Life modern man impossible without stress. Social conditions, work, overwork – all this causes emotions. Sometimes a person undergoes a sharp exit from his comfort zone, which entails the need for psychological adaptation. This is psycho-emotional stress.

Emotional stress

The danger of stress should not be underestimated, as it can cause many diseases. internal organs and systems. You should promptly identify stressors and eliminate their influence in order to protect your own health.

The concept of stress and stages of its development

The concept of emotional stress was first identified by the physiologist Hans Selye in 1936. This concept denoted reactions unusual for the body in response to any adverse impact. Due to the influence of stimuli (stressors), the body's adaptation mechanisms are in tension. The adaptation process itself has three main stages of development - anxiety, resistance and exhaustion.

In the first stage of the response phase (anxiety), the body's resources are mobilized. The second, resistance, manifests itself in the form of activation of defense mechanisms. Exhaustion occurs when psycho-emotional resources are exhausted (the body gives up). It should be noted that emotions and emotional stress are interrelated concepts. But only negative emotions that cause negative stress can lead to serious mental disorders. Selye called this state distress.

Causes of distress prompt the body to exhaust its energy. This can lead to serious illness.

The concept of stress can have a different character. Some scientists are confident that the manifestation of emotional stress is associated with a generalized distribution of sympathetic and parasympathetic arousals. And the diseases that appear as a result of this distribution are individual.

Distress - negative stress

Negative emotions and stress are unpredictable. The manifestation of the body’s protective functions against an emerging psychological threat can only overcome minor difficulties. And, with prolonged or periodic repetition of stressful situations, emotional arousal becomes chronic. A process such as exhaustion, emotional burnout, manifests itself precisely when a person remains in a negative psycho-emotional background for a long time.

Main Causes of Emotional Stress

Positive emotional reactions rarely pose a threat to human health. And negative emotions, accumulating, lead to chronic stress and pathological disorders of organs and systems. Informational and emotional stress affects both the physiological state of the patient and his emotions and behavior. The most common causes of stress are:

• grievances, fears and negative emotional situations;
• severe unfavorable life problems (death loved one, job loss, divorce, etc.);
• social conditions;
• potentially dangerous situations;
• excessive feeling of concern for yourself and loved ones.

Causes of stress

In addition, even positive emotions can be harmful. Especially if fate brings surprises (the birth of a child, a promotion career ladder, dream come true, etc.). Physiological factors can also be causes of stress:

• sleep disturbance;
• overwork;
• pathologies of the central nervous system;
• poor nutrition;
• hormonal imbalances;
• post-traumatic disorders.

Stress, as a health risk factor, is unpredictable. A person can cope with its impact, but not always. In order to alleviate stress and diagnose it, experts tend to divide stressors into external and internal.

You should look for a way out of a dangerous psycho-emotional state by eliminating the influence of the disturbing factor on the body. There are no problems with external stressors. But dealing with internal stressors requires long, painstaking work not only by a psychologist, but also by other specialists.

Signs of stress

Each person has an individual resource of strength to cope with stress. It is called stress resistance. Therefore, stress, as a risk factor for health, should be considered by its possible symptoms, which affect both emotional and mental condition body.

With the advent of distress, the causes of which are associated with external or internal factors, adaptive functions fail. When a stressful situation develops, a person may feel fear and panic, act disorganized, experience difficulties with mental activity, etc.

Stress itself manifests itself depending on stress resistance (emotional stress can cause serious pathological changes in the body). It manifests itself in the form of emotional, physiological, behavioral and psychological changes.

Physiological signs

The most dangerous to health are physiological symptoms. They pose a threat to the normal functioning of the body. When under stress, the patient may refuse to eat and suffer from sleep problems. During physiological reactions, other symptoms are observed:

• pathological manifestations of an allergic nature (itching, skin rashes, etc.);
• indigestion;
• headache;
• increased sweating.

Physiological stress

Emotional Signs

Emotional signs of stress manifest themselves in the form of a general change in the emotional background. It is easier to get rid of them than other symptoms, since they are regulated by the desire and will of the person himself. Under the influence of negative emotions, social or biological factors, a person may experience:

• Bad mood, melancholy, depression, anxiety and anxiety.
• Anger, aggression, loneliness, etc. These emotions arise sharply and are clearly expressed.
• Changes in character - increased introversion, decreased self-esteem, etc.
• Pathological conditions – neurosis.

Emotional stress

It is impossible to experience severe stress without showing emotions. It is emotions that reflect a person’s state and are the main way to determine situations in psychology. And in order to prevent danger to health, it is the manifestation of this or that emotion and its influence on human behavior that plays an important role.

Behavioral signs

Human behavior and the reactions that accompany it are signs of emotional stress. It's easy to identify them:

• decreased performance, complete loss of interest in work;
• changes in speech;
• difficulties communicating with others.

Emotional stress, which is expressed through behavior, is easy to determine by long-term observation of a person and when communicating with him. The fact is that he behaves differently than usual (he is impulsive, speaks quickly and unintelligibly, commits rash actions, etc.).

Psychological signs

Psychological symptoms of emotional stress are most often manifested when a person stays outside the zone of psycho-emotional comfort for a long time, his inability to adapt to new conditions of existence. As a result, biological and physical factors leave their mark on the psychological state of a person:

• memory problems;
• problems with concentration when doing work;
• violation of sexual behavior.

People feel helpless, withdraw from loved ones and sink into deep depression.

Deep depression

With mental factors, a person succumbs to acute or chronic trauma of a mental nature. A person may experience a personality disorder, depressive psychogenic reactions, reactive psychoses, etc. Each of the pathologies is a sign that is the result of the influence of psychological trauma. The causes of such conditions can be both unexpected news (death of a loved one, loss of housing, etc.), and the long-term effect of stressors on the body.

Why is stress dangerous?

Due to prolonged stress, serious health problems can occur. The fact is that during stress, the adrenal glands secrete an increased amount of adrenaline and norepinephrine. These hormones make the internal organs work more actively in order to protect the body from the stressor. But accompanying phenomena, such as increased blood pressure, spasms of muscles and blood vessels, increased blood sugar, lead to disruption of the functioning of organs and systems. It is because of this that the risk of developing diseases increases:

• hypertension;
• stroke;
• ulcer;
• heart attack;
• angina;

With the effect of prolonged psycho-emotional stress, immunity decreases. The consequences can be different: from colds, viral and infectious diseases to the formation of oncology. The most common pathologies are related to the cardiovascular system. The second most common are gastrointestinal diseases.

