STRESS
Cecilia Jansson
Högskolan På Åland
Företagsekonomi
English essay
09.11.2004
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Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 3
What is stress? .................................................................................................................. 3
Indicates, stress factors .................................................................................................... 3
How to eliminate stress? .................................................................................................. 4
Management ..................................................................................................................... 4
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 5
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Introduction
I chose stress because I find this subject current and interesting. I guess everybody has been
feeling stressed some times these days. We are living in a high technology society where time
is money. This makes people stressed and leads many times to burnt-out syndrome. Actually,
I think stress is our “new” national disease. And if we don’t “slow down” it will cost us and
our society a lot, in the way of rehabilitate, money in many ways and so forth. Another thing
is how stress affect the children, today you can read about children at day-care, who has
anxiety or/and depression. Is this how we wont to live?? Well, I will in this essay write about
stress as an illness, syndromes- how you recognize them and what you can/should think of in
your daily life to avoid to be ill.
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What is stress?
One definition of stress is change. When you change something in your daily routines your
body react with stress. It can be emotional or physical, like hormonal changes as puberty or
PMS, arguments, disagreements and so on. Its not only negative things, the positive influence
is fore example new awareness, an exciting new perspective or help compel us to action. But
what we think of when we hear the word stress, is more like; worry, anger, distrust, rejections
or some thing like that. As I said, stress can be both negative and positive, it depends on how
we react to it. What makes me stressed doesn’t have to make you stressed. We are all
different, and react in different ways. Our personal stress level depends on many things, but
the main things are how strong we are physically and emotionally, the same as with many
other things in our life.
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Indicates, stress factors
As I mentioned, all kind of changes to your body is stress. That’s why illness is one factor,
like catching a cold, breaking an arm, or a skin infection. Pushing your body too hard is a
major source of stress. If you work or party too much the body has not got enough time or
energy to fix broken cells or replace used up brain neurotransmitters. Sooner or later you will
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“hit the wall”, “run out of gas”. This is the most common kind of stress. If you continue
without listening to the signals, permanent damage may be done.
Another indicate is environmental factors. This can be; very hot or cold climates, high altitude
toxins and poisons. That is rather “fun”, because when smokers takes their cigarette, they
think it makes them calm, but it is the actually opposite way. (Of course smoking causes
many other diseases, as we already know…)
Taking responsibility for another persons actions is also a major stressor.
This is a couple of indicates or factors of stress, and it is good too be familiar with them, to
get a better understanding, and most important to recognize them so you might be able to
avoid stress.
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How to eliminate stress?
We cant eliminate stress totally from our life, its all among us. Deadlines, competitions,
confrontations, frustrations and sorrows are things we all have experience from. So our goal is
not to eliminate stress but to learn how to manage it and how to use it to help us. Find your
best level of stress. But our personal stress level changes with our ages, we might not tolerate
as much as we did earlier.
It has been found that most illness is related to unrelieved stress. If you are experiencing stress
symptoms, you have gone beyond your optimal stress level, then you need to reduce the stress
in your life and improve your ability to manage it. One dangerous thing is that stress becomes
like a drug, you cant get out of it. That’s why some companies should forbid working
overtime, when some people cant stop to work.
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Management
Become aware of your emotional and physical reactions.
Recognize what you can change.
Reduce the intensity of your emotional reactions to stress.
Learn to moderate your physical reactions to stress.
Build your physical reserves.¨
Maintain your emotional reserves.
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Conclusion
While I have been reading the sources and writing this essay, I almost feel stressed… It has
been instructive in many ways. I have only written a little piece about stress, it’s a big subject.
The medical terms and effects in the body I have not even mentioned. It is too complicated to
write down all the difficult words in English. But for example, its very dangerous for the
human heart to be too much in pressure, that’s one reason to early heart attacks. Another bad
effect is gastric ulcer. As I said, I cant describe all the medical terms but these are some
illnesses caused by stress. Even if the description of stress is a little bit superficial, I guess it is
the most common things for us “normal” people..
At last I just have to say, I am that kind of person who need “high tempo” in my life, and
work best under pressure and stress.
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Sources:
Selin-Törnqvist, Margaretha, I behov av intensive omvårdnad, 1998, Natur och Kultur
Recognizing Stress, http://www.teachhealth.com/
Stress Management, 2003, http://www.ivf.com/stress.html
http://www.netdoktor.passagen.se
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