Stress is an umbrella term used to describe a set of physical, emotional, mental and behavioural responses to a perceived threat. Stress isn’t caused by an event, but by our response to the event. The same event could happen to two people e.g. redundancy. One may respond with anxiety and fear while the other sees the opportunity as a positive challenge.
Sometimes our stress threshold becomes overwhelming and this can affect us physically (tension, headaches), emotionally (increased worrying), mentally or cognitively (we might think we can’t cope) and behaviorally (we might overeat when we’re too stressed).