What Causes Stress Sensitivity?

While everyone experiences stress, certain individuals may find that they are less able to handle stressful situations and more sensitive to the effects of stress. Several factors can heighten this sensitivity:

Conditioning

People who experience traumatic events in childhood or who were raised in abusive situations tend to be much less able to cope with stress. Also, if someone is raised around others with poor stress management skills, they themselves are more likely to be sensitive to the effects of stress.

Personality Traits

A person’s personality may make them prone to over react in stressful situations, compounding the effects of the stress response on the body and making them more susceptible to stress overload.

Heredity

The stress and relaxation responses are regulated by systems within the body known as the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. Inefficiencies within these systems can be inherited, and a person with a parent or relative who is extremely sensitive to stress is more likely to have the same sensitivity.

Disease

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Some diseases can interfere with the body’s ability to handle stress effectively.

Gender

Women tend to be less effective at handling stress than men, even though men are more likely to suffer from stress-related disorders such as heart disease. Working mothers are at even higher risk than women who either work or raise children but do not do both.

Isolation

People who do not have a social support system in place are more likely to suffer physical and emotional effects from stress. Unmarried individuals seem to be less able to handle stress than those that are married.

Anyone can learn how to better handle stress, whatever their situation. If someone is especially sensitive to stress due to one or more of the above factors, they may need to restructure their life in such a way that there is less stress present. They may also need to pay special attention to learning positive coping skills in order to lessen the effects of stress.

Author: Nan Little
Website: http://www.nchw.org/