Causes of psychological stress

8How does stress arise?

Stress arises from the gap between the event and the person, and neither alone is enough to explain it. The UK's National Health Service puts it simply: feeling stressed usually happens when we feel we do not have the resources to cope with the challenges in front of us.

That is why two people can go through the same circumstance, such as a delayed salary or a father's illness, and one handles it with relative calm while the other loses sleep and focus. This difference does not make one morally stronger than the other; each entered the situation with a different load, different support and a different history.

9What are the most common sources of stress in daily life?

The World Health Organization and the UK's National Health Service group the common sources of stress into similar categories:

Cleveland Clinic notes that a pile-up of small problems at the same time, such as traffic, coffee spilled on your clothes and being late for an appointment, can be enough to cause acute stress. You do not need a major disaster to feel exhausted.

10Can happy events cause stress?

Yes. Cleveland Clinic counts both getting a new job and losing one as sources of stress, and lists among its causes marriage, having a baby, moving to a new home, retirement, and even going on vacation. Joy does not cancel the effort the body and mind need to adapt to a new situation and new responsibilities, which is why many people are surprised to feel tense in weeks they had long awaited.

11Why are some people more affected by stress than others?

The UK's National Health Service notes that causes of stress include our genes, how we were raised, and our experiences in childhood and adulthood. Personal factors show up in:

• Temperament and predisposition: in some people the nervous system responds to threat faster and more intensely.
• Early experiences: a review by researcher Rajita Sinha says that early childhood stress, maltreatment and accumulated adversity cause changes in the body's stress-response systems.
• Thinking patterns: perfectionism, expecting the worst and difficulty tolerating uncertainty magnify the effect of a situation, and overlap greatly with overthinking.
• Difficulty setting boundaries: accepting every request and taking on others' responsibilities at one's own expense.
• Lack of support: a person who faces their crises alone carries the whole burden.

12What factors weaken your ability to cope with stress?

Some causes come not from outside but from the state and habits of the body, making an ordinary situation feel heavy:

13When does a temporary cause become chronic stress?

Stress becomes chronic when its sources continue for weeks and months without breaks, as in prolonged marital problems, work pressure or financial crises, which are examples Cleveland Clinic mentions. The risk rises when several sources combine at once, or when the person is in a role that does not let them stop, such as caring for a sick person at home for years. Over time, stress itself can become the cause of new stress: insomnia weakens performance, which increases work pressure, which increases insomnia.

14Could there be another psychological or medical cause behind the stress?

Sometimes what we call “stress” is a symptom of another condition: an anxiety disorder that makes every situation a threat, depression that drains energy so everything feels heavy, an adjustment disorder after a major event, or a physical problem that causes nervousness and insomnia. In the other direction, the World Health Organization says stressful situations can cause mental health conditions or make them worse, the best known being anxiety and depression. So if the tension is out of proportion to the circumstances or does not ease when they pass, a medical assessment is a sensible step.