Psychology. About stress - Essay Example

4 May, Stress: Stress is just another for tension, depression or the oflow self-esteem. It is essentially a way of responding to perceived threats to survival. Different people are stressed because of different reasons. Common reasons of development of stress are unemployment, inferiority complex, disease and violence. One of the famous theories about stress and psychology is Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrom theory. In 1926, Hans Selye observed commonality in the behavior of patients suffering from different infectious diseases and were only in the initial phase.

Later, he experimented upon animals by injecting toxic chemical in their bodies and found three common reactions. The organisms’ adrenal glands increased, their organs which produced the white blood cells and their lymph nodes initially expanded and shrank later, and thirdly, their intestines and stomachs bled. These reactions were termed by Hans Selye as the General Adaptation Syndrome. He said that when an organism or a human being gets into stress, the usual physiologic systems are interrupted and the resulting changes cause diseases.

The physical and emotional upset organisms experienced upon injection of the toxic substance caused such patterns to develop which would cause infection, disease and ultimately death if left untreated. The General Adaptation Syndrome Selye talked about can be divided into three phases namely the alarm reaction, resistance and exhaustion (“Health News Network”). In the Alarm Reaction Stage, the resistance is lowered because of initial depression of the immune system. This increases the tendency to acquire disease.

When the stress does not stay for long, the individual recovers. With the passage of time, the body adapts to the rising levels of stress. This increases the body’s ability to resist the consequential disease. In this Reaction Stage, the immune system takes more load than it does normally. In the Exhaustion Stage, after a long cultivated defense against the infections inculcated in the body by stress, resistance level of the body drops suddenly. As soon as the immunity collapses, the stress reactions begin to show up.

The internal system of body gets heavily disturbed and this leads to a state which Selye refers to as the “diseases of adaptation” (“Health News Network”). In order to remain healthy, we should try our best not to take stress. This can be achieved by raising our energy level. The energy and tension go along with each other. When the level of former is greater than the latter, we feel happy and vice versa (Jones). Thus, to remain happy, we should indulge in activities that would raise the body energy level.

Such activities include going on a regular walk, reading good books and practicing religion. In my personal opinion, organizing the daily routine is a big way of staying content. Few years ago, I used to feel very depressed, and would not know the reason of my depression. I started to regularly go on a morning walk, joined a gym, and started to pray regularly. Right from the first day, I started to feel that I was getting relief from the tension. I maintained that routine ever since and now, I have learnt the art of staying happy!

Works Cited: “Health News Network: A Resource Center for the Study of Mind, body, Stress Management & Disease Prevention.” n.d. Web. 4 May. 2011. . Jones, Pearson. “How to Live Happily.” n.d. Web. 4 May. 2011. .