What Is Psychological Stress?
By Adrian Whittle
Stress is a complex term to define. It’s simplest definition might be that it is an event or situation that forces a person to adapt to the event. Stress is the event itself and the reaction to that event within the person experiencing it. Thus stress is completely subjective. What may be stressful to one person might be pleasant or fun to another. Flying, for example, can cause some people to develop anxieties and panic attacks while others love to fly and look forward to the flight. What is more, everyone’s body responds in the same way to a stressful event, or any event for that matter, but the people that suffer from stress related illness and problems find it hard to turn their body’s response off.
Psychological stress is more to do with the turning off of the body’s stress responses to a situation.