Impact of stress on health

According to doctors, more than 60% of all diseases of modern man are caused by stressful situations.

Diagnosis of emotional stress

Diagnosis of the psycho-emotional state is carried out only in a psychologist’s office. The fact is that each case requires a detailed study using the methods and conditions set by a specialist for a specific purpose. This takes into account the direction of work, diagnostic goals, consideration of a specific situation in the patient’s life, etc.

Identification of the main causes of stressful behavior occurs using various psychodiagnostic methods. All of them can be divided into classes:

1. Current level of stress, severity of neuropsychic tension. The methods of express diagnostics and testing by T. Nemchin, S. Cohen, I. Litvintsev and others are used.
2. Prediction of human behavior in stressful situations. Both the self-assessment scale and the questionnaires by V. Baranov, A. Volkov and others are used.
3. negative effects of distress. Differential diagnostic methods and questionnaires are used.
4. Professional stress. They use surveys, tests, "live" dialogue with a specialist.
5. The level of stress resistance. Most often, questionnaires are used.

The information obtained as a result of psychodiagnostics is the main further struggle with stress. The specialist looks for a way out of a certain situation, helps the patient to overcome difficulties (prevention of stress) and is engaged in a strategy for further treatment.

Treatment of emotional stress

Treatment of psycho-emotional stress is individual for each clinical case. Some patients have enough self-organization, search for new hobbies and daily analysis and control of their own condition, while others require medication, sedatives and even tranquilizers. According to experts, the first thing to do is to detect the stressor and eliminate its impact on the emotional and mental state of a person. Further methods of struggle depend on the severity of the disease, its phase and consequences.

Most effective methods stress therapies are:

• Meditation. Allows you to relax, calm your nerves and analyze all life's difficulties and difficulties.
• Physical exercise. Physical activity allows you to escape from problems. In addition, during exercise, pleasure hormones are produced - endorphin and serotonin.
• Medicines. Sedatives and sedatives.

Psychological trainings. Taking group classes with a specialist and home methods not only help eliminate signs of stress, but also improve the individual’s resistance to stress.

Psychological trainings

Therapy is most often based on complex methods. Psycho-emotional stress often requires a change of environment and outside support (both loved ones and a psychologist). If you have trouble sleeping, doctors may prescribe sedatives. For severe psychological disorders, tranquilizers may be required.

Sometimes used traditional methods based on the preparation of decoctions and tinctures. The most common is herbal medicine. Plants such as valerian, oregano and lemon balm have a calming effect. The main thing is that the person himself wants changes in life and tries to correct his condition by returning to his natural existence.

Stress Prevention

Prevention of psycho-emotional stress comes down to management healthy image life, proper nutrition and doing what you love. You need to limit yourself as much as possible from stress, be able to predict and “get around” them. Psychologists are confident that the risk of stressful situations decreases if a person:

• exercise;
• set new goals for yourself;
• organize your work activities correctly;
• pay attention to your rest, especially sleep.

The main thing is to think positively and try to do everything for the benefit of your own health. If you were unable to protect yourself from stress, there is no need to give in to panic or fear. You should remain calm, try to think about all possible scenarios and look for ways out of the current situation. Thus, the consequences of stress will be “milder”.

Conclusion

Every person is susceptible to emotional stress. Some people manage to quickly overcome feelings of anxiety, fear and subsequent behavioral signs (aggression, disorientation, etc.). But sometimes, prolonged or frequently repeated stress leads to exhaustion of the body, which is dangerous to health.

You need to be sensitive to your own psycho-emotional state, try to anticipate stress and find safe ways expressing your emotions through creativity or doing what you love. This is the only way to keep your body healthy and strong.

PostScience debunks scientific myths and explains common misconceptions. We asked our experts to comment on popular myths about the factors causing stress and counteracting it.

A person's response to stress is determined by their genes.

This is partly true.

Genetics contribute to how a person responds to stress, but they do not completely determine that response. The reaction to stress also depends on what exactly caused this stress (the reaction to terrorist attacks is stronger than to disasters of comparable scale that occurred without malicious intent), on the duration of exposure (acute or chronic stress), and on the acquired ability to cope with stress. The genetic component can be divided into two parts. One, the actual genetic one, is determined by the characteristics of the genes received from the parents that control the functioning of the nervous, endocrine and immune systems. Carriers of certain gene variants react more strongly to stress or are slower to return to normal after a reaction and, as a result, are more likely to develop stress-related disorders. For some of these genes, the influence of upbringing conditions was shown. People who had happy childhoods and those who grew up in unfavorable conditions may express the same gene variants differently.

The second component is determined by life history, especially stress experienced in childhood. Mammals have special systems that adjust the intensity of gene activity to specific environmental conditions. As a result of the operation of these systems, special chemical marks (methyl groups) appear in the DNA sections that regulate the switching on and off of genes, which affect how active the gene will be. Experiments on mice and rats have shown that stress experienced in childhood changes the functioning of stress response genes throughout life. Similar data were obtained for humans, but not as a result of experiments, but in the study of the DNA of children who grew up in favorable and unfavorable conditions. What’s interesting is that if the mother rat took good care of the stressed pups (carefully combed and licked them), then the number of methyl marks on their DNA returned to normal, and when they grew up, their reaction to stress did not differ from the reaction of the pups that grew up in “ prosperous families.

Changes in gene function as a result of lifetime chemical modification of individual sections of DNA or other influences are studied by a branch of science called epigenetics. Epigenetic processes are what connect the reaction of the genetic apparatus to environmental influences, including the response of genes to maternal love, neglect and other conditions of upbringing. And these conditions, in turn, although not completely determining, make a significant contribution to how a person will react to stress. Therefore, even when we talk about culture and upbringing, phenomena that are far from genetics, we cannot completely discount genes. It is the work of genes that allows us to record in the form of neural connections what life and parents teach children.

Svetlana Borinskaya, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Chief Researcher of the Laboratory of Genome Analysis, Institute of General Genetics named after. N. I. Vavilova RAS

Stress is caused only by negative emotions

It is not true.

Stress is a reaction of the body, which indicates that the body is leaving a state of homeostasis, that is, equilibrium.

