There are two kinds of external demands and pressures: physical and psychosocial. External physical demands and pressures - gravity, air pollution, noise pollution, extreme weather conditions, crowding, etc. - affect the body directly. External psychosocial pressures and demands include work, family, personal, social, environmental and financial issues, and are what most of us think about when we think about stress.

All these demands and pressures compete with one another for our attention, generally all at once. Psychological research, however, has shown we can only pay attention to seven items, plus or minus two, at a time. Something has to give, so we set our own subjectively defined priorities as to what we'll pay attention to, and when.

Those external competing and conflicting demands and pressures - that big mass of items we "have to do" - combine with our internal demands and pressures - those things we carry within us. In our graphic, the things clamoring for attention from inside the person's head include:

• Physiological demands and pressures are those such as hunger, thirst, fatigue, pain, sexual desire, needs for elimination, etc.
• Psychological demands and pressures include your views of who and what you are, what your rights and privileges are, expectations of yourself and others, psychological baggage from the past, etc.

Your internal demands and pressures are thus added to your external demands and pressures to produce a total burden of demand and pressure composed of many competing and conflicting elements. We focus on the external psychosocial demands and pressures and the symptoms of stress they create:

• Job
• Family
• Personal
• Social  
• Environmental
• Financial  

Click on the areas of demand and pressure (above) that are problematic for you to learn more about what you can do to get them under control.