3 Major Types of Stress:

Physical Stress

This includes trauma to the body  from such things as car accidents, falling off of a bike, and tripping on the stairs.  These are normally stresses that you are aware of when they happen.  If you deal with them immediately, you can avoid any long erm problems due to this condition. However, if you put it off, it is likely that problems will get worse over time even if you aren’t aware of them as they do so.  Then all of the sudden the pain comes on and you wonder where it came from.  

Chemical Stress

Chemical stress happens when you are exposed to chemicals such as in a factory or taking a prescription drug.  The chemicals interact with your body in various ways and cause problems.  Evan taking a properly prescribed prescription drug will cause chemical stress because there are always side effects.  Eating a diet of fast foods and pop will also create chemical stress because you are not supplying the body with the nutrients it needs for proper growth.

Mental/Emotional Stress

Mental / Emotional stress events happen to us almost every day.  Most of the time these stresses are processed by our brain and will not have any long term affect on our life or health.  However, sometimes the stress events are too overwhelming for us to process right away because the event can basically short circuit the brain.  When this happens, the details of the event must be stored so you can go back and figure them out.  As you store this information, tension is created on the spinal cord.  Then when you go to relive that event , the tension triggers the limbic system in the brain and you feel emotion as you relive the event.  It might be saddness or anger or fear.  

You can probably think of a number of past events that bring up emotion in you right now.  The more information that has to be stored, the greater the amount of tension.  The more tension the stronger the emotion that you feel.  This j These are all what happens when you experience a stress that is so bad that you can’t completely process it in the moment it is happening.  It’s the difference between what you feel when you are with a big group of people and someone yells an obscenity at your group and what you feel when your loved one yells the same word directly at you. 

In the first example, the insult was not directed at you personally so your higher brain was able to process the event with no emotio.  You might not even remember it happened a few days later.  

However when your loved one yells the same word at you personally, the higher brain will often get overwhelmed.  Here is this person you love that is yelling a bad word at you.  The higher brain will often shut down and allow the brain center that deals with stress to take over.  The information about what happened will be stored so the higher brain can go back and figure it out later.  The memory storage will often cause tension to be built up in the nerves.  This tension is what activates the limbic system in your brain to feel an emotion when you recall that event.  The tension will also affect how well  your nerves work.  People who constantly deal with lots of stress over a long period of time are a great example.  They tend to look older and may not be has healthy. 

This tension in the nerves can cause all kinds of problems.  These include pain, lack of energy, inability to get to sleep or stay asleep.  and many others.