Hi everyone!

Today, let us talk about stress.

Stress

What is stress? Everyone knows what stress is right? But how do you actually put it into words? Stress is the term used to describe the physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses to events that are appraised as threatening or challenging.

Stressors are events that cause a stress reaction.

There are two types of stress which is distress and eustress. Distress is the effect of unpleasant and undesirable stressors. Eustress on the other hand is the effect of positive events, or the optimal amount of stress that people need to promote health and well-being.

Cognitive Factors of Stress

The cognitive appraisal approach states that how people think about a stressor determines, at least in part, how stressful that stressor will become.

Primary appraisal - the first step in assessing a stress, and involves estimating the severity of a stressor and classifying it either as a threat or challenge.

Secondary appraisal - the second step in assessing a threat, which involves estimating the resources available to the person for coping with the stressor.

The first and second panel shows an example of a primary appraisal by estimating the severity of the stress. The third and fourth panel is an example of secondary appraisal by asking what he can do to cope with the stressor.

Causes of Stress

Stress doesn't just appear out of nowhere; there must be a cause.

1. Catastrophe

A catastrophe is an unpredictable, large-scale event that crates a tremendous need to adapt and adjust as well as overwhelming feelings of threat.

This type of stressor is unforeseen and cannot be controlled. Examples would be earthquakes, tsunamis, or floods. Natural disasters such as these could cause an individual to lose his or her home and therefore, need to adapt to a new life.

A tsunami is an example of a catastrophe.

A person who has stress caused by a catastrophe may have Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD is a disorder resulting from exposure to a major stressor, with symptoms of anxiety, nightmares, poor sleep, reliving the event, and concentration problems, resulting for more than one month.

2.  Major life events

Major life events require adaption. Common examples would be marriage, death,giving birth, or even divorce. Some of these events, such as marriage, is positive, while others, such as death, is negative.

To measure the amount of stress in a person's life, over a one-year period resulting from major life events, the Social Readjusting Rating Scale (SRRS) is used. To measure the stress of a college student, on the other hand, the College Undergraduate Stress Scale (CUSS) is used. This is because students generally have different causes of stress than other people. Students have assignments, deadlines, university applications.

Go to this site to check out how stressed you are!

3. Hassles

Hassles are the daily annoyances we face while going through our everyday lives. For example, I forgot my wallet this morning so I had to skip breakfast. Obviously, this was annoying for me.

Psychological Sources of Stress

The psychological reasons why people find some events stressful fall into several categories: 

1. Pressure

What is Pressure? Force over area? Hahaha…no that is for physic. In psychology, Pressure is when there are urgent demands or expectations for a person’s behavior coming from an outside source. Pressure occurs when people feel that they must work harder, faster or do more, as when meeting a deadline or studying for final exams.

2. Uncontrollability

Uncontrollability is 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.

3. Frustration

Frustration occurs when people are blocked or prevented from achieveing a desired goal or fulfilling a perceived need. The possible reactions when people feel frustration:

Aggression: actions meant to harm or destroy

Displaced aggression: taking out one’s frustrations on some less threatening or more available target, a form of displacement.

Escape or withdrawal: Leaving the presence of a stressor, either literally or by a psychological withdrawal into fantasy. (Drug, abuse or apathy)

4. Conflict

Whenever you find yourself torn between two or more competing and incompatible desires, goals, or actions, you are in conflict. There are few types of conflict:

1.       Approach-approach conflict

Conflict occurs when a person must choose between two desirable goals.

2.       Avoidance-avoidance conflict

Conflict occurring when a person must choose between two undesirable goals.

3.       Approach-avoiding conflict

Conflict occur when a person must choose or not choose a goal that has both positive and negative aspects

4.       Double Approach-avoiding conflict

Conflict in which the person must decide between two goals with each goal possessing both positive and negative aspects

5.       Multiple Approach-avoiding conflict

Conflict in which the person must decide between more than two goals with each goal must decide between more than two goals with each goal possessing bothy positive and negative

Suicide

Suicidal behavior is highly linked to depression

People who talk about suicide should be taken seriously help. When your friends for example wan to suicide, stop them and help them,

Actually, our autonomic nervous system that is responsible for the physiological reaction to stress. It consists of:

1. Sympathetic system which responds to stressful events

2. Parasympathetic system which restores the body to normal functioning after the stress has         ceased.

According to Han Selye, there are three stages of the body's physiological reaction to stress, including alarm, resistance and exhaustion. This is what we call as General Adaptation Syndrome.

Other than that, stress also is always related to immune system because our immune system sometimes can be affected by stress. The study of the effects of psychological factors such as stress, emotions, thoughts, and behavior on the immune system is called as Psychoneuroimmunology.

Immune system - the system of cells, organs, and chemicals of the body that responds to attacks from diseases, infections, and injuries.

Natural killer cell - immune system cell responsible for suppressing viruses and destroying tumor cells.

Now, let's talk about the ways to deal with stress

Coping strategies is  actions that people can take to master, tolerate, reduce, or minimize the effects of stressors.

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

Emotion-focused coping is coping strategies that change the impact of a stressor by changing the emotional reaction to the stressor.

