What is psychological stress?
What is stress? Most people think of stress as an external event, like traffic or too much work and too little time in which to do it. Stress isn't really stress unless you experience it as stress. Like a tree falling in the forest when no one is there, a stress event without a person taking it in - just isn't stress. Stress needs you, but you don't need stress.
Stress happens in the body when you react to an event as if it were a physical threat. Your brain decides what constitutes a stress 'emergency'. Your brain takes a split second to decide between the 'fight or flight' emergency reaction or some more low-key way to react to a situation. If your brain decides your body shifts into death-prevention mode. Adrenaline pumps up your heart rate and blood pressure. Your pupils dilate. Digestion and other non-emergency processes shut down. Energy moves into the muscles. Now you can jump higher, run faster, punch harder.
After a few calls from irate people, you find that the ringing of the phone triggers an emergency response. You feel more as if were about to strike.
Luckily, your brain also has the ability to change this pattern.
Having fun is a natural antidote for stress