The Cause Of Stress
There is no one single cause of stress and one of the first things we need to understand is that there are different types of stress, each with its own symptoms, effects and treatment.
Acute Stress
The most common form of stress is acute stress brought on by recent events or by the anticipation of something in the near future. In small doses acute stress can be seen as beneficial, bringing a sense of thrill and excitement but in large doses it can lead to problems.
Acute stress might arise from such things as a minor car accident where you dent a fender, from being caught in a traffic jam on your way to an important meeting, from trying to land your first trout on a fishing expedition or from your first solo flight in a glider. The list is almost endless and I'm sure that you can think of many examples from your own everyday life.
Episodic Acute Stress
Episodic acute stress is often seen in people who take on and try to do too much. These are people who have too many irons in the fire, are always in a rush, often have difficulty organizing their lives and for whom, if something can go wrong, it usually does. It is also seen in people who spend their lives in a ceaseless state of worry. The cause of stress in this case comes from a vision of a world in which disaster lies around every corner and the future course of events is always pessimistic.
Chronic Stress
While acute stress can often be beneficial and add to the thrill and excitement of life, chronic stress does not. Chronic stress goes on day in and day out, year in and year out and can literally destroy lives.
The causes of chronic stress are many and varied and it is often seen as the stress of poverty, of being trapped in an unhappy marriage or a job which you would leave in an instant, were it not for the fact that you need the money.
It is the stress that comes from living in a society plagued by never-ending troubles such as those once seen in Northern Ireland or seen today the Middle East. It is the stress that comes from finding yourself in a seemingly never-ending situation from which there appears to be no escape.
While for some people acute stress can cause problems from time to time, for many people it is chronic stress which provides the real danger to life. It is chronic stress that can lead to violence or to suicide and it is chronic stress which can result in a stroke or a heart attack.
It is often quite easy to find the cause of stress in an individual and often a fairly simple matter to identify its symptoms, but finding a cure is not always such an easy matter.
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