Stress

            What is stress? Stress is a part of day to day living. As a college student I experience stress meeting academic demands, adjusting to a different schedule every week, or developing relationships with others. The stress I or anyone else experience is not necessarily harmful; in fact, stress is a normal part of life. Although we tend to think of stress as caused by external events, events in themselves are not stressful. Rather, it is the way in which we interpret and react to those events that makes them stressful, and will either make us peak performers or not. People differ greatly in the type of events they interpret as stressful and the way in which they respond to such stress. For example, speaking in front of a large crowd can be stressful for some people and relaxing for others. There are several and symptoms that you may notice when you are experiencing stress. These symptoms basically fall into three categories. They are feelings, thoughts, and behavior. When a person is under stress, they will normally show symptoms from each category.
             When a person's feelings are affected by stress, they become very anxious, irritable, and even scared. If you let your feeling and emotions be ruled by the stress you are under, you may quickly lose friends; or worse, lose yourself. You must learn to control your feelings when under extreme amounts of stress. A person's thoughts are also seriously affected by stress. When a person's thoughts are affected, they begin to have low self-esteem, the inability to concentrate, they constantly have the fear of failure, and they are often preoccupied and forgetful. Behavior is another factor which is influenced by stress. When someone's behavior is affected by stress, they may have difficulty speaking, they can become very impulsive, and they can either become very nervous (apparent by the high pitched voice) or very sad and cry for no apparent reason.