Stress: Types of Stress in Psychology
If you understand the stress and its types, it gets more convenient for you to handle the situation and you can cure it easily. Stress is a feeling that people experience when they try to cope with challenging situations. It can be related to finance, relationship, work, home or another environment around us. Most of the times, people get confused with anxiety, depression, fear, overwhelming, pain or nervousness with stress. These sounds similar but in medical terms, it is not exactly the same.
What is Stress?
Stress is our built-in response to a critical situation. The experience of a surge of hormones in a situation of fight, feelings or change in temperature or essence of danger is considered to be a stressful situation. The situations can be real or imaginary, current or futuristic but when imagined, it creates pressure on our mind igniting the surge on hormones.
Types of Stress
As per the study, there are different types of stress however in psychology, it can be divided into three major categories. The rest of them are minor categories that you can read further in this article.
Acute Stress
Acute Stress is a short-term experience of stress that is common in today’s generation. This type of stress dwells when you are under pressure of an event, something that just happened or about to happen, that is challenging and running into your nerves.
People tend to find temporary solution of acute stress like talking to someone, sharing their thoughts, asking for the suggestion, mastering the art of facing that situation.
Symptoms: Acute Stress symptoms may include severe headache, tension, upset stomach, or chronical distress. These effects are short term effects and don’t last long however repeated situations of acute stress may lead to harmful effects such as heart attack.
Expression of anger, irritability, anxiety, depression may lead to tension, neck pain, back pain, jaw pain, muscle tension, pulled muscles or ligament disorder. You may also experience heartburn, acidic stomach, diarrhea, flatulence, constipation.
Episodic Acute Stress
There are people who are overburdened or at times take too much stress in their lives. They tend to worry about small things like boss shouting, pranks, friends too close or too far, more money or less money. They are trouble inventors as they can’t find happiness even in positive circumstances.
Your body and mind demand physical exercise, mental peace, and meditation to favor the situations. If that doesn’t work, you may need to visit a therapist to consult for suggestions. Such repeat stressful situations are considered as Episodic Acute Stress when we encounter another stressful situation before the first one is over.
Symptoms: Poorly managed tasks, incomplete goals leading you into another stressful situation, anxiety, depression, serious illness or other complications in the body. Such symptoms may put a bad impact on your personal and professional relationships and may push you towards unhealthy eating, drinking or drugging habits. You should seek proper treatment to cure such disorder under medical supervision.
Chronic Stress
Chronic Stress is more dangerous and harmful and takes a longer time to develop. There needs to be a strong reason to suffer from chronic stress that may include ongoing poverty, unsuccessful married life, broken relationships, being jobless for months, family clashes or ongoing distressful situations for a long time. A disturbing experience in early childhood or victim of child abuse may also put someone in such a stressful situation.
Symptoms: People suffering from such a traumatic situation may suffer hormonal disorder and result in cardiovascular, respiratory, sleep disorder, immune dysfunction or reproduction ailment. People suffering from such a traumatic situation may also experience severe attacks of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, depression, anxiety, mental trauma, etc. People have also been identified risking their life with suicide attempts, violent actions, heart stroke or other severities.
Other Types of Stress
If we keep the psychological term aside, then there are other definitions of stress that people named it as per their symptoms. They are mainly known as Physical Stress, Psychological Stress, Psychosocial Stress, and Psychospiritual Stress.
Prolonged stress may lead to different disabilities. You may suffer Cognitive Disorders like fearful anticipation, poor concentration, or difficulty in remembering things. Emotional Disorders like tension, irritability inability to relax, restlessness or worries. Behavioral Disorders like insomnia, crying, strong urge of eating drinking or smoking, clenching fists. Physiological Disorders like Grinding teeth, headache, vomiting, sweating, constipation, frequent urgency of urination, stomach-ache, tiredness, etc.
What Can Help?
There is a lot you can do to destress yourself and irrespective of what type of stress it is. There are steps that you can take to control your mind body and soul.
Mindfulness: You can practice mindfulness meditation to fight anxiety and depression. Mindfulness changes the thinking structure and brings awareness, concentration or wise decision-making power. You can also practice two minutes of diaphragmatic breathing that can ease up your nervous system and help you dwell destress hormones.
Time Management: If you can master the time management skills, you would be in a situation to avoid various stressful episodes. Well managed time may help you furnish your tasks swiftly without any tension resulting in praises as work and harmony at home. You would also be able to figure out the time for yourself and maintain a healthy lifestyle.
Mindset: A positive mindset is required to lead a positive life. Always see the positive side of anything even if it’s a flat type as it gave you a chance to walk and stay fit. Developing positiveness in your thoughts may be a task for you but once done, it will bring positiveness in your thought process, circumstances, expectations, and environment.
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