Q: What is stress?

A: Stress is a normal body response to things that try to threaten our life.

Q: Do you mean that stress is a normal thing to have?

A: Yes. It is an instinct we born with it to prepare the body against severe changes within our environment whether external or internal.

Q: Is this is the only type of stress present?

A: No. There are tow types of stress. The first one called physiological stress which was the one that I talked about. The other one is called pathological stress which is a disease.

Q: Is there a boundary between these two types?

A: No. Usually under normal circumstances we respond to threats by the physiological stress response, but if the response is exaggerated then it will change into a disease (i.e. pathological stress).

Q: What causes the exaggeration?

A: Let's call the things that cause stress stressors. Depending on severity of these stressors the body responses either normally or abnormally.

Q: Are individuals response the same to the same stressor?

A: No. Every human being is completely different from the other. Some people response normally while others response abnormally to the same stressor.

Q: What happens in my body in response to stressor?

A: The body releases a chemical substance called adrenaline which acts on different organs that give physical and "feeling" of being stressed.

Q: I feel irritable, nervous, vigilant and cannot concentrate, why?

A: Because of severe stress the adrenaline activates the brain. Most of the neurons in the brain become overstimulated as if there is "a short-circuit". This overstimulation makes you feel these manifestations, and even you cannot go to sleep.

Q: That's right! I also have lack of energy, easily tired, headache and muscle pain all over my body, why?

A: This is also because of adrenaline. Due to its oversecretion the body uses lots of energy and makes the brain continuosly send orders to skeletal muscles to contract which uses lots of energy, makes muscle spasm, and even chest pain which may mimic cardiac attack.

Q: Sometimes I have lost heart beats, feels that my heart is getting out off my chest and shortness of breath, Why? 

A: Still its the same cause, adrenaline. It stimulates the heart that causes increase its beat with occasional "missing beat". The chest muscles are continuousely contracted that makes you cannot inhale deeply (shallow breathing) and due to stimulation of respiratory center in the brain your breathing is rapid. This breathing pattern (shallow rapid) makes the amount of oxygen in the body decreases which aggravate the condition and makes you feel "tight" all the time.

Q: So whay you say that all what I complain of is due to oversecretion of adrenaline in my body!!!

A: Yes.

Q: Ok! I understood this, but what are the real causes of stress?

A: There are different theories regarding what causes stress. As a general rule when a disease has different theories in regard to its causes, none is the victim, and to be treated needs different techniques to be used at the same time, and the treament is not curative, especially if it is a chronic one, and the usually success rate is not high as they claim.

Q: You are frustrating me.

A: Do not misunderstand me. I am taking about the real cause of the disease but not its manifestations.

Q: Do you mean that the manifestations that I have can be treated?

A: Yes! There are different techniques which could be used to decrease or even eliminate these manifestations. But if, for example, you have past trauma during childhood that lead you to have stress now, this is untreatable, we cannot reverse the past, past is past, though some claim by psychoanalysis "Frued School" they can do that.