This chapter examines different definitions of stress and introduces the author's new definition. It discusses how stress has been defined through: 1) early physiological research on stress responses, 2) psychological research on stress as a stimulus or transaction between person and environment, and 3) the holistic health movement's perspective of stress affecting multiple dimensions of wellness. The author's definition integrates these views by defining stress as a holistic transaction between an individual and potential stressor, resulting in a stress response, influenced by the person's overall well-being across emotional, spiritual, environmental, physical, social, and intellectual dimensions.

1. Chapter 1 What is Stress?

2. Overview Examines the etiology of the author’s new way of defining stress by tracing its roots in four common ways of defining stress Describes how the author’s new definition of stress integrates these four common views of stress

3. Outline Many researchers and theorists have contributed to defining what stress is Early physiological research pioneers Psychological stress researchers The holistic health/wellness movement A new definition of stress

4. Stress Is Universal But Different for Different People Everyone experiences stress To be alive is to be stressed Stress means different things to different people

5. What Is Stress? Four common ways of defining stress Stress as response Stress as stimulus Stress as a transaction Stress as a holistic health phenomenon

6. Stress as Response The early pioneers Claude Bernard ( milieu interieur ) Walter Cannon (homeostasis) Hans Selye (General Adaptation Syndrome—GAS)

7. Stress as Stimulus Psychological stress researchers Holmes and Rahe (life events approach)

8. Stress as a Transaction Other psychological stress researchers Simeons (symbolic threats) Lazarus (threat appraisal model) A person perceives a stimulus as threatening This transforms it into a stressor, triggering the stress response

9. Stress as a Holistic Health Phenomenon Stress can be better understood in the context of one’s functioning level across six dimensions of wellness Emotional Spiritual Environmental/Occupational Physical Social Intellectual

10. Author’s Definition of Stress Stress is a holistic transaction between an individual and a potential stressor resulting in a stress response

11. To Understand This Explanation of Stress . . . Potential stressors only become actual stressors when they are perceived as being beyond one’s ability to cope with Determined as a result of a transaction between the individual, the potential stressor, and the environment in which the transaction occurs Holistic transaction because it is influenced by the person’s overall well-being level

12. Chapter 1: What Is Stress? Summary