Chronic Stress

"For example, when your mom tells you that you are going to take the SAT next month, the first reaction may be shock, complaints, and feelings of stress, representing the beginning of the alarm stage. In the resistance stage, you may try your best to do practice tests, review vocabulary, and study using available aids. Finally, you may feel doomed to fail, desperate, constantly anxious, and have difficulty falling asleep and waking up in the morning. The exhaustion of this stage can have harmful effects on health by depleting body resources crucial for maintaining normal functions. The immune system can become exhausted and its function impaired. Functional deterioration of the body may happen as the exhaustion stage extends. Selye believed that a person becomes sick at that point because stored hormones secreted during the stress response are depleted. Stress perceived as a threat, or distress, may be debilitating if it is continuous. Our bodies and minds seem to have evolved to cope well with sudden and brief stressors, such as escaping an attack by a predator, but we do not seem designed to handle chronic stress, even if it is mild, like driving in heavy traffic. Chronic stress is associated with stress-related illnesses and can result from time pressures, work pressures, relationship pressures, crowding, noise, crime, too many things to do in too little time, achievement pressures, and education-related pressures."