Stress is our body’s response to any challenging situation. In animal world stress response is only physical i.e. fight & flight response to any physical threat. It’s the system that saves them from harm & warns them of dangers ahead.In humans, thankfully most of us do not experience any life-threatening physical threat on regular basis, but any emotional experience or situation can trigger our inbuilt physiological fight & flight response which results in various physical symptoms like headaches, body aches, fatigue, palpitation and many more.
The word stress is one of the most commonly used words in our urban lives nowadays, but at the same time not clearly understood. Stress can be experienced by a child seeing his parents leave for work, it can be felt by a student appearing for his tests, by any of us attending any social events and the situations can vary, triggers may be different but all of us do experience stress at some point in our daily lives. Those of us who can deal with such situations can carry on with our daily routines but than there are those whose lives are completely crippled due to a failure to cope with such stress inducing situations. Thus, dealing with everyday life stresses is something that we all need to learn. Unable to manage stress leads not only to mental distress & physical symptoms but can damage social connections resulting in troubled relationships.
Anger, fear, self-pity,lack of self-confidence, anxiety are all emotions not personality traits. We should learn to identify the source that elicits such response in ourselves and in those around us. We have to learn to express these emotions in a way that doesn’t damage us or our relationships.Stress cannot be eliminated but we can learn to manage our response to it.
The author Dr Sabeen Akbar Yezdani is a mother of three, a lecturer by profession but still a student of life.