What are the Known Causes of Stress and How to Avoid Them

Our emotional response to changing environment is defined as stress. When we experience a change in our surroundings or environment, say a threat, fear, excitement, uncertainty or cognitive dissonance we experience stress. The causes for stress are many and varied as it is a personalized reaction to environmental stimuli. A few known causes for stress are discussed here.


General causes

The general causes can be classified in to four categories –distinctive heads. They are (1) Threat perception (2) perceptional of fear (3) uncertainty perception and (4) cognitive dissonance. Threat perception can take the form of social, financial and personal aspects. When one under a threat perception cannot come out of it, there is an extraordinary level of stress in him.

Fear psychosis and perception is also a cause for stress. Hence the individual imagines a few solutions which by themselves cause stress. Though ignorant of what future holds for us, we believe that we can anticipate our future. But for some reasons, when we lack this ability whether the reasons are personal, social or environmental, we are extremely stressed about uncertainty.

In cognitive dissonance there is cognitive discrepancy because of our thought and action. Stress is caused as a result of the conflict that we perceive from the situation. For example when we know Mr. A is a good person for long and suddenly we know him to be a smuggler of drugs and so the police have come to arrest him, we suffer intense stress. This is because our concept and observation are diametrically opposite and at logger heads.

Life causes

Stress due to life related causes covers, a wide variety incidents, like death of spouse, divorce health hazards, sexual molestation, argument, financial change, relocation, change in job or school etc. All changes in life need not be negative in nature to bring stress experience. Positive changes can also be there like marriage, pregnancy, promotion distinction, doing research, preparation for examination etc. Negative stressors are called distress while the positive ones are termed eustress.

Organizational causes

The organizational or job related causes include the demanding nature of a job employee management, relation with coworkers, job responsibilities, changes in work place, high staff, turnover, technological change in work place, discomfort at work spot, job dissatisfaction, conflict between personal values and job role, lack of feed back from superiors, financial dissatisfaction and others.