But getting out of the state of balance is necessary for life, for a person to develop. Therefore, being in love or performing in front of a large audience can be stressful, that is, things that are quite comparable to a good life. Thus, stress is necessary for life, and it is, in principle, associated with any situations in which we worry.

As for negative emotions, for this case there is the concept of “distress”, the so-called bad stress, when the experienced negative emotional states are either very intense or chronic. It differs from ordinary stress in that a person finds himself in an external situation that constantly throws him off balance, and experiences negative emotions constantly, and not from time to time. For example, he is bullied at work, or he has constant conflicts in the family with his wife, or he does not like his job and every day he has to force himself to leave the house for a long time in the morning. Distress can also occur due to high-intensity stress, that is, when negative emotions are too strong. For example, when you lose a loved one, or when something very frightening happens, or when a person faces a serious threat. Distress can have a really bad effect on mental and physical health, and such stress necessarily requires some kind of intervention, a request for help, and so on.

Maria Padun, candidate of psychological sciences, senior researcher at the laboratory of psychology of post-traumatic stress at the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, practicing psychologist, psychotherapist

Food helps relieve stress

This is true.

We need to start with the fact that stress is not always negative emotions, but it can also be caused by positive emotions. From the point of view of the body and the functioning of internal organs, euphoria is also stress. Therefore, you can, unfortunately, die of joy. This myth concerns the stress that appears against the background of negative emotions. If a person has such stress, anything that evokes positive emotions can help him. And food is the most reliable source of positivity. A piece of meat or chocolate will never fool you. You may not like the concert, you may have a fight with your best friend, but a piece of good food at the right moment guarantees positive emotions.

At the level of nerve cells, food promotes the release of mediators of positive emotions. As soon as pleasant taste sensations appear in the mouth and something begins to fall into the stomach, endorphins and dopamine begin to be secreted in the brain. As a result, a positive emotional state arises that blocks negative experiences. This mechanism works according to innately given principles, since food is a source of energy and building materials, without which we cannot exist. Therefore, evolutionary processes have formed a brain configuration that ensures the process of nutrition, forcing us to eat every day through hunger. Moreover, a newborn eats due to innate reflexes, but later very quickly learns to find food, and learning occurs against the background of positive emotions caused by the absorption of food.

There are people who actually overeat due to stress. But, as a rule, if a person controls his behavior, he looks for other sources of positive emotions in order to relieve the stress that negative experiences caused. He can go to an exhibition, play sports or even play a computer game. Eating relieves stress, but you shouldn’t use this route often, otherwise consuming extra calories will put you at risk of stress due to excess weight.

Vyacheslav Dubynin

Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor of the Department of Human and Animal Physiology, Faculty of Biology, Moscow State University, specialist in the field of brain physiology

For residents of the metropolis, daily stress is inevitable.

This is partly true.

This statement is only partly true. Stress is a condition that occurs when the human body is exposed to stimuli to which it is difficult for it to adapt. These stimuli can be very different - from loud sounds to conflicts with others. In a big city, we encounter such incentives quite often. These are the environmental conditions in which we live (for example, polluted air and loud noise from cars), a large number of people we meet (for example, in crowded public transport or in a traffic jam), time limits and heavy physical activity, problems arising in the family and at work. All of this can cause stress.

However, there are three limitations in this case. Firstly, people living not only in large but also in small ones face many stressors. settlements. These include, for example, working conditions that cause a person to experience severe physical fatigue or a feeling of injustice of what is happening. Secondly, even in big cities different people are in different conditions: someone gets on an old, crowded train in the morning, and someone on a comfortable express; someone is in traffic jams, and someone is driving on a free road; someone comes to work as if it were a holiday, while others dream of leaving it forever, and so on. This means that by choosing our mode of transportation, our life partner, or our job, we can influence our stress levels.

And finally, thirdly, the influence of many stressors depends on our interpretation of what is happening, our attitude towards it. Imagine that two people have to solve a difficult problem. One person thinks: “Well, here it is again! I do not know what to do. I will not be able to solve this problem, and I will be fired from work. In other words, he perceives it as a heavy burden that can cause serious trouble. Another person thinks differently: “How interesting! I don’t know what to do with it, but I will definitely come up with it and succeed.” He perceives this task as a challenge that he can answer. As a result, the first participant will experience stress more quickly than the second. A simple conclusion follows from this: yes, the big city constantly throws stimuli at us that can cause stress, but we are able to increase or decrease their impact.

Olga Gulevich, Doctor of Psychology, Associate Professor of the Department of Psychology, National Research University Higher School of Economics

Stress can't cause real harm to your health

This is not entirely true.

Stress can really mobilize the body's strength and help increase human activity. However, certain types of stress, especially those caused by intense stressors, can negatively affect a person's health. For example, there is traumatic stress, which has various detrimental psychological effects. It is believed that traumatic stress is caused by the influence of high-intensity stressors, which are associated with a threat to both the life of the person himself and his loved ones. Traumatic stress disrupts a person's normal functioning. Such stress is dangerous not only with its immediate manifestations, but also with its delayed manifestations. For example, with post-traumatic stress, a certain part of people who are more vulnerable to stress may experience consequences in the form of constant experience of this situation, both six months after the traumatic event and several years and even decades later.

If we are talking about the impact of such stress on a person’s physical health, then the consequences of stress can be expressed in different ways: the normal level of wakefulness is disrupted, problems with sleep arise, somatic reactions appear, such as rapid heartbeat, breathing, etc. With such stress, symptoms may also occur. problems with the gastrointestinal tract, various skin diseases and other consequences.

Of course, it is incorrect to separate the psychological consequences of stress from the consequences associated with a person’s physical health. The fact of a person’s systemic response to a situation has long been established. Thus, difficulties with regulating emotions can lead to increased time spent awake, difficulty falling asleep, interrupted sleep, and chronic early awakening. If a person does not get enough sleep, if he is constantly in a state of hypervigilance, that is, constantly expecting some kind of trouble, then he cannot recover or rest. And from here various diseases arise, primarily those to which a person is most sensitive.

But it is wrong to think that there is only harmful stress and distress. There is also another level of stress - eustress. Hans Selye wrote about such manifestations of stress. This is a beneficial stress, during which the body’s forces are mobilized and a person becomes toned. And this tone also performs a protective function. Let's say, when a person needs to avoid undesirable factors in some circumstances or when he really needs a certain state of tone in order to solve a real problem.

