Stress is natural to human lives. Everyone experiences stress. It is unavoidable. Stress is not always negative as people generally perceive. Complete absence of stress is death. Only corpses may have zero level of stress. Life in itself indicates stress. It is natural mechanism to sustain the life of an individual. Psychologists call it “fight or flight” response. For example, if a person comes in contact with a snake; then the person has only two options i.e. either he will try to fight or kill the snake or he tend to flight or ran away perceiving the danger of being bitten by the snake. In order to do so; adrenaline (a biochemical) enter into the blood stream that makes body get energized so that he may fight or flight. In the absence of this mechanism the person would have been died because of snake’s bite. Hence all kinds of dangers or situations function as a stimulus or stressor which stimulates a suitable response so that the situation may be tackled.

In the context of present scenario, the danger as that of snakes is replaced by sales target, meeting deadlines, role conflict, ambiguity at the work place, overload, family responsibilities, and environmental factors such as flood or dread etc.

Its negative implications lead to insomnia, ulcers, cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure etc.

Stress provides one of the most powerful means to accomplish things. In the absence of stress nobody bothers to fulfill his/her responsibilities. However, extreme levels of stress are injurious to health and productivity of an individual.

Moderate stress level is necessary to attain productivity and win appreciation of the employer. This is where the relevance of stress management comes in. The stress has be managed so as attain the moderate level of the same.

Stress is a tri-edged process in which:

• Stressor (environmental demands) produces the stress;
• An adaptive response that is effected by;
• Individual differences.
• Stress means different to different people. For example, an introvert person may feel stress while interacting with an audience, whereas an extrovert person may experience stress on routine activities. Hence, stress is individual specific i.e. everybody experiences stress according to the physiological and psychological state of his personality.
• One should experience stress up to a definite, tolerable point, causing positive effects in the form of enhanced outputs. Beyond this point, negative implications of stress start functioning in the form of headache, absenteeism, insomnia which suggests that one has crossed the tolerable point. This is where stress management is needed. One should follow only moderate level of stress (neither absence nor absolute presence is appreciated).

• Written by farha mazhar.
• In category General.
• 13 years ago.

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