Stress is a powerful entity that can debilitate a person beyond reason or provide a person with enough adrenaline to lift a car to help someone. There are two main types of stress; eustress and distress. .
Eustress can be a powerful tool when needed to perform. An athlete, tired from a long day's winning game, might feel eustress in bodily fatigue and exhaustion. A medical student, studying hard for final exams might experience eustress after having performed well on his last exam of the semester.
Distress, however, comes in an entirely different manner and effect. Distress could be an overwhelming fear of being lost in a public place, extreme anxiety and fear kick in, and a panic attack could even result. Distress almost always comes from trepidation, anxiety or physiological/mental fatigue.
A stressor has a wide range of possibilities, meaning it can anything from a gunshot reminding a veteran of combat to a slow song that reminds a woman of being raped in her younger years. The nature of a stressor depends greatly and many different factors. When considering the severity and significance of a stressor, one must always consider the longevity and specific impact that it had on the person's life. One must also determine if the stressor is a common manifestation, natural or artificial, contrived or realistic, or if it is within their realm of control or not. .
Stress is frequently dealt with using a term called coping. Coping involves two separate methods, task-oriented coping and defense-oriented coping. Task-oriented response involves the implementation of a specific task or behavior in an effort to deal directly with the situation. For instance, if a shark were seen swimming in the vicinity of your location in the water, the obvious task-oriented response would be to swim to safety. Defense-oriented coping involves two different methods as well, physical manifestations of sadness and ego-defense mechanisms.
