You are here > Home > About Stress > Sources of Stress

Sources of Stress

There are several major sources of stress:

• Survival stress
• Internally generated stress
• Environmental and job stress
• Chemical and Nutritional stresses
• Lifestyle and job stress
• Fatigue and overwork

These different sources of stress are explained in more detail below:

Most people realise that aspects of their work and lifestyle can cause stress. While this is true, it is also important to note that it can be caused by your environment and by the food and drink you consume. The strategies that you should use to counter stress depend on the causes of that stress.

Survival Stress

Where you are in a physically or emotionally threatening situation, your body adapts to help you react more effectively to meet the threat.

This is controlled mainly by release of adrenaline. The changes are quite powerful and useful in a 'fight or flight' situation. The main ones are:

• Adrenaline mobilises sugars, giving your body access to more strength, energy and stamina. This helps you to fight harder or run faster.
•  It reduces the blood supply to your skin and short-term inessential organs. This minimizes bleeding if you are hurt, and ensures that energy is not wasted on processes that are not immediately useful.
• You may experience nausea or diarrhoea: this eliminates excess weight that might otherwise slow you down.
• You may have experienced these changes as fear. Where speed and physical strength are important this adrenaline stress will be helpful and beneficial - fear can help you to survive or perform better.
• However where calm thought or precise motor skills are important, it is best to control and, ideally, eliminate these adrenaline responses.

Prolonged exposure to adrenaline can damage your health.

Internally Generated Stress & Anxiety

Internally generated stress is stress that you cause for yourself. This can come from anxious worrying about events beyond your control, from a tense, hurried approach to life, or from relationship problems caused by your own behaviour. It can also come from an 'addiction' to and enjoyment of stress.

Stress can cause the levels of a chemical called noradrenalin to rise in and between nerve cells. This gives a feeling of confidence and elation that some people like. They can subconsciously defer work until the last minute to cause a 'deadline high', or can create a stressful environment at work that feeds their enjoyment of a situation. The downside of this is that they may leave jobs so late that they fail when an unexpected crisis occurs. They may also cause unnecessary stress for other colleagues who are already under a high level of stress.

Other aspects of personality can cause stress. Examples are perfectionism, where extremely or impossibly high standards can cause stress; and excessive self-effacement, where constant attention to the needs of others can lead to dissatisfaction. A major cause of internally generated stress in many people is anxiety.

Environmental and Job Stress

Your environment may be a significant source of stress. This can come from:

• Crowding and invasion of personal space
• Insufficient working and living space
• Noise
• Dirty or untidy conditions
• Pollution
• A badly organised or run down environment
• Working environments are rarely perfect, however often you can improve your environment quite cheaply.

Chemical and Nutritional Stresses

The food you eat may contribute to the stresses you experience. Examples of stressors you may not be aware of are:

• Caffeine: this raises your levels of stress hormones, makes it more difficult to sleep, and can make you more irritable. Many people report as big a reduction in feelings of stress after switching away from coffee as they do after giving up smoking. Note that there is often as much caffeine in a cup of tea as there is in a cup of coffee.
• Bursts of sugar from sweets or chocolate: these can make you feel more energetic in the short term. However your body reacts to stabilize abnormally high sugar levels by releasing too much insulin. This causes a serious energy dip shortly after the sugar high.
• Too much salt: This raises your blood pressure and puts your body under chemical stress.
• Smoking: most people who smoke feel relaxed after a cigarette. If you smoke, however, try taking you pulse before and after a cigarette and think about the difference. Smoking puts your body under chemical stress. Most people who have given up smoking feel much more relaxed generally after the initial 'giving up' period is finished.

As well as these specific sources of stress, you may experience stress if you eat an unbalanced or unhealthy diet. You may find that some dietary deficiency or excess causes discomfort and illness which generates stress. If you are obese, then this causes physical stress on your internal organs and emotional stress as your view of yourself declines.

While there is a lot of crooked, biased, naïve or incorrect dietary information around, you can normally rely on nutritional advice from your doctor or from government health education. Before you accept advice, examine the motives of the people offering the advice!

Lifestyle and job stress

Many of the stresses you experience may come from your job or from your lifestyle. These may include:

• too much or too little work
• time pressures and deadlines
• responsibility for people, budgets or equipment
• frustration and boredom with current role
• lack of clear plans and goals
• demands from clients
• disruptions to plans
• frustration at having to overcome unnecessary obstacles
• financial or relationship problems
• ill-health
• family changes such as birth, death, marriage or divorce
• etc.

Fatigue and Overwork

Here stress builds up over a long period. This can occur where you try to achieve too much in too little time, or where you are not using effective time management strategies.