy, balanced, and ordered life. A healthy diet and regular sleep provide balance by preventing the overload of stress hormones. Additionally, a regular schedule reduces your workload and prevents stress caused by confusion by planning your time. There are also other techniques that we can list under
categories. In a problem-focused style, the issue that is causing distress is addressed. Examples of this style’s techniques are planning and suppression of competing activities. The emotion-focused style aims to decrease the negative emotions linked with the problem. Techniques such as acceptance, turning to religion, and humor can be listed in this category.
In a meaning-focused style, an individual uses cognitive strategies to grasp and figure out the meaning of a situation. In the social coping or support-seeking style, individuals reduce stress by interacting with the community.

Stress is unavoidable, especially in this modern era, but if you see what causes stress, you can defend yourself easily against this sneaky feeling. Intense job and school workloads and negative relationships with people can increase stress levels, but with the right methods and a healthy lifestyle, this situation can be easily dealt with. If managed correctly, stress is a very good motivator for personal development.