Recognizing our Stress Reactions and Responses

Three days of holiday weekend - technically four as my husband had Friday off - and I've decided to do not much more than thoroughly enjoy having him around for four days straight. Stress seems to come to a standstill when he's at home.

So let's talk about stress for a moment before I go back to relaxing and doing not much of anything.

Stress is a fact for everyone. In terms of physics, stress is a measure of force per unit area within a body. Thanks, Wikipedia! Even though I managed to get all the way through high school without taking a physics course, I recognize that gravity is stress. Moving against gravity demonstrates physical stress. That is normal and unavoidable, and will continue at a relatively constant rate unless we all move to the moon where gravity is lower!

The types of stress that become a concern are medical, mental, emotional, spiritual - probably not the stress source itself so much as how we manage them.

Some people manage stress easily or with no apparent outward difficulty. Others react to stress but then recover. Still others react strongly to every bit of stress to hit their doorstep.

Stressors can come from one huge event - a house fire, an auto accident, death of a loved one - or from the tiniest situation - spilling wine on a rug, finding a jar lid that just won't open, a broken fingernail, a missed hair appointment, an added pound on the bathroom scale.

A stressor that can totally derail one person may be trivial to another. One person may handle huge stressors gracefully and yet be completely blown apart by a much smaller event.

One of us may be able to handle the stress of chronic pain but still be totally derailed by the pounding of a drum set next door. Maybe we can deal with the broken pickle jar gracefully but are brought to tears by discovering a small tear in our favorite sweater.

There's a difference between how we react to stress and how we respond to stress.

One person may react to stress calmly, absorbing the difficulty and taking things in stride. Another may react to stress by fracturing emotionally. Yet another may react physically with skin disorders, headaches, migraines.

Each of us responds to stress in different ways as well. Some people get mad, shout, hit walls, scream at the top of their lungs, punch pillows, cry, go for a run, overeat, forget to eat.

Others may respond by growing uncharacteristically quiet, withdrawing from friends, avoiding social contact, appearing depressed (not to be confused with clinical depression, which should be addressed no matter what stressors are present).

What stresses you out? How do you react? How do you respond? Feel free to share anonymously.