Stress Awareness Month: Types of Stress
April is Stress Awareness Month. While we have a month devoted to bringing awareness to stress, let’s call a spade a spade. We experience stress in our lives everyday. Before we spend more time on the challenges of stress, let’s remember why the human body has the ability to experience stress. Stress is a natural physical and emotional response to the challenges we experience in our lives as a survival mechanism that activates the “fight-or-flight” to face what our bodies or minds view as threats. Our stress response is facilitated through interactions of the nervous, endocrine, and immune mechanisms, triggering the sympathetic-adreno-medullar (SAM) axis, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, and the immune system (Chu et al., 2024). However, when we stay in a state of chronic stress we set ourselves up for serious consequences for our physical and mental health. To set us up for the conversation about the impacts to our health in next week’s blog, let's begin by discussing the difference between the types of stress. Yep, there are more types than just acute and chronic stress.
Acute Stress
Simply stated, acute stress is short-term, immediate, and can often be described as helpful for addressing potentially dangerous or high-stakes-pressure situations. The body’s fight-or-flight response, when activated, leads to temporary physiological changes such as increased heart rate and adrenaline release (Chu et a., 2024). Examples of acute stress can be daily hassles or unexpected events like misplacing your phone, interpersonal conflict with a friend or partner, performance pressure like taking an exam, sudden changes like unforeseen expenses, or environmental stress like experiencing bad weather.
Chronic Stress
Chronic stress is more long-term and persistent, which can lead to harmful consequences for both mental and physical health due to the cumulating physiological and psychological effects like cardiovascular disease, anxiety, and depression (Chu et al., 2024). Additionally, chronic stress is one of the most impactful risk factors when it comes to numerous diseases (Schmidt et al., 2008). However, not everyone who experiences chronic stress will progress to disease due to individual differences (Bartolomucci et al., 2005). Examples of chronic stress are things like financial and work strain, relationship issues like being a long-term caregiver for a family member, environmental experience like living with daily discrimination, or experiencing a health or life change like learning about a chronic illness.
Episodic Acute Stress
Now we arrive at episodic acute stress, which is different from chronic stress because instead of experiencing stress consistently over a period of time, the stress is in the form of frequent episodes of acute stress. This type of stress can impact health and lead to impairment of daily functioning (Chu et al., 2024). So, what does this type of stress even look like? Examples include being in constant high-pressure situations such as having an overwhelmingly busy schedule or studying for a demanding professional degree, experiencing a lifestyle where one has a high degree of responsibility and is in a constant state of rushing to accomplish things, interpersonal conflicts that are regularly occurring, financial stress around job insecurity, chronic catastrophizing, or even perfectionism by setting standards that are unrealistic.
Traumatic Stress
Traumatic stress is pretty much exactly like it sounds. This type of stress arises from being exposed to traumatic events, where the trauma overwhelms one’s ability to cope leading to symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Chu et al., 2024). The impacts of traumatic stress on the brain are vast in terms of function and structures like the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus, and even the neurochemical systems via cortisol and norepinephrine, and also on the neuropsychological components of memory (Bremner, 2006). People can experience traumatic stress when they are exposed to violence, abuse, accidents, disasters, war, sudden loss or medical trauma, or even witnessing trauma.
Environmental Stress
Environmental stress comes from adverse or challenging experiences or conditions in a person’s surroundings such as noise, pollution, overcrowding, or even unsafe living conditions (Bilotta et al., 2018; Chu et al., 2024). These conditions impact us even if we don’t spend too much time thinking about them. For example, chronic noise can lead to physiological stress that leads to high blood pressure or high levels of traffic congestion leading to elevated physiological stress (Bilotta et al., 2018). Our environment matters when it comes to both our mental and physical health. Other examples of environmental stress include sensory overload, physically challenging working conditions in terms of temperature or pollution, social and spatial constraints such as overcrowding, or disasters, either natural or man-made.
Hang tight! We’ve almost made it through the different types of stress. Just a couple more to go!
Psychological Stress
Psychological stress arises from cognitive or emotional factors that may manifest as anxiety, rumination, or perfectionism (Chu et al., 2024). The impact of psychological stress and disease is also impacted by the nature, number, and persistence of the stressors in addition to the make-up of the individual in terms of biological vulnerability, psychosocial resources and even learned patterns of coping (Schneiderman et al., 2005). Simply said, what one person may experience as psychological stress another may not because of their ability to cope or even their genetics. Now for the examples. Consider major life transitions, divorce, bereavement, work or academic pressure like tight deadlines, or financial strain, like debt.
Physiological Stress
Now we come back to the body and stress. Physiological stress defines the body’s response to both internal and external stress that pulls it out of balance of homeostasis (Chu et al., 2024). And if one dives deeper into the definition, there are three different aspects: environmental stress, intrinsic developmental stress, and aging (Kagias et al., 2012). Does one of these aspects sound familiar? Yep! Environmental stress. So while we are talking about these different types of stress separately remember there may be a connection between them. Now back to examples: physical trauma/injury, illness, infection, exposure to extreme temperatures or altitudes, metabolic stress like dehydration, physical overexertion, or even sleep deprivation.
We have made it to the end! There are many different ways to look at stress. It is important to understand these different perspectives as we continue into next week and look at the impact of stress. Additionally, if we understand what type of stress we are experiencing we can better come up with a plan to address our stress for better mental and physical health.
A pug wrapped in tan blanket on a white blanket.
take action today moment:
Now that we have covered the different types of stress. Can you identify what stress you are experiencing in your own life? Take some time to identify what you can. Remember becoming aware of your stress can then help you take steps to reduce your stress. A future blog post will talk more about addressing stress. In the meantime, you can begin to think about what you may want to try now to reduce your stress now that you have identified the type of stress.
Learn More About the Types and Impact of Stress:
Stress Affects Your Body and Mind
How stress affects your health
Stress symptoms: Effects on your body and behavior
References
Bartolomucci, A., Palanza, P., Sacerdote, P., Panerai, A. E., Sgoifo, A., Dantzer, R., & Parmigiani, S. (2005). Social factors and individual vulnerability to chronic stress exposure. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 29(1), 67-81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2004.06.009
Bilotta, E., Vaid, U., & Evans, G. W. (2018). Environmental stress. Environmental Psychology: An introduction, 36-44. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119241072.ch4
Bremner, J. D. (2006). Traumatic stress: Effects on the brain. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 8(4), 445-461. https://doi.org/10.31887/DCNS.2006.8.4/jbremner
Chu B, Marwaha K, Sanvictores T, et al. Physiology, Stress Reaction. [Updated 2024 May 7]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2026 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK541120/
Kagias, K., Nehammer, C., & Pocock, R. (2012). Neuronal responses to physiological stress. Frontiers in Genetics, 3, 222. https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2012.00222
Schmidt, M. V., Sterlemann, V., & Müller, M. B. (2008). Chronic stress and individual vulnerability. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1148(1), 174-183. https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1410.017
Schneiderman, N., Ironson, G., & Siegel, S. D. (2005). Stress and health: Psychological, behavioral, and biological determinants. Annu. Rev. Clin. Psychol., 1, 607-628. doi: 10.1146/annurev.clinpsy.1.102803.144141