Emotional-stressors move a person from a peaceful state to an uncomfortable state and, depending upon the course of action chosen, back to a peaceful state again.

The uncomfortable state is referred to as the "stress response." The stress response is made up of the internal pressures and/ or anxieties that the body feels a need to expel during the course of living each day. The stress response is natures' cue for a person to move into a course of action. The goal of this action is to move the body from an uncomfortable state back to a peaceful state.

Some stress cycles are easier to move through than others. Consider the bio-stressor "Dust in the nose," and the cycle that accompanies it (figure 2).

From the peaceful state, the body moves to an uncomfortable state as the bio-stressor dust in the nose acts on the body. This is the natural stress response to dust in the nose. The stress response is the body's cue to move into action. The goal of the action is to resolve the stress cycle back the peaceful state. In this case, the action of sneezing could resolve the cycle back to the peaceful state (figure 3).

The action taken to resolve the cycle is called the "Expulsion." In this example, the expulsion is a sneeze.

next: A Closer Look