Stress is a natural physiological response of the body that is triggered by external environmental stimuli or events, normally something that is perceived as threat by the primitive part of our brain (amygdala).

Stress prepares our body for immidiate action, popularly known as the fight or flight respons. For example, if you see a crocodile on the loose, your sympathetic nervous system will cause an increase to the blood flow, glucose level, perspiration, and heart rate, essentially enabling you to run for your life immidiately.

While a certain amount of stress may be desired and has have been proven to be beneficial for our survival for millions of years, excessive or chronic stress is recognized as a psychological pain by medical science.

Unlike prehistoric times, modern humans do not face frequent life threatening situations like dangerous predators or acute disasters, but the brain responds the same way anytime it perceives a threat. For example, in a modern day situation, if your boss yells at you or if you are about to miss your homework deadline, your brain will prepare the body the same way as if you are about to run from a crocodile - that is, increased blood, heart rate, glucose, and extra energy for robust physical action. But you won't be using that extra energy because you cannot physically attack your homework or your boss.  Hence, all the extra energy will go unused, creating a physiological imbalance in your system, effectively making you tired or exhausted aftewards.

Chronic stress has been associated with various health problems, such as anxiety, depression, heart diseases, headaches, high blood pressure, skin rashes, and loss of sleep.

Prevention and treatments: While there is no definitive treatment or cure for stress, nor would you want to eliminate stress from your life altogether, but you can certainly learn to cope with it, and manage stress in a way to use it to your advantage without allowing it become harmful.

1. Understand what stress is and how it works

2. Improve your physiological capacity by improving your fitness levels, and overall health, Some common ways to achieve that is by eating healthy, adequate sleeping, and visiting the doctor when needed,

3. Increase your coping ability by improving your mental capacity and resilience. Yoga, meditation, and relaxation exercises can help improve your capacity to cope with stress or stressful situations.

4. Avoid or manage stressful situations where possible. You cannot quit your job or give up school just because they are potentially stressful. But you can do your part to minimize the risks of being stressed, such as, manage your time well, and reshuffle your priorities, so you are never late for work or a deadline, or avoid behaviours that promotes stressful situations, such as aggression.

Anxiety is an emotion characterized by symptoms and responses very similar to stress. However, the key difference is that stress is a response to fear from an immediate perceived threat, and anxiety is a response from an anticipated fear about a perceived threat in the future.

For example, if you were terminated from your previous work for negligence, let’s say someone got injured because you forgot to put the ‘wet floor’ sign after spilling some liquid on the floor. This may cause you to feel anxious in your future roles in different ways. Next time you start working at a new workplace, you may start to panic frantically over a minor mistake, such as spilling some water on the table or breaking a stapler. Here, you are not really responding to the immediate threat (that is splining few drops of water or breaking the stapler), you are fearful about the consequences of your mistake in the future, such as, losing your job again, or going through various forms of economic hardships as a result.

When people form anxiety disorder, they tend to develop a sense of doom – the mere sight or thought of specific objects or ideas can trigger their anxiety. A survivor of a shark attack could be afraid of ever entering a swimming pool again, or the very word ‘sea’, or pretty much anything that reminds them of sharks. This process can often be very spontaneous and it’s very important to intervene and get professional help before it gets too bad.

Much like stress, anxiety is highly associated with various health problems and illnesses, such as sleep disorders, depression, type 2 diabetes, digestive problems, fatigue, high blood pressure, muscle and joint pains, cardiorespiratory problems, and coronary heart diseases.

Prevention and treatments:

Unlike stress, anxiety has a bigger cognitive component and involves various thought processes. This provides therapists a greater opportunity to intervene using cognitive methods. A common pattern among people suffering from various types of anxiety is the formulation of irrational thoughts or fear. One way to intervene is to understand the antecedent of such fear and rationalize them where possible. For example, a therapist may try to help a client understand that the likelihood of being attacked by a shark in a swimming pool is very low, and a client shouldn’t be afraid of losing his/her job for mistakenly breaking an inexpensive stapler. The intervention techniques may vary in terms of levels of intensity starting from talk therapy or cognitive behaviour therapy, to more radical approaches such as hypnosis or rapid eye movement therapy.

And much like stress, effects and symptoms of anxiety disorder can be reduced by maintaining a healthy diet, regular exercise, and a positive approach to life.

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