Stress: it's hard to live with it, but it's almost impossible to live without it. We are bombarded by a host of subtle and not so subtle internal and external stresses from the moment we awake in the morning until we finally drift into deep sleep at day's end. Even during our sleeping moments, noise, temperature changes, and other activities can be sources of stress.

For some people, stress provides the stimulus for growth and higher levels of achievement. Yet for others, it increases the likelihood of dysfunctional of abnormal behavior or illness.

Stress in itself is neither positive nor negative. Rather, our reactions to stress can be positive or negative. Whether we are aware of it or not, our reactions to stress can become the habits that lead us either to health-enhancing personal growth or to dehabilitation in the form of migraines, alcohol and drug addiction, circulatory disorders, asthma, gastrointestinal problems, and hypertension (high blood pressure). In addition, stress can lead to psychological and social problems, including dysfunctional relationships.

Many things that have contributed to making you who you are also have influenced how you respond to stressful events in your life. Stress reactions such as breaking out in a cold sweat before getting up in front of the class to speak, becoming anxious around people who speak too slowly or drive too cautiously, feeling nervous when meeting new people are all unique by-products of past experiences. Your family, friends, environmental conditions, general health status, personality, and support systems affect how you respond to a given event.

Stress means different things to different people. Often, we think of stress as an externally imposed factor that threatens or makes a demand on our minds and bodies. If your hard-nosed instructor tells you that you must do a 10-page paper in the next week, that's an external stressor. A more serious or life-threatening external event, such as someone breaking into your apartment while you are sleeping, is another form of external stressor. In this case, someone or something prompts a stressful response in you. Most people would agree that these situations might stress anyone out.

But, actually, most stress is self-imposed and is usually the result of an internal state of emotional tension that occurs in response to the various demands of living. Stress may manifest itself in physiological responses to the demands placed upon us, and many researchers define stress as these responses. Most current definitions state that stress is the mental and physical response of our bodies to the changes in our lives.

From Access To Health, by Rebecca J. Donatelle and Lorraine G. Davis, published by Allyn and Bacon. Copyright (c) 1996 by Prentice-Hall, Inc., a Simon & Schuster Company.