Notes from Live Lecture

Page 1

Physiological Reaction of Stress - The HPA and SAM response systems - ?????

- Stress is a response to a perceived threat or challenge. If we perceive something that is a threat, we act differently than if we perceive it as a challenge.

- How we perceive things sometimes is more important than what they actually are.

- First to identify stressors: Holmes and Rahe (pronounced raow)

Chronic stressors: poverty, job situation, continuous conflict

There's a new one that we just defined. Acculturative stress: influenced by lots of immigrants. Adapting to a new culture. Having a lot of stress due to this. Another stressor

Daily Hassles, throw us over the edge.

Hans Selye identified the first to identify physical reactions. So did Walter Cannon. Hans Selye came up with a formula of stress: GAS. General Adaptation Syndrome

HPA: Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal

SAM: Sympathetic nervous system Adrenal Medulla

SAM - Fight or flight

Autonomic nervous system: we do not control. Two parts to the autonomic system; stress and peace

In SAM, the adrenal gland, medulla is stimulated. Adrenal medulla secretes

epinephrine and norepinephrine which triggers the sympathetic nervous system

HPA system: At the same time, the hypothalamus wakes up the pituitary gland which sends information to a different gland adrenal cortex??

Corticosteroids or cortisol?????. So our muscles can do something, fight or flight. HPA shuts down unimportant functions and gives the body enough glucose and fats to be able to run or fight. As a result from these steroids our T cell production. Steroids do not make your muscles stronger. These steroids increases blood sugar and metabolism. It also influences memory formation. Snapshot memories are good but our thinking memory and ouru ability to plan and remember decline.. Cortisol increases appetite and somethinga bout the m. IDKIDKIDK. Good in the short term bad in the bad term. Good at getting the immune system working.

Having the steroids floating around in our systems are not good for us.

norepinephrine/epinephrine start the fight or flight system. They also help get glucose out.

Two ways of coping: problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping

Problem solving is when we come up with solutions for a problem.

Type a and b have the same grittiness Type D personalitie: type a on steroids. Not only avoid confrontnig things, poor social skills, anxious individuals. Distressed people

Lazarus says that we appriase things when we cope. We look at a stressor and our first look at something is what is this? In primary appraisal. What is this thing? Is it something that I want to define as a harm or loss? A threat? or a challenge? Stressor is either a threat, challenge, or it is a harm/loss. A threat is something that I look at and I say, wow, this is going to be a problem here. I may even practice some emotional copig skils with a threat. In terms of emotion-focused coping is calling a friend and complaining about it. I won't do well on planning things, this is just rather scary.

a challenge uses some problem-focused coping. Can I handle this? Or is this pretty bad? . Harm/loss is something that already happened and we are sizing up what happened and how it impacted us.

Martin seligman - too much focusing on illness. Happiness equation