Concept & Definition of Stress
Stress is a popular expression used by people in day to day life. Pressures of day to day living sometimes necessitate coping or dealing with them and stretch the body beyond its natural capacity. They are called stressors. Stress is a natural, ongoing dynamic, and interactive process that takes place as people adjust to their environment.
Definition of Stress
Throughout our life, we all have to adjust ourselves to the environment in which we live. Mostly this process is smooth but it can be challenging, causing conflicts and disharmony.
The word stress is derived from the Latin word 'stringere' which means "hardship".
Stress can be defined as "any event, situation, circumstance, demand, pressure or tension that disturbs or threatens to disturb the individual's functioning, leading to physical, mental and emotional strain".
Stress is the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressures or other types of demand placed upon them. It arises when they worry they can’t cope.
Stress can be defined as "Any physical or psychological event that is perceived as a threat to physical or emotional wellbeing (Oliver et. al.1999).
Stress is a normal, natural, and ongoing process in life as we adjust to our environment. It is an internal alarm system that prepares our body to take action.
Stress is a "dynamic condition in which an individual is confronted with an opportunity, constraint or demand related to what he or she desires and for which the outcome is perceived to be both uncertain and important" - Robbins, 2001
Stress appears almost as a necessary kind of comfort discourse, a tranquilizer to cope with the diversity of competing messages about the truth of this world, and the dreadful uncertainty of our times. The stress discourse reassures us by explaining how it is normal to feel stressed in these conditions, and it provides strategies to help us cope with them by being vigilant and stress-fit - Newton, 1995
Stress is a condition arising from the interaction of people and their jobs and characterized by changes within people that force them to deviate from their normal functioning - Beehr and Newman (1978)
Stress is essentially a psychological condition induced by external conditions that release or restrict certain chemicals in the brain; this in turn can lead to a psychological change in the individual resulting in a change of behavior. It is associated with the psychological perception of an individual about the pressure of contingencies. A pioneer of research on stress has seen it as a response, not, as the environmental stimulus, or as a situation where the demand exceeds the individual's abilities to cope. - Winfield, Bishop and Poter
There are three stages in the experience of stress. Alarm; The individual has lowered resistance when he or she is in a state of psychological disequilibrium, which does not permit the individual to co-exist conformably within the environment. Resistance; The individual adapts to the stimulus, which permits him or her to eventually return to a state of psychological equilibrium. Exhaustion; It results when the willingness and ability to adapt to the stimulus collapses. This will result in 'giving up' or resigning oneself to the inevitable and lead to damage psychological and physical health. - Seyle (1945)
To Giddens, stress could be seen as in part a consequence of the increasing uncertainty of modern life. As Giddens (1991) points out, we no longer have clear sources of authority, such as those traditionally provided by religious authorities. Instead, there is an" indefinite pluralism of expertise" which "some individuals find it psychologically difficult or impossible to accept." By Giddens' account, the problem of stress is likely to appear as fundamentally social, moral, and institutional.
For Cooper, stress is seen as the product of an interaction between individual needs and resources and the various demands, constraints, and facilitators within the individual's immediate environment. Cooper (1986) presents a comprehensive overview of both the causes of work stress and the organizational and individual problems, which may arise when the individual worker experiences those stressors. The medical terminology adopted by Cooper facilitates the task of sanitizing organization life by implying that both the individual and the organizational outcomes of stress are self-evidently pathological and thus in need of treatment rather than illumination.
Robbins's model (this model adopts the transactional perspective found in many 1980s models of stress) identifies three sets of factors: Environmental, organizational, and individual that act as stressors.
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