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How serious are your stress symptoms
By peace | April 29, 2006
Acute stress
In determining how to cope with your stress symptoms, it is helpful to know what type you are experiencing. According to the APA Help Center’s The Different Kinds of Stress, the most common form of stress, acute stress, results from “demands and pressures of the recent past and anticipated demands and pressures of the near future.”
The University of Maryland Medical Center’s What Are The Biological Effects Of Acute Stress? likens the effects of acute stress to imagining yourself in a primitive situation, such as being chased by a bear. During situations where you experience acute stress, you’ll likely experience increases in your heartbeat and breathing. Your skin might feel cool and clammy and you might notice a change in appetite.
In small doses, acute stress may feel exciting, but too much eventually becomes exhausting and taxing on the body, mind, and spirit. Most people are able to recognize the symptoms of acute stress. Common symptoms include:
- emotional distress (irritability, resentment, anger, anxiety, and depression)
- muscular problems (tension headache, back pain, jaw pain, etc.)
- problems involving the stomach, gut, and bowels (heartburn, diarrhea, constipation, irritable bowel syndrome)
Acute stress symptoms often appear when something major happens in your life like moving, changing jobs, or experiencing a loss of some kind. You might feel stressed when something goes wrong or happens unexpectedly—when you are involved in a car accident or your child gets hurt at school, for example. Normally, our bodies rest when these types of stressful events cease and our lives get back to normal. Because the effects are short-term, acute stress normally does not have the same effects and extensive damage associated with long-term stress.
Episodic acute stress
If you endure acute stress frequently, you probably are experiencing episodic stress. Your life might feel disorderly, in perpetual crisis, chaotic, or out of control. The APA Help Center notes that you are likely experiencing episodic stress if you:
- are always rushing and always late
- take on too much and have “too many irons in the fire”
- feel over-aroused, short-tempered, anxious, and/or tense most of the time
- describe yourself as having “a lot of nervous energy”
- have “worry wart” tendencies (focus on negative possibilities and anticipate crisis or disaster in most situations)
If you experience episodic acute stress, you are seemingly always facing a new stressful situation.
Chronic Stress
The APA Help Center describes chronic stress as “unrelenting demands and pressures for seemingly interminable periods of time.” Chronic stress is stress that wears you down day after day and year after year and seems endless.
Common causes of chronic stress include:
- poverty and financial worries
- dysfunctional families
- caring for a chronically-ill family member
- feeling trapped in unhealthy relationships or career choices
- long-term unemployment
- personal belief systems (i.e., believing that the world is a threatening place or you that must be perfect at all times)
- traumatic experiences
Chronic stress has been going on for so long, that it is often not recognized by those experiencing it—you may just accept it as part of your personality. Chronic stress may also stem from traumatic experiences that have changed the brain and become internalized, causing recurrent painful and stressful feelings.
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