»Stress & Fight or Flight Response

We have already discussed stress in the beginning of project. And till now you would be considering stress only an adverse  thing for us. Well the answer is NO!

As a coin has two sides, similarly stress has also two aspects, you all are familiar with its bad face but do you know it is also beneficial? Let's see how..... 

Stress - Fight or Flight response 

Do you know that little instant stress is actually itself a good thing for you? Do not believe? Well, stress is also known as Fight or Flight response. Do you know why? It is so because human beings have got a function to power up some specific hormones or glands and nervous system. Adrenal gland situated on upper side of each kidney secretes hormones in blood when a person faces stress or danger. These hormones increase the metabolic activities like, increase in heart beat or breathing rate and thus your muscles become more active to even do your stressful work. That is why adrenal gland is known as the glands of emergency . You must have noticed that when you encounter a stressful event, you start sweating. It is so because your sweat glands start functioning at that time to cool up your body. Even your eye sight improves at that situation. Isn't human body simply miraculous! This is the reason it is also known as fight or flight response. It is incredibly an awesome feeling that is quite natural in human beings. In this case, the stress actually prepares the body in advance to meet the tough situations with lots of focus and alertness. This type of stress is called Eustress. 

Stress - Harmful/Useful?

This fight or flight response is also known as stress and can you tell why? Well, if you observe another meaning of stress it is:

"A force that acts in a way which tends to change the shape of an object"

Similar is this condition, our body applies force to do work with even more alertness in such conditions. That is why it is known as "Stress".

Without this type of stress, life would be boring and seem emotionless. It fills our life with excitement and spiciness. Only after going through stress, we learn to cope with stress prominently next time at that situation. Stress can be the excited feeling we get when getting ready for an important event. But seeing the other type of stress, it is very harmful to our body. It sticks to our body and thus we become unable to respond to the outer surroundings properly. It sometime leads to depression and then later you can depict how disastrous it can be.

So we can conclude that there are two types of stress. One is the fight or flight response known as Eustress which could be beneficial to us at the time of some important events. Whereas, the other type of stress also know as Distress or hyperstress causes harm to our body. 

Our Target - Distress

So from now in this project we will be talking about the Bad Stress or the damaging one. It is harmful and it can almost occur in everyone's day-today life. When this stress remains for long it is known as prevalent stress. We will be trying to tweak this out from teens in order to tweak depression from teenage. Tweaking prevalent stress will also help reducing the occurrence of eustress or in simple words the events which are stressful to the person will be reduced. 

Now check out the quiz below. This game will help you understand between these two types of stress. Just try your knowledge and find out how much you have understood this. This quiz will help you differentiate between good and bad stress.

Note that these stages don't mean that stress and prevalent stress are only reasons for depression. Depression occur through other factors too which we will discuss in the next pages.

So, how can we differentiate between good or bad stress?

Is this question running in your mind? So, let's discuss them briefly here.

Below are the symptoms of stress. Right now we are talking about the good stress, the fight or flight response.

• The heart begins to beat fast
• Blood pressure is raised
• Your eye sight improves during stressful event 
• Production of saliva increases or dry mouth.
• Sweating starts
• Trembling
• Change in breathing rate

These are the instant symptoms which can be seen mostly at the time of stressful events. Strength of the stressful event may vary from person to person or situation to situation. You may not face these symptoms all the time but they remain only until the stressful situation remains. 

We have discussed before that Eustress is actually good for our body, but it has a different story when it overloads - too much stress isn't good for anyone. For example, when you feel little stress for preparation of some test, it can motivate you to study hard. But stressing out too much over the test can make it hard to concentrate on the material you need to learn and you may spoil everything. 

Now let us observe the symptoms of Bad stress. (Arranged on the bases of the stats of our survey)

• Physical tiredness or lack of energy
• Difficulty in concentrating on work or studies
• Easily becomes irritable on most of the things and becomes aggressive in nature
• Criticizes himself on unsuccessful works
• Frequent headaches, neck-pains muscle aches, stomachaches or tiredness
• Regular sadness
• Regular Tension
• Anxiety 
• Difficulty in sound sleep(insomnia)
• Loss of interest in most of the things which used to be enjoyable once
• Cries without some definite reason
• Neglects his responsibilities
• Grinds the teeth, nail-biting and talking during sleep
• Digestive problems
• Phobias

These all are few things you can generally face during stress. But if you start suffering from couple of these symptoms frequently, then this maybe a matter to worry. If few of these symptoms persist frequently and for long time, for example, if you are facing a couple of these symptoms since a month regularly, then it's a danger alarm. You may have entered into Prevalent Stress Stage. It could harm your body affectively. It could later come to Depression stage from which you are already familiar now.

To get a idea about your current stage, you can visit our next page and try "Stress-O-Meter". But remember it is just for an idea. It do not give any exact result. For exact result, An expert or doctor will be perfect for you.

Stress can never be pinpointed on single cause. Things that cause stress are known as Stressors. These stressors may vary person to person.

These are few stressors found generally in most of the teens. (Arranged in accordance to our survey) 

• Decrease in academic performance
• Frequent Homework and Assignment
• Abuse or conflict at home
• Peer pressure
• Exams pressure
• Over-scheduling
• Stressful life events particularly break-up, loss of a parent due to death or divorce
• The death of a friend or relative  
• Frequent health problems
• Poor social skills
• Change in home or school
• Change in family structure 
• Unstable care given by parents
• Conflict with friends

Peer pressure is also one of the most common and effective cause of stress in teenagers. We will discuss this in our page "Dealing with stress".

Keep in mind the causes, listed below can never be the only causes of stress. Some other particular causes can also add up to stress. When teens face these symptoms frequently and no proper solution is implied, it leads to prevalent stress.