Stress and coping workbook

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Q1

an activity, event, or other stimulus that causes stress

stressor is simply a fancy term used to describe any event that triggers your parasympathetic nervous system (the body's way of dealing with stressful situations). In other words, an event that causes stress.

Bad Stressors

1.Loosing Your Job

the prospect of not being able to support yourself, or family is enough to keep anyone awake at night.

2. Illness

Illness: Illness, whether relatively short in duration, for example having the flu, or something more long-term, like recovering from bypass surgery, can also have quite an impact on your life.

Good Stressors

1. Having a baby

Many people have spent several years waiting and anticipating the birth of their first child, yet may feel stressed and scared as the impending birth looms. Fears associated with not being "ready" for such a life-changing event, or feeling inept in some way, is quite common.

2. Getting Married

Getting married is not easy because there are usually a hundred and one different details that need to be taken care of, not to mention the fact that you are going through a major life change. You may adore your spouse and know down to your very soul that this is the right decision for you, and still feel stressed by this huge life change.

Stressors are demands made by the internal or external environment that upset balance, thus affecting physical and psychological well-being and requiring action to restore balance

Q2

Headache.

Muscle tension or pain.

Chest pain.

Fatigue.

Change in sex drive.

Stomach upset.

Sleep problems.

Q3

Hans Selye (1907- 1982) was a Hungarian endocrinologist, first to give a scientific explanation for biological stress.

Hans Selye explained his stress model based on physiology and psychobiology as General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS).

His model states that an event that threatens an organism’s well-being (a stressor) leads to a three-stage bodily response:

Stage 1: Alarm

Stage 2: Resistance

Stage 3: Exhaustion

He explained about hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis) system which prepares the body to cope with stress.

It must also be criticized that Selye used non-humans (rats) for his research on human response to stress. This could have lead to some of his errors as rats may not respond in the same psychological way as humans.

Q4.

Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s, stress was considered to be a transactional phenomenon dependant on the meaning of the stimulus to the perceiver (Lazarus, 1966; Antonovsky, 1979).

The Transactional Model of Stress and Coping is a framework for evaluating the processes of coping with stressful events. Stressful experiences are construed as person-environment transactions. These transactions depend on the impact of the external stressor. This is mediated by firstly the person’s appraisal of the stressor and secondly on the social and cultural resources at his or her disposal (Lazarus & Cohen, 1977; Antonovsky & Kats, 1967; Cohen 1984).

When faced with a stressor, a person evaluates the potential threat (primary appraisal). Primary appraisal is a person’s judgment about the significance of an event as stressful, positive, controllable, challenging or irrelevant. Facing a stressor, the second appraisal follows, which is an assessment of people’s coping resources and options (Cohen, 1984). Secondary appraisals address what one can do about the situation. Actual coping efforts aimed at regulation of the problem give rise to outcomes of the coping process. In the table below the key constructs of the Transaction Model of Stress and Coping are summarized.

Concept

Definition

Primary Appraisal

Evaluation of the significance of a stressor or threatening event.

Secondary Appraisal

Evaluation of the controllability of the stressor and a person’s coping resources.

Coping efforts

Actual strategies used to mediate primary and secondary appraisals.

Problem management

Strategies directed at changing a stressful situation.

Emotional regulation

Strategies aimed at changing the way one thinks or feels about a stressful situation.

Meaning-based coping

Coping processes that induce positive emotion, which in turn sustains the coping process by allowing reenactment of problem- or emotion focused coping.

Outcomes of coping

Emotional well-being, functional status, health behaviors.

Dispositional coping styles

Generalized ways of behaving that can affect a person’s emotional or functional reaction to a stressor; relatively stable across time and situations.

Optimism

Tendency to have generalized positive expectancies for outcomes.

Information Seeking

Attentional styles that are vigilant (monitoring) versus those that involve avoidance (blunting)

Table from Glanz et al, 2002, p. 214

In addition, interaction or transactional theories emphasize the relation between the individual and the environment

Q5

personality TYPE LIKELY TO EXPERIENCE STRESS :Angered , aggressive, Perfectctionist, helpless/hopeless, Ultr competitive

Personality type resistant to Stress :: Proud but humble Survivor , Spiritual

Q6

Emotional based-coping • Used when we feel we have little control of the situation, thus we can’t manage the source of the problem • Involves gaining strategies for regulating emotional distress – e.g. 1. Avoiding – ‘I’m not going to school’ 2. Distancing yourself from the emotion ‘I’m not stressed, it doesn’t matter’ 3. Acceptance – ‘I failed the exam, but I still have 4 other subjects’ 4. Seeking emotional support from Emotion based-coping – your partner 5. Selective attentionattempts to reduce negative 6. Alcoholemotional state/ appraisal of 7. Venting anger demands

B.

. Problem based-coping • Used when we feel we have control of the situation, thus can manage the source of the problem • Thus our possible strategies could include: 1. Defining the problem 2. Generating, evaluating alternative solutions 3. Learning new skills to manage stressor Problem based-coping – 4. Reappraising – by attempts to change reducing our egonegative emotions/ stress involvement

Q7

Controlled breathing can cause physiological changes that include:

lowered blood pressure and heart rate

reduced levels of stress hormones in the blood

reduced lactic acid build-up in muscle tissue

balanced levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood

improved immune system functioning

increased physical energy

increased feelings of calm and wellbeing.

Exercise increase in oxygen