That is, stress can affect both beneficially and detrimentally to a person’s condition. It is important to note that this is also related to the human condition. The fact is that usually a person experiences various stresses and does not always quickly recover from them. Accumulated, cumulative stress is the result of experiencing many negative events, and therefore for one person a particular stressful event will not have obvious negative consequences, and for another it will be the last straw.

In general, the myth that stress does not harm human health has the right to exist, because by creating such a myth, people thereby try to convince themselves that there are no problems, to protect themselves from the anxiety that arises when thinking about the negative consequences of a stressful situation. : a person tends to deny the problem and, as it were, escape from his fears. In fact, this is an illusory salvation. Lack of knowledge that the consequences of stress can be negative does not protect a person from these consequences, but, on the contrary, disarms him in coping with them. After all, as you know, the denial of the problem does not eliminate it at all, but, paradoxically, makes it even more difficult to solve. The courage to admit to oneself that after one or another difficult event a person’s life and health have changed for the worse opens the way for him to turn to his own resources or to social support, to the help of other people.

Natalya Kharlamenkova, Doctor of Psychology, Head of the Laboratory of Post-Traumatic Stress Psychology, Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Head of the Department of Personality Psychology, GAUGN

The causes of emotional stress are associated with extreme impacts, primarily with the influence of organizational, social, environmental and technical features of the activity. It is based on violations of information-cognitive processes of activity regulation. And in this regard, all those life events that are accompanied by mental tension (regardless of the sphere of human life) can be a source of emotional stress or influence its development.
Consequently, the development of emotional stress in a person is associated not only with the characteristics of his work process, but also with a variety of events in his life, with different areas of his activity, communication, and knowledge of the world around him. Therefore, the division of the causes of emotional stress must be carried out taking into account the characteristics of the influence of various human life events that can be a source of stress. Chronic role tension develops under the influence of unfavorable conditions over a long period of time that do not pose an immediate threat to life. Some life circumstances are a combination of chronic stress (role strain) and short periods injuries. These life events can vary in length, but they differ from role strain in that they have a clearly defined beginning and end. Troubles (collisions" conflicts) are events of short duration, usually minor, but they can be included in the context of a long life event or role strain, which can increase their importance.

The source of traumatic exposure can be natural and man-made disasters, war and related problems (for example, famine), as well as individual trauma. As a result of growing research interest in this problem, stressors have been identified, but there is still no clear and generally accepted categorization of them. In addition to the above categories, he divided stressors directly or indirectly involved in organizing the anxiety-stress reaction in a person into four groups:

1. Stressors of vigorous activity:

extreme stressors

(combat, space flight, scuba diving, parachute jumping, mine clearance, etc.);

· production stressors (associated with great responsibility, lack of time);

· stressors of psychosocial motivation (competitions, contests, exams).

2. Evaluation stressors (evaluation of upcoming, present or past activities):

· “start” - stressors and memory stressors (upcoming competitions, medical procedures, memories of grief experienced, anticipation of a threat);

· victories and defeats (victory in a competition, academic success, love, defeat, death or illness of a loved one);

· spectacle.

3. Stressors of activity mismatch:

· disunity (conflicts in the family, at work, threat or unexpected but significant news);

· psychosocial and physiological limitations (sensory deprivation, muscle deprivation, illness, parental discomfort, hunger).

4. Physical and natural stressors (muscular stress, injury, darkness, strong sound, pitching, height, heat, earthquake).

As P.K. Anokhin pointed out in 1973, the very fact of impact or its expectation necessarily presupposes the presence of anxiety as a component of stress. Test anxiety, or pre-exam anxiety, was first identified by Sarason and Mandler in 1952. From Tuckman's perspective, they proposed that test anxiety is composed of two drives: task-oriented drives, which give the individual an incentive to reduce that drive by completing the task, and An anxiety-related drive that interferes with task performance by causing a person to feel unfit and helpless. It is these anxiety-driven urges that cause people to do things that have no connection with completing the task, and thereby worsen the outcome of the task. While task-oriented urges can be viewed as facilitating performance, anxiety-related urges can be seen as weakening the effectiveness of task completion.

They divided the debilitating, anxiety-related urge into two components:

1) anxiety, or “the cognitive expression of concern about one’s performance,” and

2) emotionality, or the human body's reaction to a situation, such as sweating and an increased heart rate.

1.3 Coping behavior.

In recent decades, the problem of overcoming conflict in the forms of compensation or coping behavior (coping behavior) has been widely discussed in foreign psychology. The concept of “coping”, or overcoming stress, is considered as an individual’s activity to maintain or maintain a balance between the demands of the environment and the resources that satisfy the requirements. Coping behavior is implemented through the use of coping strategies based on personal and environmental coping resources. It is the result of the interaction between a block of coping strategies and a block of coping resources. Coping strategies are the individual’s actual responses to a perceived threat as a way to manage stress. Relatively stable personal and social characteristics of people, which provide a psychological background for overcoming stress and contribute to the development of coping strategies, are considered as coping resources.

One of the most important environmental coping resources is social support in the form of information that leads the subject to assert that he is loved, valued, cared for, and that he is a member social network and has mutual obligations with it. Research shows that people receiving different types support from family, friends, and significant others, they are healthier and can more easily endure everyday life difficulties and illnesses. Social support, mitigating the impact of stressors on the body, thereby preserves the health and well-being of the individual, facilitates adaptation and promotes human development. Personal coping resources include self-concept, locus of control, perception of social support, low neuroticism, empathy, affiliation, and others. psychological characteristics. Strategies such as distraction and problem analysis are associated with the cognitive sphere, with emotional release - emotional release, optimism, passive cooperation, maintaining composure, with the behavioral sphere - distraction, altruism, active avoidance, seeking support, constructive activity.

Coping behavior, along with psychological defense mechanisms, is considered as the most important forms of adaptation processes and individuals’ responses to stressful situations. The distinction between defense mechanisms and coping mechanisms is carried out according to the parameters “activity-constructiveness” and “passivity-unconstructiveness”. Psychological defense is passive and unconstructive, while coping mechanisms are active and constructive. Karvasarsky notes that if coping processes are aimed at actively changing the situation and satisfying significant needs, then the processes of compensation and, in particular, psychological defense are aimed at mitigating mental discomfort.

