Common Stress Reactions - A Self-Assessment (2024)

FAQs

What are common stress reactions? ›

Physical reactions: Chills, sweating, stomach upset, headaches, rapid heartbeat, vomiting, dizziness, chest pain, heavy breathing, difficulty catching your breath, shaking, muscle tension and aches, or. nything that is not part of your normal physical being.

Based on these works and others, stress responses were generally classified into four categories: physiological, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive [26,27].

Psychological symptoms

Stress can lead to emotional and mental (psychological) symptoms, like: Anxiety or irritability. Depression. Panic attacks.

There are three stages to stress: the alarm stage, the resistance stage and the exhaustion stage. The alarm stage is when the central nervous system is awakened, causing your body's defenses to assemble. This SOS stage results in a fight-or-flight response.

Fawn is your body's stress response to try to please someone to avoid conflict. The goal of the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn response is to decrease, end, or evade danger and return to a calm, relaxed state.

They include a pounding heart, sweaty palms, and feeling anxious. But you may respond to stress in many other ways too, from feeling irritable to driving recklessly.

The 'fight or flight' response is how people sometimes refer to our body's automatic reactions to fear. There are actually 5 of these common responses, including 'freeze', 'flop' and 'friend', as well as 'fight' or 'flight'.

Psychosomatic disorders resulting from stress may include hypertension, respiratory ailments, gastrointestinal disturbances, migraine and tension headaches, pelvic pain, sexual dysfunction, dermatitis, and ulcers.

What are 5 physiological responses to stress? ›

These hormones, together with direct actions of autonomic nerves, cause the heart to beat faster, respiration rate to increase, blood vessels in the arms and legs to dilate, digestive process to change and glucose levels (sugar energy) in the bloodstream to increase to deal with the emergency.

Mental or behavioral symptoms include: Being more emotional than usual. Feeling overwhelmed or on edge. Trouble keeping track of things or remembering. Trouble making decisions, solving problems, concentrating, getting your work done.

The body's fight-or-flight response leads to temporary physiological changes such as increased heart rate and adrenaline release.

When you feel threatened, a chemical reaction occurs in your body that allows you to act in a way to prevent injury. This reaction is known as "fight-or-flight” or the stress response. During the stress response, your heart rate increases, breathing quickens, muscles tighten, and blood pressure rises.

“The intestines can spasm when a person feels stress, and with that can come diarrhea, constipation, or flatulence — it's different for every individual,” Bergquist says. The fight-or-flight phenomenon causes all the body's systems to ramp up to help a person escape.

This reaction is known as "fight-or-flight” or the stress response. During the stress response, your heart rate increases, breathing quickens, muscles tighten, and blood pressure rises. You've gotten ready to act. It is how you protect yourself.

Emotional reactions to trauma

fear, anxiety and panic. shock – difficulty believing in what has happened, feeling detached and confused. feeling numb and detached. not wanting to connect with others or becoming withdrawn from those around you.