Stress is a feeling of Emotional or Physical tension that comes from any Event or Thought that makes you feel Frustrated, Angry, or Nervous.
Acute Stress comes in short bursts and generally goes away just as quickly, such as when you slam on the brakes to avoid danger or do something exhilarating.
It’s your body’s compulsory reaction to a challenge or demand and is a normal feeling.
On the other hand, Chronic Stress can go on for longer, lasting days, weeks, or even longer.
You can become so used to your Chronic Stress that you don’t even realize it is a problem.
Chronic Stress may come from troubles at work or school, money issues, or a bad relationship. The reasons are countless, and everyone is stressing over something.
You think you’re managing it, but it can seriously harm your health when Stress lasts long.
What happens to the body during Stress?
The autonomic nervous system controls your heart rate, breathing, vision changes, and more.
In addition, its built-in stress response, the “fight-or-flight response,” helps the body face stressful situations.
When a person has long-term chronic Stress, continued activation of the stress response causes wear and tear on the body.
As a result, physical, emotional, and behavioral symptoms develop.
Physical symptoms of Stress include:
- Aches and pains.
- Chest pain or a feeling like your heart is racing.
- Exhaustion or trouble sleeping.
- Headaches, dizziness, or shaking.
- High blood pressure.
- Muscle tension or jaw clenching.
- Stomach or digestive problems.
- Trouble having sex.
- Weak immune system.
Stress can lead to emotional and mental symptoms like:
- Anxiety or irritability.
- Depression.
- Panic attacks.
- Sadness.
Often, people with chronic Stress try to manage it with unhealthy behaviors, including:
- Drinking alcohol too much or too often.
- Gambling.
- Overeating or developing an eating disorder.
- Participating compulsively in sex, shopping, or internet browsing.
- Smoking.
- Using drugs.
The Perceived Stress Scale
The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) is a simple self-assessment developed in 1983 by Sheldon Cohen to measure the degree to which situations in one’s life are appraised as stressful and is the most widely used psychological instrument for measuring the perception of Stress.
The PSS predicts both objective biological markers of Stress and increased risk for disease among persons with higher perceived stress levels. For example, people with higher scores are an indicator of Chronic Stress.
Conversely, they tend to have worse biological markers of aging, cortisol levels, immune features, depression, infectious disease, healing, and prostate-specific antigen levels in men.
Items were designed to tap into how unpredictable, uncontrollable, and overloaded respondents find their lives.
The scale also includes several direct queries about current levels of experienced Stress.
The PSS was designed for community samples with at least a junior high school education.
The items are easy to understand, and the response alternatives are simple.
Moreover, the questions are general and relatively free of content specific to any subpopulation group.
The questions in the PSS ask about feelings and thoughts during the last month.
Respondents are asked how often they felt a certain way in each case.
The Social Readjustment Rating Scale
The Social Readjustment Rating Scale (Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale) was developed in 1967 by psychiatrists Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe.
They decided to study the links between Stress and illness by examining more than 5,000 patients’ medical records and focusing explicitly on 43 everyday life events.
They asked people which events (called Life Change Units, or LCUs) they’d experienced in the previous two years.
That allowed Holmes and Rahe to work out the relative “weights” of different types of Stress.
It also showed them the point at which someone’s combined stress load was likely to put them at risk.
Some critics have suggested that the Holmes and Rahe Stress Scale is weak in certain areas.
For instance, some believe different cultural groups react differently to other life events.
In one example of this, a study compared American and Malaysian participants. Interestingly, the Malaysians’ attitudes toward breaking the law and relationships were different overall from those of the Americans studied, meaning that their experience of Stress was different, even though they had the same score.
What Does Your Score Mean?
150 points or less | a relatively low amount of life change and low susceptibility to stress-induced health breakdown
150 to 300 points | 50% chance of health breakdown in the next two years
300 points or more | 80% chance of health breakdown in the next two years, according to the Holmes-Rahe statistical prediction model
The Student Stress Scale
The Student Stress Scale is an adaptation of Holmes and Rahe’s Social Readjustment Rating Scale. Each event is given a score representing the amount of readjustment a student has to make due to the change.