The idea of ​​the development of defense mechanisms has undergone significant changes; an idea has emerged about the structural and level organization of defense mechanisms, taking into account their connection with other mechanisms of personality self-regulation. Nevertheless, the criteria for their differentiation from the mechanisms of coping behavior - a repertoire of strategies for active and constructive interaction with problematic, crisis or stressful situations - are still ambiguous. On the one hand, it is argued that defense mechanisms are low-effective and primitive coping mechanisms, on the other hand, a gradation of defense mechanisms is assumed according to the degree of activity in counteracting stress. Moreover, some of them may approach coping mechanisms. In contrast to defense mechanisms as unconscious and, in a certain sense, innate reflexive ways of regulating affective conflict, coping is considered a conscious strategy for interacting with reality, mastery of which is carried out through active learning. Thus, the difference between defense and coping mechanisms is seen in the varying degrees of their awareness, reflexivity, focus, controllability, and activity in interaction with reality. It is also possible to transform protective mechanisms into coping; in particular, in psychotherapy, when the patient acquires the ability to verbalize, reflect and recognize conflict as an intentional source of a defense mechanism, he can also choose and voluntarily use certain defenses that were necessary for survival in the past, but have become useless or harmful in the present . Then the latter are able to transform into rational, constructive, fundamentally new strategies for resolving and processing subjectively complex situations. Defenses lose their obsessively repetitive dynamics and chronic ability to distort internal and external reality, are “neutralized” and rise to a more mature level of functioning.

It is well known that in emotional situations it is not always possible to clearly trace the sequence of transition from self-control to self-influence on the emotional sphere due to the rather continuous flow of these processes and the speed of their succession. In people with an integral character, self-control occurs quickly, and therefore it is almost unnoticeable, but in people who are hesitant, indecisive, self-control is prolonged. According to J. Reikowski, difficulties and failures in attempts to discover a special control mechanism involved in ensuring emotional stability have led many researchers to become skeptical about the very assumption of the possibility of its existence.

In principle, O. A. Chernikova touches on this same aspect of the issue when she says that “great difficulties arise when controlling one’s own emotional processes. Emotional experiences of a person’s relationship to external phenomena and one’s own activities, emotional states and reactions are not always accessible to full conscious control and management. Often, even when we are aware of them, we still cannot subordinate them to our will.” The author sees the difficulty in developing techniques for consciously mastering one’s emotions in the unintentionality of their occurrence, the immediate nature of experiences, inertia and persistence, and the complexity of their awareness. And yet, the existing difficulties should not lead to the conclusion that emotions are generally inaccessible to conscious self-regulation, and, consequently, to self-control over their course.

Psychosomatics. Psychotherapeutic approach Kurpatov Andrey Vladimirovich

Stress is an emotion in action

The concept of stress was officially introduced into scientific use by G. Selye, who understood “stress” as a nonspecific response of the body to exposure environment. As is known, stress, according to G. Selye, occurs in three phases:

· an alarm reaction, during which the body’s resistance decreases (“shock phase”), and then defense mechanisms are activated;

· the stage of resistance (resistance), when the tension of the functioning of the systems achieves the organism’s adaptation to new conditions;

· the stage of exhaustion, in which the failure of defense mechanisms is revealed and the violation of the coordination of life functions increases.

However, G. Selye’s theory of stress reduces the mechanisms of nonspecific adaptation to changes in the levels of adaptation hormones in the blood, and the leading role of the central nervous system in the genesis of stress was openly ignored by this author, which in a sense is even funny - at least from the heights of today knowledge of the phenomenon of stress. Further, G. Selye tried to improve by introducing, in addition to “stress,” the concept of “psychological” or “emotional stress,” but this innovation did not produce anything other than further difficulties and paradoxes. And until science realized the fundamental role of emotion in the development of stress, the theory stood still for quite a long time, accumulating and shifting empirical material from place to place.

History of "stress"

Hans Selye is rightfully considered the founder of the theory of stress, who published the article “Syndrome Caused by Various Damaging Agents” on July 4, 1936 in the English journal Nature. In this article, he first described the body's standard reactions to the action of various pathogenic agents.

However, the first use of the concept of stress (in the sense of “tension”) appeared in literature, albeit in fiction, in 1303. The poet Robert Manning wrote in his poem “Handlying Synne”: “And this torment was manna from heaven, which the Lord sent to people who were there are forty winters in the desert and those who are in a lot of stress". G. Selye himself believed that the word “stress” goes back to the Old French or medieval English word pronounced as “distress” (G. Selye, 1982). Other researchers believe that the history of this concept is older and it did not come from English, but from the Latin “stringere,” meaning “to tighten.”

At the same time, the theory of stress itself was not essentially original in the presentation of G. Selye, since back in 1914 the brilliant American physiologist Walter Cannon (who was one of the founders of the doctrine of homeostasis and the role of the sympathoadrenal system in mobilizing the functions of the body struggling for existence) described the physiological aspects of stress. It was W. Cannon who identified the role of adrenaline in stress reactions, calling it the “attack and flight hormone.” At one of his reports, W. Cannon said that due to the mobilization effect that adrenaline has in conditions of strong emotions, the amount of sugar in the blood increases, thus reaching the muscles. The day after this speech by W. Cannon, the newspapers were full of headlines: “Angry men become sweeter!”

It is interesting that already in 1916 between I.P. Pavlov and W. Cannon began a correspondence, and then a long-term friendship, which, presumably, had a significant impact on the further development of the scientific ideas of both researchers (Yaroshevsky M.G., 1996).

At the same time, the undeniable fact is that stress is always accompanied by emotion, and emotions are manifested not only by psychological experiences, but also by vegetative and somatic (physical) reactions. However, we still do not correctly understand what is hidden behind the word “emotion”. Emotion is not so much an experience (the latter, without any reservations, can be classified as “feeling”, but not “emotion”), but rather a kind of vector that determines the direction of the activity of the whole organism, a vector that arises at the point of coordination of external and the internal environment, on the one hand, and the survival needs of this organism, on the other.

Moreover, such reasoning is by no means unfounded, since the place of neurophysiological localization of emotions is the limbic system, which, by the way, is sometimes called the “visceral brain.” The limbic system plays the most important role for the survival of the body, since it is it that receives and summarizes all information coming from both the external and internal environment of the body; According to the results of this analysis, it is she who triggers vegetative, somatic and behavioral reactions that ensure adaptation (adaptation) of the body to external environment and maintaining the internal environment at a certain level (Luria A.R., 1973). By and large, this entire cumulative reaction, triggered by the limbic system, is, in the strict use of the word, an “emotion.” Even with the most serious and thoughtful study, we will not find anything in the “emotions” of an animal other than vegetative, somatic and behavioral reactions designed to ensure the preservation of its life.

