Stress is a normal part of our life that can happen to everyone and not all stress is bad. Each of us experiences stress in our lives every now and then. However, when we begin feeling out of control or having trouble coping with stressors, we may suffer. We can find many ways of identifying the stress in our life and then make a plan for dealing with it in a healthy way. We can deal with stress by using the healthy skills or by coming up with our own ways to cope. In short, no one can avoid stress in his or her life. Everyone must deal with stress and it's our choice how to react. If we need more help, reach out to others, such as our friends, family, relatives and neighbor who can be help us to overcome the stress.
There are several reasons that cause stress. According to a report on website run by St. Botanica,[1] the first reason is frustration which can be caused by their workplace, a relationship, social issues or moral and philosophical response to society. The second reason is conflicts which happen when people are in confusion or a difficult situation to decide something essential in their lives. For instance, a working mother may be stressed out because she is not able to give proper time to her baby and at the same time, she feels that her job is also important. Moreover, a study conducted by another web site,changemind.org[2] points out that there are some causes of stress, such as threat, fear, uncertainty, and cognitive dissonance. Threat includes physical threats, social threats, financial threat, and so on which can raise fear. Uncertainty when we are unable to predict, therefore, we are not in control, and may make someone feel threatened by that which is causing the uncertainty; and cognitive dissonance when there is a gap between what we do and what we think. In short, psychologically, stress is a state of emotion that is caused by any kind of feeling in reacting to something happening in one’s life.
Some people deal with stress positively by looking at it as a challenge. Stress can be a positive thing that it can challenge us to go beyond or transcend boundaries and ideas we had about ourselves. In challenge, we focus on gain as opposed to focusing on potential for harm and threat. It involves judgments that the demands of the stressor situation can be met and overcome without overtaxing resources. In this sense challenge may facilitate rather than damage cognitive and emotional coping. On the other hand, stress can become negative if we are feeling overwhelmed by difficult circumstances and trying to escape or ignore it instead of facing the problems in our lives by looking for such things like, smoking, consuming drugs, going to night clubs, drinking alcohol, etc.
To deal with stress is not a matter of avoiding the problems, but we have to face it and to look for the solution. There are many ways to control our stress, but first of all, we should learn how to handle stressful feelings, create time out in our lives, and learn how to relate to ourselves in a different way. Finally, we should realize that life is filled with all kinds of problems, but we should be able to attune ourselves to the fact that, we should take one step at a time in our struggles. ***
[1] NN, Stress, http://www.ayurvediccure.com/depression/stress.htm
[2] NN, Causes of Stress, http://changingminds.org/explanations/stress/stress_causes.htm
Ateneo de Manila University, 2010
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