Whether the event is good or bad, imagining changes in your life is stressful. Stress Stress, in psychology, a demand, threat, or other event that requires an individual to cope with a changed situation. Stresses are an unavoidable part of life. They range in severity from relatively mild forms, such as a traffic jam, a disparaging remark from one's employer, or a family argument, to severe ones, such as the death of a spouse or the fear of dying in battle. People's responses to stress vary widely, depending on their cultural and family background, their personal experiences, their mood at the time, and on other stresses present at the same time.
Most people are able to cope satisfactorily with the everyday stresses of living.
However, when problems escalate faster than they can be solved, a person's adaptive capacity may be overloaded and chronic illness, anxiety, or depression may result. In 1926, Hans Selye, a Canadian scientist who pioneered in stress research, began investigating the effects of stress on the body. Selye had noticed that people showed characteristics of fatigue and general discomfort following either a physical or an emotional stress. He proposed that the response to stress involves three possible stages. During the alarm reaction, pulse and respiratory rates speed up, blood pressure rises.