The role of emotion is the role of an integrator; it is it, based on the crossroads of paths (in the limbic system), that forces both the organism itself and all levels of mental organization to combine their efforts to solve the main task of the organism - the task of its survival. Even W. Cannon considered emotion not as a fact of consciousness, but as an act of behavior of an entire organism in relation to the environment, aimed at preserving its life. Almost half a century later, P.K. Anokhin will formulate a theory of emotions, where he will show that emotion is not just a psychological experience, but a holistic response mechanism, including “mental,” “vegetative,” and “somatic” components (Anokhin P.K., 1968). Indeed, simply worrying about danger is an absurd and absurd thing; this danger must not only be assessed, but eliminated - either by flight or in a fight. It is for this purpose that emotion is needed, which, one might say, includes the entire arsenal of “means of salvation,” starting from muscle tension and ending with the redistribution of activity from the parasympathetic to the sympathetic system with the parallel mobilization of all the humoral factors necessary for these purposes.

Irritation of the limbic structures, especially the tonsils, leads to an increase or decrease in heart rate, increased and depressed motility and secretion of the stomach and intestines, changes in the nature of breathing, secretion of hormones by the adenohypophysis, etc. The hypothalamus, which is generally considered a “place of dislocation” emotions, in fact, is provided only by its vegetative component, and not at all by the totality of psychological experiences, which without this vegetative component are frankly dead. If we begin to irritate the tonsils of the brain of an experimental animal, then it will present us with a whole range of negative emotions - fear, anger, rage, each of which is realized either by “fighting” or “flighting” from danger. If we remove the tonsils of an animal’s brain, we will get a completely non-viable creature that will look restless and unsure of itself, since it will no longer be able to more adequately evaluate information coming from the external environment, and therefore effectively protect its life. Finally, it is the limbic system that is responsible for translating information stored in short-term memory into long-term memory; That is why we remember only those events that were emotionally significant for us, and we do not remember at all what did not arouse a living affect in us.

Thus, if there is a specific point of application of a stressor in the body, then it is the limbic system of the brain, and if there is some specific reaction of the body to a stressor, then it is an emotion. Stress (that is, the body’s response to a stressor), therefore, is nothing more than the very emotion that W. Cannon called at one time “emergency reaction”, which literally translates as “extreme reaction”, and in Russian-language literature was called "anxiety reactions" or, more correctly, "mobilization reactions". Indeed, the body, when faced with danger, must mobilize for the purpose of salvation, and the best remedy, except to do this through the autonomic pathways of the sympathetic department, he has no.

As a result, we get a whole range of biologically significant reactions:

· increased frequency and strength of heart contractions, narrowing of blood vessels in the abdominal organs, expansion of peripheral (in the extremities) and coronary vessels, increased blood pressure;

· decreased muscle tone of the gastrointestinal tract, cessation of activity of the digestive glands, inhibition of digestion and excretion processes;

· dilation of the pupil, tension of the muscle providing the pilomotor reaction;

· increased sweating;

· strengthening the secretory function of the adrenal medulla, as a result of which the content of adrenaline in the blood increases, which in turn has an effect on the body’s functions corresponding to the sympathetic system (increased cardiac activity, inhibition of peristalsis, increased blood sugar, accelerated blood clotting).

What is the biological meaning of these reactions? It is easy to see that they all serve to ensure the processes of “fight” or “flight”:

· increased work of the heart with a corresponding vascular reaction leads to intensive blood supply to the working organs - primarily skeletal muscles, while organs whose activity cannot contribute to fight or flight (for example, the stomach and intestines) receive less blood and their activity decreases or stops altogether;

· to increase the body’s ability to exert force changes and chemical composition blood: sugar released from the liver becomes the energy material necessary for working muscles; activation of the blood anticoagulation system protects the body from too much blood loss in case of injury, etc.

Nature has provided for everything and everything seems to have been arranged wonderfully. However, it created a system of response and behavior adequate to the biological existence of a living being, but not social life a person with its orders and regulation. In addition, nature, apparently, did not count on the ability of abstraction and generalization, accumulation and transmission of information that emerged only in humans. She also did not know that danger could lurk not only in the external environment (as happens in the case of any other animal), but also “inside the head,” where the lion’s share of stressors is located in humans. Thus, this peculiar “genetic error” turned this brilliant mechanism of “protection” and “survival” of the animal, so lovingly and talentedly crafted by nature, into the Achilles heel of man.

Yes, the conditions of a person’s “social community” have brought significant confusion to this nature-established scheme of response to a stressor. The appearance of all of the above symptoms in cases where the danger is of a social nature (when, for example, we are faced with a difficult exam, speaking in front of a large audience, when we learn about our illness or the illness of our loved ones, etc.) is, as a rule, impossible considered appropriate. In such situations, we do not need somatovegetative support for our attempts to "fight" or "flight", because we simply do not use these behaviors under conditions of such stress. Yes, and it would be stupid to fight with the examiner, run away from the doctor, having learned about your illness, etc. At the same time, the body, unfortunately, reacts properly: our heart is pounding, our hands are trembling and sweating, our appetite is no good, dry mouth , but urination works, inappropriately, properly.

Yes, oddly enough, not only the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system suffers, but also the parasympathetic one. An increase in the former in response to a stressor can be accompanied by both suppression and activation of the antagonistic parasympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system (there may be an urge to urinate, stool disorders, etc.). It should be added that after the cessation of the action of excitatory factors, the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system, associated with the recovery process as a result of a kind of overcompensation, can lead to an overstrain of the latter. For example, experimentally proven cases of vagal cardiac arrest during severe stress are well known (Richter C.P., 1957), as well as the manifestation of severe general weakness in response to a strong stimulus, etc.

Psychogenic death

C.P. Richter illustrated the phenomenon of vagal cardiac arrest in experiments on rats. Tamed rats, lowered into a special cylinder of water, from which it was impossible to get out, remained alive for about 60 hours. If wild rats were placed in this cylinder, then their breathing almost immediately sharply slowed down and after a few minutes the heart stopped in the diastolic phase. However, if wild rats did not have a sense of hopelessness, which was ensured by preliminary “training”, during which these wild rats were repeatedly placed and removed from the cylinder, then the duration of survival in this cylinder in tamed and wild rats turned out to be the same (Richter C.P., 1957).

