Author: Konstantin Koss
Everyone can experience stress. The human body is designed
to feel stress and respond to it. Stress keeps us alert and
prepared to prevent danger. Being knowledgeable on the
prime causes of stress is important and using your
knowledge to control stress is vital.
The cause of stress changes as we age. A stressed child at
young age can threw tantrums but when he becomes a student,
he can be stressed by school works. Once he becomes a teen,
he is stressed by dating and relationship. And the causes
of stress differ as he grows older thereon.
So what really causes stress? Anything can cause stress if
it allows you to adapt to changes in the environment. The
body will have to react to changes with mental, emotional
and physical responses. All people have their own ways of
adjusting to changes, thus the stress causes can differ for
each individual.
*General Causes of Stress*
Generally, the causes of stress are:
1.Threat. An apparent threat can lead a person to be
stressed. Different threats include social, physical,
financial, and others. It will become worse if the person
experiencing the stress feels that he can't do anything to
lessen the threat.
2.Fear. Threat can cause fear which further leads to
stress. Fear advances to imagined outcomes and these
outcomes are the real causes of stress.
3.Uncertainty. When people are uncertain, they can't
predict and thus they feel they are not control of a
situation. This can lead to a feeling of fear and of threat.
4.Cognitive dissonance. We are experiencing cognitive
dissonance if there's a gap on what we think and what we
do. This dissonance can also happen when we can't meet our
commitments. This dissonance can therefore lead to stress.
Other than the general causes of stress, there are the life
causes of stress. Such causes include:
-Health: illness, pregnancy, injury
-Crime: burglary, mugging, sexual molestation, pick-pocketed
-Argument: with friends, family, boss, spouse, boss,
co-workers
-Death: of friend, spouse, family
-Money: investing it, lack of it, owning it
-Sexual problems: with partner, getting partner
-Physical change: new work hours, lack of sleep
-Family change: marriage, divorce, new baby, separation
-Self abuse: alcoholism, drug abuse, self-harm
-Environment change: in house, school, job, jail, town
-Responsibility increase: new job, new dependent
-New location: moving house, vacation
*Causes of Stress in the Workplace*
There are also stress-related to work. United Kingdom's
Health and Safety Executive gives 6 key stress related
factors at work:
1.Demands of the job.
2.Relationship with colleagues
3.Control staff on how they can do their work
4.Workplace changes
5.Receiving support from superiors and colleagues
6.Understanding their responsibilities and roles.
The other indicators of stress at work are:
-High staff turnover
-Sickness absence
-Bullying
-Poor team communication
-Contribution and value
-Lack of performance feedback
-Technological change
-Working for long hours
-Lack of clear roles and responsibilities
-Dissatisfaction with the non-monetary benefits
-Mundane and boring work
-Uncomfortable workplace
-One-off incidents
We may not admit it but the lives of students are also
faced with a lot of stresses. There are many pressures
faced by students at school. These pressures equate to a
lot of stress. Some of the school stresses are tests and
examinations, reports, school bully, difficult subject,
strict teachers, etc.
From the causes mentioned above, you may be asking yourself
which among them are the leading causes of stress. In 1967,
Richard Rahe and Thomas Holmes, both from University of
Washington, conducted a study on the relationship between
illnesses and significant life events. They compiled the
major causes of stress and created a chart as a part of
their study. The chart which had 43 stress causes in 1967
was updated on 2006 with 55 additional causes of stress.
This proves that our society finds more causes of stress
year after year.
Studies come up with ranking for the major causes of
stress. The online poll LifeCare Inc. conducted a survey on
the top most causes of stress in 2005. Majority of the
respondents considered finances as the leading cause of
stress. Next is work related stress such as job security.
Third in the rank is family stress followed by personal
concerns such as shopping and household chores. The fifth
cause of stress is personal health and safety; sixth is
personal relationship and the last in the rank is death.
There are seemingly endless causes of stress and we can
find some new causes as long as we live. Everyone must be
aware of these causes in order to take control of the
situations that can lead to stress. Learning about these
causes can arm us with defense once stress attacks us.
About the Author:
Konstantin Koss runs the popular website Real
Relaxation.net. Want to learn more about stress and how to
handle it? Discover the Top 10 Ways to Relax at
http://realrelaxation.net/the-
