Nearly all of us are familiar with stressful situations. At the mention of stress, we end up thinking it to be some unpleasant and/or threatening events, which is not so. In fact, positive experience and things that happen for good can also be stressful, say for example; dealing with marriage, changing job, conceiving a baby and shifting to a new location. The scale of stress for these life events may vary, based on the responses of each individual. Thus, stress is defined as the feeling perceived in response to pressures or specific events, which are called stressors.
The profound symptoms of stress are both metal and physical, which include increased heart rate, fatigue, irritation, muscular tension, headache and loss of concentration. In this competitive world, job related stress is quite common. But, that does not mean that children, housewives and retired persons (who are without job) are relieved of stressful conditions. So, what causes stress at home and work? Finding out the stressors or stress factors and reducing them is the key to lead a healthy and sound life.
Causes of Stress in Children
Children are free of household and work responsibilities, but they are prone to stress like adults. If stress continues for a longer period in children, it can lead to serious side effects pertaining to their health and psychology. For children, the main stress triggers at home are parental conflict and exposure to abusive relationships. Loss of any valuable object or person very close to the child is also a reason for stress. Other than these, children experience stress due to changing school, bullies at school, tough competition in exams and lack of proper diet. Under such situations, parents should be able to identify the stressors and try to correct them at the earliest.
Causes of Stress in Adults
While dealing with stress in adults, certain factors can cause stress, starting from money worries to relationship insecurity. Anything that forces you to adjust or adapt in the current situation results in stress. It can be either internal or external. The former type includes failure to accept uncertainty, perfectionism, pessimism and health conditions. Whereas external stress factors are major life changes, unstable relationship, hectic lifestyle, financial instability, job and family.
If you are working currently, you might be already know what causes stress at work. The reasons for job stress are management duties, target oriented profile, less support from colleagues and high responsibility job. Based on these criteria, there are less stressful and more stressful work profiles. The most stressful jobs are senior corporate executive, firefighter, car race driver and taxi driver. In contrary to this, being a janitor, musical instrument mender and florist is less stressful.
Generally speaking, the definition for stressors vary from one person to another. In simple words, things that are stressful to you may not be stressful to your friend. For example; some people perform better with a changing job, while others feel tensed about the new roles and work environment. The same is with deadline pressure, some take it as a challenge and work efficiently; while others are less productive due to increased tension. Under such cases, getting stress relief depends entirely on how you respond to the present situation.
For everyone, irrespective of the age group and gender, the most common factors for triggering stress are change, career, relationship and death. So you see, there is no way to avoid or change stress factors. Nevertheless, we should learn techniques to reduce them for proper stress management in life. Then only, the effects of stress on mental health and physical well-being can be managed effectively.