Causes of Stress

Dear Readers

Are you facing stress everyday? What could be the causes of your stress?

Stress is defined by the body's reaction to a change that requires a physical, mental or emotional adjustment or response. The bad stress is also known as distress and it is caused by an exciting stress-causing factor or "stressor". Stress happens to everyone in your daily life. There are various sources of stressors and they may include Family, Job, Personal, Social, Environmental and Financial.

Family represents a body and should any parts of the body gets ill, suffers from pain and malfunctions, all other parts of the body coordinate and assist in getting the body back and to function normally. As family goes through hard times, which may range from financial worries to illness to marital difficulties, anger and disagreement and many more, both parents and children are affected. The relationship among the family could be detrimental if the situation is not handled properly. Communication and conflicts are common in family stress.

Job stress is one of the leading causes of stress. The pressure created over interactions among colleagues, job roles, job insecurity, deadlines, burnout and many more affect the job productivity and even safety in the work place. The economic downturn and increase in unemployment rate coupled with uncertainty and doubts in work add to job stress.

Personal stress is caused by various events which happen around you and that affect your relationship with yourself. High self-esteem with success and achievement can reverse itself to become failures and loss in ego. Personal stress could be from worries about attractiveness, weight, ageing and personal doubts. It could be from a demanding job, from the loss of family members or friends, illness, self-depression, financial concerns and relationship issues.

There are many phases of social stress because we are inseparable from the society, the community and the public. It is hard to determine if your social life is a liability to you. You may get overwhelmed by too much social activities and the social demands by the public whereas lack of social involvement may result in you feeling lonely and isolated. Any conflict resulted from a public relationship can be energy drain while trying too hard to gain supportive relationship also brings negative momentum to your social life.

Environmental stress is defined as the minor irritations and frustrations of everyday life that we all experience. They can be the petty obstacles which we struggle through during work or the pain we suffer from sitting on chairs for long hours. Environmental stress can also be from oil spills, air pollution such as smoky indoors, car exhaust, factory emission of gases; noise pollution such as living in the proximity of railroads, airports, city centres; violent crime and burglary in the neighbourhood that threaten your life and so on. Some stress may even be caused by fear of loss of future life on earth as the end of the world has been predicted by scientists and philosophers.

Financial stress is growing in all parts of the world. It is one of the most stressful causes in family issues. Money is important to all households; loss of employment, failure in business, debt, reduction in income, children's education, medical expenses and many other money-related matters cause financial stress to the family. Financial uncertainty can transform one into uncertainties about himself and his value in life.

We need to understand the causes of our stressors before we learn to cope with them.