At the same time, it is impossible not to notice that a person - due to his mental activity, which often leads him to a dead end - is able to experience a feeling of hopelessness stronger than the mentioned rodents. It is no coincidence that even the mysterious “voodoo death” that occurs in an aboriginal after he learns about the shaman’s curse sent to him, or when he violates the “deadly taboo”, is explained by an overstrain not of the sympathetic, but of the parasympathetic system, as a result of which the same vagal cardiac arrest (Raikovsky Ya., 1979).

In addition, we, being “decent people”, do not consider it necessary (or possible) to show our emotions in such cases, that is, we forcibly restrain them. However, the somatovegetative reaction, as is known thanks to the works of P.K. Anokhin, from such suppression of the "external component of emotion" only intensifies! Thus, our heart, for example, in such situations will beat not less, but more than that of an animal if it were (let us assume such an unthinkable possibility) in our place. But we will not allow a “shameful flight”, “we will not stoop to that level of sorting things out with our fists” - we will restrain ourselves, and if we experience these feelings in the boss’s office or “in the scene of reconciliation” with a spouse who has set his teeth on edge, then we will restrain ourselves exclusively, we will suppress any negative emotional reaction. The animal, of course, would reasonably retreat from the bombardment of such strong stressors, but we will remain in place, trying to “save face” to the last, while experiencing a real vegetative catastrophe.

However, there is one more difference that significantly separates us from such “normal” animals in comparison with us; and this difference consists in the fact that the amount of stress that an animal experiences cannot be compared with the amount that befalls a person. The animal lives in “blissful ignorance”, but we are aware of all the possible and impossible troubles that can, as it sometimes seems to us, happen to us, because they happened to other people. We are afraid, among other things, of social assessments, of losing our hard-won positions in relationships with relatives, friends, and colleagues; we are afraid of appearing insufficiently knowledgeable, incompetent, insufficiently masculine or insufficiently feminine, not beautiful enough or too wealthy, too moral or completely immoral; Finally, we are frightened by financial troubles, unresolved everyday and professional problems, the absence of “big and big” things in our lives. eternal love”, a feeling of incomprehensibility, in short, “their name is legion.”

A monkey who became a man (for the duration of the experiment)

Not the most humane, but more than indicative experiment, demonstrating the tragedy of suppressing natural reactions that arise in a situation of stress, was carried out in the Sukhumi branch of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences by Yu.M. Repin and V.G. Stratsev. The essence of this study was that the experimental monkeys were immobilized, and after that they were exposed to a “threat signal”, which caused aggressive-defensive arousal. The impossibility, due to immobilization, of implementing both behavioral options programmed by nature (“fight” or “flight”) led to stable diastolic hypertension. The developing disease had a chronic course, combined with obesity, changes in the arteries of an atherosclerotic nature, clinical and morphological signs coronary disease hearts.

Sympathetic-adrenal activation of the initial period was gradually replaced by signs of depletion of this system in the stage of stabilization of hypertension. The adrenal cortex, which secreted significant amounts of steroid hormones during the formation of the pathology, underwent pronounced changes during the chronicization of the disease, creating a picture of “dyscorticism”, which is observed in a number of patients with arterial hypertension from the Homo Sapiens species.

All this allowed the authors to conclude that psychosomatic diseases (in this case, hypertension) are predominantly a human ailment that arises as a result of strict social regulation of behavior, which involves suppression (inhibition) of external - motor components of food, sexual and aggressive-defensive reactions (Repin Yu M., Stratsev V.G., 1975). Indeed, immobilization, which in the experiment was forcibly and cruelly applied to animals under stress, is our usual state in everyday life.

It’s hard to even imagine what kind of overstrain we end up subjecting our own autonomic nervous system to! In general, vegetative reactions - from palpitations to intestinal discomfort - are common phenomena in our lives, full of stress, anxiety, often unjustified, but still excellent fears. It is no coincidence that psychologists called the last - twentieth century - the “century of anxiety”: in the second half alone, the number of neuroses, according to WHO, increased 24 times! But most people, of course, are traditionally fixated on their psychological experiences, and the vegetative components of these anxieties pass relatively unnoticed for them. Another part of people (due to a number of circumstances, which will be discussed below) either simply do not notice their stressors, and therefore see only manifestations of “autonomic dysfunction”, or are fixated on these somato-vegetative manifestations of their anxiety before they manage to understand that naturally became alarmed for some completely unrelated reason.

How a person evaluates these reactions of his autonomic nervous system largely depends on how high the level of his psychological culture is, how well he is familiar with the mechanisms of formation and manifestation of emotions. Of course, for the most part in this spectrum the level of culture of our population is extremely low, so it is not strange that for very a large number For our fellow citizens, these natural vegetative manifestations of anxiety mean nothing more than symptoms of a “sick heart”, “bad blood vessels”, and therefore – “quick and inevitable death”. However, the specificity of a person’s perception of the “inner life” of his body also plays a certain role. It turns out that the differences here are very significant - some people are generally “deaf” to their heartbeat, increased (within reasonable limits) blood pressure, gastric discomfort, etc., while others, on the contrary, feel these deviations so clearly that they can cope with the resulting horror about their occurrence neither forces nor common sense they don't have enough.

In addition, special studies have found that individuals who report a greater number of autonomic changes during the experience of emotions objectively exhibit greater physiological sensitivity to the effects of emotional factors. That is, in people whose autonomic reactions are more distinct and well understood, the emotional process occurs with greater severity than in those individuals in whom these reactions are less pronounced (Mandler G. et al., 1958). In other words, impulses coming from internal organs support the emotional process, that is, here - in this group of people - we are dealing with a kind of self-starting machine. On the one hand, emotional reactions in these people are accompanied by an excessive (“excessive”) vegetative reaction, but, on the other hand, their sensation and awareness of the latter leads to the intensification of the initial emotional reaction, and therefore the excessive vegetative component inherent in it. Apparently, among our patients with vegetative-vascular dystonia (somatoform autonomic dysfunction), these individuals with a special ability to sense their own “vegetative excesses” predominate. It is this special sensitivity that determines that these patients will consider their main problem not to be anxiety or emotional instability, but the bodily (somatovegetative) manifestations of these emotional states, not realizing, however, that they have become a victim of “emotion” rather than “body.” .

