The average person under stress begins with little tension upon awakening. Then as the stress-filled day progresses, this tension gradually mounts, often reaching a high level in the late afternoon when energy has dropped to one of its lowest daily points.
Tension may continue to increase into the evening, but usually it diminishes and is influential mainly because of the low levels of energy during that period.
Besides daily biological cycles, the most important causes of the variations in energy and tension are health, sleep, exercise, food, thoughts, and stress (Davis, M., Eshelman, E. R., & McKay, M. 2000). Each of these variables exerts significant influence on energy and tension, and therefore, on mood. Energy level is something like a barometer of the state of our body in relation to these variables and usually, is directly affected when any of them change. Tension is the elemental mood reaction to danger or threat and has an important cognitive basis. It is very much related to our interpretation of events.
The subjective experience of these two major components of mood can be readily explained using some simple concepts. For example, consider calm-energy. in the middle to the late morning, this pleasant state often represents the predominant mood. Or for the person who lives a 90-mile-an-hour lifestyle, this may be the time of a moderately exciting mood state of tense-energy. But tension for too long a period, even if it seems pleasant for a while, will take a toll, and tense-energy will give way to the markedly unpleasant state of tense-tiredness. In a typical day, tense-tiredness may reach a high point in the late afternoon and continue until bedtime, producing insomnia and only a fitful sleep (Fried, R. 2000).
Energy and tension have an interesting relationship to each other.............
