Critical Thinking Exercise

� Do you think we as a culture are too stressed out?� Why or why not?

What is Stress?

� Stress - the physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses to events that are appraised as threatening or challenging.

� Distress - the effect of unpleasant and undesirable stressors.

� Eustress - the optimal amount of stress that people need to promote health and well-being.

� Alarm Phase - a stressor is perceived and a fight or flight response is activated by the sympathetic nervous system.

� Adrenal glands release hormones that increase heart rate, blood pressure, and the supply of blood sugar, resulting in a burst of energy

� Resistance Phase - the body mobilizes its resources to attain equilibrium, despite the continued presence of the stressor.

� Exhaustion Phase - continued stress response itself becomes damaging to the body.

� High blood pressure, ulcers, weakened immune system, etc.

How Do We Experience Stress?

Physical Symptoms

� Headaches

� Stomach aches

� Getting sick often

� Feeling fatigued, tired, or exhausted

� Having sleep problems (too much or too little)

� Others?

Emotional Symptoms

� Feeling anxious (e.g., nervous, tense, unable to relax)

� Feeling fearful or afraid (e.g., to make decisions)

� Feeling angry or hostile

� Others?

Cognitive Symptoms

� Excessive worrying

� �If I fail this exam, I�ll never be able to transfer.�

� �If I ask her out, she�s going to laugh at me.�

� Irrational thoughts

� �I�ll never be happy unless I have a romantic partner.�

� �I just know Dr. Ano hates me.�

Behavioral Symptoms

� Exaggerating normal behaviors (e.g., hard workers become workaholics; quiet people become loaners)

� Withdrawing socially

� Working harder (but getting less done)

� Fighting (about everything and nothing)

� Scapegoating (blaming others, finding fault, being critical or hard to please)

� Neglecting responsibilities

� Sharing fewer satisfactions (with family and friends)

� Violating your values

� Crying

� Taking alcohol or drugs

� Others?

Estimating Your Stress

� In general, how stressed out do you feel with the events that are going on in your life right now on a scale of 1 � 10 (1 being �not stressed at all� to 10 being �extremely stressed�)?

What Causes Stress?

� Stressors - events that cause a stress reaction.

� Cognitive Appraisals - how we think about or appraise a situation or event (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).

� Primary Appraisal - estimating the severity of a stressor and classifying it as a loss, threat, or challenge.

� Secondary Appraisal - estimating the resources available for coping with the stressor.

Major Sources of Stress

� Catastrophe - an unpredictable, large-scale event that creates a tremendous need to adapt and adjust as well as overwhelming feelings of threat.

� Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) - a disorder resulting from exposure to a major stressor, with symptoms of anxiety, nightmares, poor sleep, reliving the event, and concentration problems, lasting for more than one month.

� Major Life Events - cause stress by requiring adjustment.

� Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) - assessment that measures the amount of stress in a person�s life over a one-year period resulting from major life events (Holmes & Rahe, 1967).

� College Undergraduate Stress Scale (CUSS) - assessment that measures the amount of stress in a college student�s life over a one-year period resulting from major life events (Renner & Mackin, 1998).

Daily Sources of Stress

� Hassles - the daily annoyances of everyday life (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).

� Children experience stress from various daily hassles (Ellis et al., 2001).

� Ages 3-5: getting teased.

� Ages 6-10: getting bad grades.

� Ages 11-15: feeling pressured to use drugs.

� Ages 16-22: trouble at school or work.

� Pressure - the psychological experience produced by urgent demands or expectations for a person�s behavior that come from an outside source.

� Uncontrollability - the degree of control that the person has over a particular event or situation.

� The less control a person has, the greater the degree of stress.

� Frustration - the psychological experience produced by the blocking of a desired goal or fulfillment of a perceived need.

� Conflict - psychological experience of being pulled toward or drawn to two or more desires or goals, only one of which may be attained.

� Approach�Approach Conflict - conflict occurring when a person must choose between two desirable goals.

