Internal Determinants Of Stress

Stress is simply a fact of nature-forces from the outside world affecting the individual. In general, stress is associated with external and internal factors. The external factors include the physical environment, the relationships with others, the family and all the situations -challenges, difficulties, expectations- that we face on a daily basis. The internal factors determine the ability of our body to respond and deal with the external pressure. Furthermore, they affect the ability of a person to handle stress including the nutrition, the general health, the emotional well-being and the amount of sleep and rest he gets (www.medicinet.com).

In the following section, at first is made a presentation of the concept of anxiety nowadays

It is experienced as mental stress, which in turn is defined as a common human experience which is characterized by a fear of expectation for some unpleasant events in the future” (Anagnostopoulos and Papadatou, 1999:184). As a defense mechanism and mental state, stress has got a multifactorial basis. Originally, it was considered as a reaction of every living being under external threats, which is characterized by transient changes in the normal body functions. A threatening stimulus, depending on its intensity and nature, causes many negative emotions such as anxiety, panic and anger. It may also causes obsessive thoughts, restlessness, poor concentration and other cognitive deficiencies. Other symptoms include partial awkwardness in movements, hyperactivity or social isolation.

The stress intensity depends not only on the external stimuli but also the endogenous factors (e.g. personality, experience from previous stressful events, which totally act to the experiencing of a new threat or the way each person perceives and faces the external stimulus). (Anagnostopoulos and Papadatou, 1999). Despite the interdisciplinary interest, the notion of stress creates several difficulties, as there is not a generally accepted theoretical background from all the researchers, so each of them introduces his own terms for understanding the

Based on this approach, stress should not be seen and avoided as something negative by definition. This is a normal reaction of the body to external and internal requirements or even risks and the objective of this is to help the organism to react (Hofmann 2003, in www.stress.org). If these capabilities can respond to such a requirement, so that the person can cope with this challenge, the stress is acceptable. But when the man considers this challenge exhausting, the stress is