In addition, ingenious experiments conducted to study human behavior after the introduction of adrenaline (which causes a state resembling a vegetative crisis) showed two possible options for the operation of such a “self-starting machine” (Schachter S., Singer J.E., 1962). In the first case, the psychological components of an emotional reaction fall into the “field of vision” of a person, and the further course of mental events comes to an increase in this emotion. In the second case, a person's attention is focused on the bodily (somatovegetative) components of the emotional reaction, which leads to the strengthening of the latter due to the unconscious connection to this process of the psychological components of this emotion. And if the first way of responding will give us patients with a plot of "emotional disorders" (that is, those suffering from anxiety-phobic symptoms), where, as a rule, some external factors (for example, fear public speaking or sexual contacts) that caused these reactions, then the second method is the main "supplier" of patients with vegetative-vascular dystonia (somatoform autonomic dysfunction), since, having fixed their attention on the vegetative components of emotion, these persons, on the one hand, are not aware of their own emotions, but therefore, they do not look for “external reasons”, on the other hand, they, not understanding the true cause of their vegetative paroxysms, begin to think that they are having a “heart attack”, while in fact they simply “fell into an affect”. Fixation on this "heart attack", supplemented by appropriate heartbreaking reflections, will increase this autonomic paroxysm, convincing these patients of the justification of their fears for their health.

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Emotions and emotional stress

Emotions are a person’s subjectively experienced attitude to various stimuli, facts, events, manifested in the form of pleasure, joy, displeasure, grief, fear, horror, etc. The emotional state is often accompanied by changes in the somatic (facial expressions, gestures) and visceral (changes in heart rate, breathing, etc.) spheres. The structural and functional basis of emotions is the limbic system, which includes a number of cortical, subcortical and brain stem structures.

The formation of emotions follows certain patterns. Thus, the strength of an emotion, its quality and sign (positive or negative) depend on the characteristics of the need and the likelihood of its satisfaction. Important role The time factor also plays a role in an emotional reaction, so short and, as a rule, intense reactions are called affects, and long and not very expressive - moods.

A low probability of need satisfaction usually leads to negative emotions, increase in probability – positive.

Emotions perform an important function in assessing an event, an object, or irritation in general. In addition, emotions are regulators of behavior, since their mechanisms are aimed at strengthening the active state of the brain (in the case of positive emotions) or weakening it (in the case of negative ones). And finally, emotions play a reinforcing role in education conditioned reflexes, and positive emotions are of primary importance in this.

A negative assessment of any impact on a person, his psyche can cause a general systemic reaction of the body - emotional stress(tension) caused by negative emotions. It can arise due to exposure, situations that the brain evaluates as negative, because there is no way to protect yourself from them or get rid of them. Consequently, the nature of the reaction depends on the person’s personal attitude to the event.

Due to social motives of behavior in modern man widespread received emotional stress caused by psychogenic factors (for example, conflicting relationships between people). Suffice it to say that myocardial infarction in seven out of ten cases is caused by a conflict situation.

A sharp decrease in physical activity had a noticeable effect on the mental health of a modern person, which violated the natural physiological mechanisms of stress, the final link of which should be movement.

When stress is applied, the pituitary and adrenal glands are activated, the hormones of which cause an increase in the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, which, in turn, cause an increase in the work of the cardiovascular, respiratory and other systems - all this contributes to the growth of human performance. This initial stage of stress, the restructuring stage that mobilizes the body to act against the stressor, is called " anxiety". During this stage, the main systems of the body begin to work with great tension. In this case, in the presence of pathology or functional disorders in any system, it may not withstand, and a breakdown will occur in it (for example, if the walls of a blood vessel are affected by sclerotic changes, then with a sharp increase blood pressure it may burst).

At the second stage of stress - “ sustainability"- the secretion of hormones is stabilized, the activation of the sympathetic system is maintained for high level. This allows you to cope with adverse effects and maintain high mental and physical performance.

Both first stages of stress are a single whole - eustress – this is a physiologically normal part of stress, contributing to the adaptation of a person to the situation that has arisen through an increase in his functional capabilities. But if the stressful situation lasts for a very long time or the stress factor turned out to be very powerful, then the adaptive mechanisms of the body are exhausted, and the third stage of stress develops, “ exhaustion“When performance decreases, immunity drops, and stomach and intestinal ulcers form. This is a pathological form of stress and is referred to as distress.

Reduce stress or undesirable consequences Maybe movement, which, according to I.M. Sechenov, (1863), is the final stage of any brain activity. The exclusion of movement noticeably affects the state of the nervous system, so that the normal course of the processes of excitation and inhibition with a predominance of the former is disrupted. Excitement that does not find a “way out” in movement disorganizes the normal functioning of the brain and the course of mental processes, which is why a person experiences depression, anxiety, and a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness. Such symptoms often precede the development of a number of psychosomatic and somatic diseases, especially stomach and intestinal ulcers, allergies, and various tumors. Such consequences are especially characteristic of highly active people who capitulate in a seemingly hopeless situation (type A). And vice versa - if you resort to movement under stress, then the destruction and utilization of hormones that accompany stress itself occurs, so that its transition to distress is excluded.

Another way to protect against negative consequences stress is change in attitude towards the situation. To do this, it is necessary to reduce the significance of the stressful event in a person’s eyes (“it could have been worse”), which makes it possible to create a new focus of dominance in the brain that will slow down the stressful event.

Currently, the greatest danger to humans is information stress. The scientific and technological progress in which we live has given rise to an information boom. The amount of information accumulated by humanity approximately doubles every decade, which means that each generation needs to assimilate a significantly larger amount of information than the previous one. But at the same time, the brain does not change, which, in order to assimilate the increased volume of information, has to work with increasing stress, and information overload develops. Although the brain has enormous capabilities for assimilation of information and protection from its excess, when there is a lack of time to process information, this leads to information stress. In the conditions of school education, a third factor is often added to the factors of volume of information and lack of time - motivation associated with high demands on the student from parents, society, and teachers. Diligent children experience particular difficulties in this regard. No less information overload is created by various types of professional activities.

Thus, the conditions modern life lead to excessively strong psycho-emotional stress, causing negative reactions and states leading to disruptions of normal mental activity.