What Is Stress? A Guide to Understanding and Managing Stress

15 Apr

What is stress?

According to the American Psychological Association, stress is “the physiological or psychological response to internal or external stressors”. Put more simply, stress is our body’s response to pressure. It's a natural response that has evolved to help us navigate threats and challenges in our lives. For example, it helps us respond quickly to dangerous situations by triggering our fight, flight or freeze response. Once the threat passes, our body settles back into a regulated, low-stress state. This kind of stress is very useful and necessary. It helps us prepare for meaningful challenges, like doing a job interview or addressing a conflict with a loved one.

The difficulty is when stress is long-lasting, keeps coming back or is very intense. In these cases, it can take a big toll on our physical and mental health.

What causes stress?

Almost anything can be a source of stress, and what feels stressful is deeply personal. Two people can face the same situation and experience it very differently. This depends on many things: our past experiences, how resourced we feel, our sense of agency, and the meaning we make of what's happening.

That said, stressors tend to fall into two broad categories:

Internal stressors

These come from within us, like:

negative self-talk
worrying about the future
unhelpful thinking styles (e.g. catastrophising, all-or-nothing, shoulds and musts)
personality tendencies (e.g. perfectionism and people-pleasing)
and lifestyle behaviours (e.g. lack of sleep, overworking and procrastinating)

External stressors

These come from our environment and include:

Major life events (e.g. a loss, breakup or illness)
Transitions (e.g. leaving home, starting a new job, having a child, relocation)
Chronic stressors (e.g. an unhappy relationship, caring for someone, work stress)
Daily stressors (e.g. commuting, chores, organising childcare)
Trauma (e.g. abuse, being a victim of a crime, experiencing a natural disaster)

a blue outline of a personal holding their face in their hands.

A moment to pause: what causes you stress?

Before reading on, it can be worth taking a moment to reflect on what causes you stress. In Gestalt therapy, we pay close attention to what is happening in the present, including noticing our bodily sensations, emotions and thoughts. Awareness is the starting point and opens up the possibility for things to change.

Four ways of responding to stress

Once you have a clearer sense of your stressors, you can begin to think about how to respond to them. Keep in mind that there’s no one right approach: different situations call for different responses.

1. AVOID the stressor

Some stressors are unnecessary and can be reduced or removed. This might mean saying no to things that drain you without giving anything back, delegating where possible, or being more intentional with your time.

2. ALTER the stressor

When you cannot avoid a stressor, you may still be able to change it. This can involve communicating about your needs rather than holding everything inside and being willing to negotiate. For example, if you have an upcoming deadline that is causing you stress, talk to your boss about how you’re feeling and ask if it’s possible to get an extension. The stressor (the project deadline) doesn’t just disappear, but it might become more manageable.

3. ADAPT your relationship to the stressor

Some stressors can’t be avoided or altered, but we can change how we relate to them. For example, questioning whether your standards are realistic (not only is perfect unrealistic, it’s very stressful too!) or noticing whether you’re framing a situation as a threat when it could be seen as a challenge or even an opportunity. Practices like diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, and mindfulness can also help regulate the nervous system and can help to slow down and stay regulated while navigating the stressor.

4. ACCEPT what cannot be changed

Some things are simply outside our control. Much of our suffering comes not from the stressors themselves but from the energy we spend resisting or fighting what we cannot change. When we accept what is and stop pouring ourselves into the uncontrollable, we free up attention, time and energy that we can then use on the things that are within our control and can improve our wellbeing, like prioritising sleep, movement, nutrition and connection.

A note on seeking support

If stress has become a persistent presence in your life, it might be worth exploring this with a therapist. Therapy can be a space where you can slow down, explore what is happening, and begin to understand what patterns are maintaining your stress.