THE STRESS FACTOR
While there is no denying that the world loves a winner. It is important that you recognise the signs of stress in your behaviour and be healthy enough to enjoy your success. Stress can strike anytime, in a fashion that may leave you unaware of its presence in your life. While a certain amount of pressure is necessary for performance, it is important to be able to recognise your individual threshold. For instance, there are some individuals who accept competition in a healthy fashion. There are others who collapse into weeping wrecks before an exam or on comparing marksheets and finding that their friend has scored better.
It is a body reaction to any demands or changes in its internal and external environment. Whenever there is a change in the external environment such as temperature, pollutants, humidity and working conditions, it leads to stress. In these days of competition when a person makes up his mind to surpass what has been achieved by others, leading to an imbalance between demands and resources, it causes psycho-social stress. It is a part and parcel of everyday life. Stress has a different meaning depending on the stage of life you're in. The loss of a toy or a reprimand frour the parents might create a stress shock in a child. An adolescent who fails an examination may feel as if everything has been lost and life has no further meaning. In an adult, the loss of his or her companion, job or professional failure may appear if there is nothing more to be achieved.
Such signs appear in the attitude and behaviour of the individual, as muscle tension in various parts of the body, palpitation and high blood pressure, indigestion, hyperacidity and ultimately in self destructive behaviour such as eating and drinking too much, smoking excessively, relying on tranquilisers, trembling, shaking, nervous blinking, dryness of throat and mouth and difficulty in swallowing.
The professional under stress behaves as if he is a perfectionist followed by depression, lethargy and weakness for further work. Periodic mood shifts also indicate the stress status of students, executives and professionals.
In a study sponsored by World Health Organisation and carried out by Harvard School of Public Health, the global burden of diseases and injury indicated that stress diseases and accidents are going to be the major killers in 2020.
The ischaemsic heart diseases and neurological depression, both stress diseases, are going to rank first and second in 2020. Road traffic accidents are going to be the third largest killers. These accidents are also an indicator of psycho- social stress in a fast-moving society. Other stress diseases like ulcers, hypertension and neuronal disorders including insomnia have assumed epidemic proportions in modem societies.
A person behaves in different ways in stress but the common ones are flight fight and flow. Depending upon the nature of stress and capability of the person, the three responses can be elegantly chosen to cope up with the stress so that stress does not damage the system and become distress.
When stress crosses the threshold peculiar to an individual, it deteriorates his/her performance capacity. Frequent jumps over that threshold may result in a syndrome called chronic fatigue in which a person feels lethargic. disinterested and is not easily motivated to achieve anything. This may make the person mentally undecided, confused and accident prone as well. Sudden exposure to unnerving stress may also result in a loss of memory.
The best technique is self-control. This arises by having faith in oneself, on the usefulness of the job he is doing and on any superpower who would deliver the result of the effort made. There are many stress modifiers or stress busters. Some of these are diet and massage from naturopathy, food supplements and herbs from herbal medicine hobbies and relaxation techniques, homeopathy and modem medicine. Physical exercise and dance movements are excellent stress modifiers.
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B. Find words in the passage similar in meaning as:
a) making someone feel less confident and slightly frightened.
b) the level or point at which you start to experience something, or at which. something starts to happen.
c) strong official criticism of a person or their behavior.
d) to do or be better than.
