Alina Tugend - Stress

            Many people experience some sort of stress in their daily lives. Those people's feelings and mental states change when they are under high amount of pressure such as workloads, exams, speaking in public, financial problems and other forces. In fact, stress has no definite meaning in life but many of us have our own ways to express and define stress. For example, someone would say stress is the overwhelming feeling he/she is being overworked. Psychologically speaking, stress is a mental disorder that is simply a reaction to a stimulus that disturbs our physical or mental equilibrium. Stress is associated with different kinds of other psychological disorder such as anxiety and depression, and with some types of health disease such as cardiovascular diseases.
             Moreover, many people, who are going through stressful events, believe that stress is bad for their health. This is because both kinds of the stressor, internal and external, can trigger the "fight-or-flight" response, causing hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol to surge through the body. According to the New York Times article by Alina Tugend, stress is an energy-consuming event, both mentally and physically. However, stress can be viewed differently, in other words, stressful events can be good for us. .
             Ms. Tugend presents that there are several misconceptions of stress so that it is not always bad for us, associated with being overworked, and unhealthy. By viewing stress from that window, many people would actually have stress to be their best friend.
             First of all, many people usually relate stress to having too much work, which is not the case always. According to a research, less work and boredom can arouse stress. This is because a small amount of work can cause several physical discomforts such as muscle tension and headache. Actually, according to the Experimental Brain Research journal, level of hormones and heart rates in people, who are feeling bored, are similar to those who are stressed.