The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) defines stress as the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure or other types of demand placed on them. Stress and pressure are a natural aspect of life and as part and parcel of our work situation it can help to keep us motivated and focused on our work. However, excessive pressure and stress can undermine performance and lead to illhealth, which is costly to employers and detrimental to employees.

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It is common to use stress as an umbrella term connoting all the various pressures we experience in life – unfortunately this confuses whether stress is the cause of the pressures we feel or the effect of those pressures, i.e. whether stress is the stimulus or the response.

It may be more helpful to define stress as a response to a stimulus or event i.e. a ‘stressor’ that produces the physical and psychological stress response.

The important aspect to note is that a stressor can be:

• internal - a thought or feeling
• external - the thought or feeling is a response to an outside stimulus.

We are continuously making efforts to adapt to the pressures and demands that we face, which may or may not be adequate. It follows that the more we can bring attention to the effectiveness of our efforts to cope with the stressors we experience the more able we will be at managing them and avoiding feeling overwhelmed and over stressed and perhaps avoid making ourselves ill.
It is not the potential stressor itself but how we perceive it and then how we handle it that will determine whether or not it will lead to unmanageable stress.