� Avoidance�Avoidance Conflict - conflict occurring when a person must choose between two undesirable goals.

� Approach�Avoidance Conflict - conflict occurring when a person must choose or not choose a goal that has both positive and negative aspects.

Social Sources of Stress

� Job Stress - workload, lack of variety or meaninglessness, lack of control over decisions, lack of job security, long hours, poor work conditions (Murphy, 1995).

� Burnout � negative changes in thoughts, emotions, and behavior as a result of prolonged stress or frustration (Miller & Smith, 1993).

� Poverty - lack of sufficient money to provide the basic necessities of life (Schmitz et al., 2001).

� Acculturative Stress - stress resulting from the need to change and adapt to the dominant or majority culture (Berry & Kim, 1998).

Stress and Personality

� Type A Personality - person who is ambitious, time conscious, extremely hardworking, and tends to have high levels of hostility and anger as well as being easily annoyed (Friedman & Rosenman, 1974).

� Type B Personality - person who is relaxed and laid-back, less driven and competitive than Type A, and slow to anger (Rosenman et al., 1975).

� Type C Personality - pleasant but repressed person, who tends to internalize his or her anger and anxiety and who finds expressing emotions difficult (Temoshok & Dreher, 1992).

� Hardy Personality - a person who seems to thrive on stress but lacks the anger and hostility of the Type A personality (Kobasa, 1979).

� Commitment: to values, sense of identity, and family.

� Control: sense of control over lives.

� Challenge: see stressful events as a challenge.

Stress and Explanatory Style

� Optimists - people who expect positive outcomes.

� Longer life and increased immune system functioning (Maruta et al., 2002).

� Pessimists - people who expect negative outcomes.

� Higher death rate, physical and emotional problems, less energy, and less ability to take part in social activities (Maruta et al., 2002).

Positive Implications of Optimism (Seligman, 2002)

� Optimists are less likely to develop learned helplessness.

� Optimists are more likely to take care of their health by preventive measures.

� Optimists are less likely to be depressed.

� Optimists have better immune systems.

Stress and Religion/Spirituality (Pargament, Koenig, & Perez, 2000)

� Meaning: finding purpose and reinterpreting stressors in a positive light.

� Comfort: a sense of hope and internal peace.

� Control: a sense of �control� over the uncontrollable.

� Social Support/Intimacy: from religious community and the divine.

� Life Transformation: an opportunity to make positive changes.

Ways to Deal with Stress

� Three types of people (according to Dr. Ano)

� Repress-ers � people who minimize and deny their levels of stress.

� Accept-ers � people who realistically evaluate and deal with their stress.

� Exaggerate-ers � people who overreact and �freak out� to even minimal levels of stress.

� Which one are you?

Ways to Deal with Stress

� Coping Strategies - actions that people can take to master, tolerate, reduce, or minimize the effects of stressors.

� Problem-Focused Coping- coping strategies that try to eliminate the source of a stress or reduce its impact through direct actions.

� Emotion-Focused Coping - coping strategies that change the impact of a stressor by changing the emotional reaction to the stressor.

Problem-Focused Strategies
(Adapted from Kosslyn & Rosenberg, 2006)

� Active Coping - actively trying to remove or work around the stressor.

� Planning - thinking about how to manage a stressor.

� Instrumental Social Support - seeking concrete advice, assistance, or information.

� Suppression of Competing Activities - putting other activities on hold in order to deal with the stressor.

� Restraint Coping - waiting to act until the appropriate time.

Emotion-Focused Strategies
�(Adapted from Kosslyn & Rosenberg, 2006)

� Emotional Social Support - seeking encouragement, moral support, sympathy, and understanding from others.

� Venting Emotions - talking about distressing feelings.

� Positive Reinterpretation/Growth - reinterpreting the stressor in a positive way or a challenge.

� Behavioral Disengagement - reducing efforts to deal with the stressor.

� Mental Disengagement - turning to other activities to distract attention from the stressor.

Social Support

� Social Support System - the network of family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, and others who can offer support, comfort, or aid to a person in need.