The word stress has many connotations and definitions. For example, in Eastern cultures, it means the lack of inner peace, whereas in the West it is considered the loss of control. Dr. Hans Selye, a Hungarian-Canadian endocrinologist, was one of the first researchers to come up with the notion of stress for humans, in the 1960s. He noticed that people react in different ways when dealing with life events such as divorce, death in the family, loss of a job, and so on. Seeing the physiological responses to those life events, he concluded that the body’s responses happen in a three-step process, which he called the general adaptation syndrome (GAS). The first stage is the alarm reaction, the second is the stage of resistance, and the last is the stage of exhaustion. The term stress has evolved its definition since then. According to Seaward (2018), the current definition of stress is “the inability to cope with a perceived (real or imagined) threat to one’s mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being, which results in a series of physiological responses and adaptations.”
REFERENCE
Koopsen, C., Young, C., Integrative Health – A Holistic Approach for Health Professionals, 2009