A stressor can be interpreted as a threat or as an opportunity. People vary along a personality dimension of optimism versus pesimism. Optimists are more likely to see the future as benign and a stressful situation as giving rise to an opportunity. People vary in the extent to which they believe that they have the resources to deal with new and threatening situations. Poeple high in hardiness or resilience believe that they have the competence to control the world around them. This perception of competence and control makes them find a threat less stressful than others might.

5 Social support protects people from stress

Research shows that people who experience high levels of social support are less likely to become stressed. In addition, if a situation is perceived as stressful, then people high in social support show fewer adverse effects to the stressor. In short, social support protects against stress. Measures of social support distinguish between the practical support and the emotional support that others give. They are both important for reducing stress.

6 Exercise protects against stress

The immediate effect of exercise is that it creates the biological changes associated with stress. But if exercise if practised regularly, then those biological changes are associated with less stress. Acute exercise is therefore a stressor, but chronic exercise is in general a de-stressor.

7 Some people create stress

People do not just respond to their environments, they also change them. Some of that change involves the impact one person has on another. In the late 1950s, two American cardiologists, Friedman and Rosenman, proposed a personality type called 'Type A'. The Type A personality is someone who is high in hostility, competitiveness and time urgency. People with a Type A personality tend to show a greater physiological response to a stressor. The Type A concept is important because a hostile, time-urgent and competitive person is likely to create stress for themselves and for others. So stress produces the kind of interaction that increases stress. The increased stress then produces the type of social interaction that increases stress. Stress easily becomes a vicious cycle where it feeds on itself.   This is an edited extract from Michael Hyland's Stress: All That Matters, follow the link below to purchase: