Stress is a Spice of Life

One of the numerous things that differentiate humans with the rest of the
beings on this planet is that we have a vivid range of emotions to comprehend what we are
feeling. In fact, Charles Darwin has emphasised on the belief that one of the major changes
we acquired during our journey of evolution is that we developed a mosaic of feelings to
express our very own emotions. With the dawn of civilisation, as we are focused on the
prosperity of our world dealing and/or balancing with the big three (Profession, Society,
Self) has become a Herculean Task. With all that things to handle obviously there will be
some sort of mental pressure on the person which is “Stress”, to simply put Stress is “a state
of emotional strain resulting from adverse or demanding circumstances”. That “demand” you
just read in the above definition is not materialistic at all it simply refers to the emotional
demand a particular situation requires which will create some sort of confusion within our
consciousness which will eventually lead to some sort of tension or mental pressure.
A lot of psychologists firmly believe that stress is actually the thing which
fuels your survival in the daily life, it is what keeps you going. Take it as some sort of
Mental Reminder which keeps alerting you to achieve tasks as simple as doing the laundry or
as complex as submitting the paper before the deadline; stress is the same thing which makes
a college student prepare for his test and helps a sniper shoot the bull’s eye. Stress has been
viewed as a response, a stimulus, and a transaction. How an individual conceptualizes stress
determines his or her response, adaptation, or coping strategies.
Stress as a response model, initially introduced by Hans Selye (1956), describes stress as a
physiological response pattern and was captured within his General Adaptation Syndrome
(GAS) model. This model describes stress as a dependent variable and includes three
concepts:
(1) Stress is a defensive mechanism.
(2) Stress follows the three stages of alarm, resistance, and exhaustion.
(3) If the stress is prolonged or severe, it could result in diseases of adaptation or even death.

The theory of stress as a stimulus was introduced in the 1960s, and viewed stress as a
significant life event or change that demands response, adjustment, or adaptation by Holmes
and Rahe (1967). The stress as stimulus theory assumes:

(1) Change is inherently stressful.

(2) Life events demand the same levels of adjustment across the population.

(3) There is a common threshold of adjustment beyond which illness will result.
In attempting to explain stress as more of a dynamic process, Richard Lazarus developed the
transactional theory of stress and coping (TTSC) which presents stress as a product of a
transaction between a person (including multiple systems: cognitive, physiological, affective,
psychological, neurological) and his or her complex environment.

CONCLUSION:
There are many ways that people strive to cope with stressors and feelings
of stress in their lives. Stress management techniques are more general and range from
cognitive (mindfulness, cognitive therapy, meditation) to physical (yoga, art, natural
medicine, deep breathing) to environmental (spa visits, music, pets, nature). To end this
paper on a good note let’s look at stress exactly the way our title says “Stress is a spice of
life” and we all know (being a South Asian) the curry never achieves its peak deliciousness
until it has a perfectly balanced blend of all the spices involved. Just like that Stress is just
one of the spices of life which makes it flavourful.

HARSHIT MISHRA
B.Tech (Biotechnology)
6th Semester