Stressors are agents that cause stress. Stressors can be divided into two broad categories:

External

Internal

External stressors

External stressors are the sources of stress that we are aware of around us. These stressors are things that create a perceived threatening situation in our minds and bodies. In recent years there has been a lot of research on external stressors. These stressors can affect us in various settings: at work, at home, while driving, and in a social setting. We are all free spirits in nature. Anything that limits our freedom of expression, thought or action creates a stressful situation that our body and mind would like to change. It results in a feeling of unhappiness and discontent. For example, the same house can be a happy place or a stressful place. If things don’t go according to our wishes at home, our wishes are not fulfilled and we feel stressed.

In the workplace, our expectations of our work, our employers, our colleagues, and our own commitments, if not met, create a situation that our minds perceive as a threat. We find ourselves helpless and unable to change the situation. Our free spirit is forced. We feel the ‘pressure’. That is stress.

Internal stressors

Internal stressors are the stressors within us. These are stressors that have been in our minds and bodies for many years of our lives. These stressors exist in the form of genetic makeup. They are also restrictions imposed on us by our parents, our teachers, and various authority figures who have taught us what to do and, more importantly, what not to do. Such internal stressors remain in our bodies, unknown to us, in the form of emotions. According to recent research conducted in the United States, such emotions exist in our bodies in the form of neurochemicals called neuropeptides. Neuropeptides are distributed in our cellular systems in such a way that the patterns are difficult to eliminate. Such patterns, when established by our emotional experiences, persist throughout life. In this way, stress is stored in our bodies. These stressed or negative emotions or neuropeptides are organized in such a way that they affect our perception, our thinking and our behavior. These tensions become chronic.

The interaction of external and internal stressors and internal stresses creates what we call stress. The internal stressors mentioned above, when interacting with external stressors (environment), create arousal in our body systems. Internal stressors then turn into stress.