Defense Mechanism	Explanation	Examples
Denial	A person refuses to acknowledge or recognize a threatening situation	Pat is an alcoholic who denies being an alcoholic.
Repression	A person refuses to consciously remember an unacceptable event, pushing the events into unconscious mind	Regan, who was sexually abused as a child, cannot remember the abuse at all.
Rationalization	A person invents acceptable excuses for an unacceptable behaviour	“If I don’t have breakfast, I can have that piece of cake later on without hurting my diet.”
Projection	A person invents acceptable excuses for an unacceptable behaviour	Britni is attracted to her sister’s husband but denies this and believes the husband is attracted to her.
Reaction formation	A person form opposite emotion from what they are feeling, keep her feelings hidden from self and others	Charley is unconsciously attracted to Sean but outwardly voices an extreme hatred of homosexuals.
Displacement	Redirecting feelings from threatening to unthreatening	Sandra gets reprimanded by her boss and goes home to angrily picj a fight with her husband.
Regression	Persons fall back on childlike pattern in responding from stressful situation.	Four-year-old Blaine starts wetting his bed after his parents bring home a new baby.
Identification	Try to become someone else to deal with anxiety	Samantha really admires Emily, the most popular girl in school, and tries to co[y her behaviour and dress.
Compensation	Makes up for inferiorities in one area by becoming superior in another	Ethan is not good at athletics, so he puts all of his energies into becoming an academic scholar.
Sublimation	Channelling unacceptable urges into socially acceptable behaviour	Ryder, who is very aggressive, becomes a mixed martial arts fighter.

For every problems, there are solution. For every stresses, there are meditation!

Meditation is  mental series of exercises meant to refocus attention and achieve a trancelike state of consciousness. Now, let us look at this picture below, on how people meditate to release their stress.

Basically, meditation is about focussing the mind on particular thing, ignoring other things simultaneously, so that the problems that causes the stress will be released. Many people have used this meditation to release their stress. The most common type of meditation is yoga, where you always see in the TV! But, you don't really have to do yoga to meditate, instead, you can do your own meditation at any time, at any place. For example, if you are nervous before a match, you can just sit calmly and thing about your girlfriend or boyfriend (if you have one). the point is to focus on one thing that is pleasant to you!

So, there are two types of meditation, which are:

1. Concentrative meditation - form of meditation in which a person focuses the mind on some repetitive or unchanging stimulus so that the mind can be cleared of disturbing thoughts and the body can experience relaxation.

2. Receptive meditation - form of meditation in which a person attempts to become aware of everything in immediate conscious experience, or an expansion of consciousness.

But, bear in mind that meditation is not the only solition for coping   with stress. Other than meditation, there are many other ways to release the stress, and one's culture also influences the ways they coop with their stress. in short, different cultural reacts differently with stress from other culture.

One of the most important element that can influence people to manage their problem which causes the stress is religion. this is because religion always teach to see everything at the positive side, or in other word, to be optimistic!

 
Happy news for evreyone! All the methods suggested above are not the only ways to deals with stress. In fact, there are millions ways to deal with stress. So, below are some suggestion of activities to promote wellness for everyone:

•         Exercise

•         Social activities

•         Getting enough sleep

•         Eating healthy foods

•         Having fun

•         Managing one’s time

•         Practicing good coping skills

Now, let me tell you about the personality factors in stress. As we all know, there are many types of people in this world. Their personality usually show who they are and can be one of the factors that causes stress in their lives. 

So, let's start with Type A personality. Type A personality is a WORKAHOLICS person who is ambitious, time conscious, extremely hard working, and tends to have high levels of hostility and anger as well as being easily annoyed. They feel a constant sense of pressure and have a strong tendency to try to do several things at once. This clearly shows that a person with type A personality has a higher chance of getting coronary heart disease because of their hostility and they are easily getting stressed in whatever they do as they are perfectionist.

Meanwhile, type B personality show the person who is RELAXED and LAID BACK, less driven and competitive than Type A, and slow to anger. This type of personality is prefers to take a book to the beach to cover up their face than actually read the book. They seem relaxed and peace and tend to be easygoing. A person with type B personality will get a lower chance of getting coronary heart disease because their lives are full of fun and less stress.

Other than that, there is also a type C personality. Type C personality is the third type of personality identified by researchers Temoshok and Dregher (1992) and it is associated with a higher incidence of cancer. Type C people tend to be very pleasant and try to keep peace but find it difficult to express emotions, especially negative ones. They tend to internalize their anger and often experience a sense of despair over the loss of a loved one or a loss of hope. They are often lonely. These personality characteristics are strongly associated with cancer.

Another type of personality is Type H or Hardy personality. This personality is quite similar with type A personality but they are lacking the anger and hostility of the type A personality. They are the type of people that seem to thrive on stress instead of letting stress wear them down. They are different from ordinary, hostile type A people and others who suffer more ill effects due to stress in three ways:

·         Have deep sense of commitment in their life

·         They control of their lives and what happens to them

·         If there is threat, it’s not frightening them but it’s a challenge to be met and answered

The four personality types discussed so far could be summed up this way: If life gives you lemons, (according to the textbook)

Ø  Type A people get enraged and throw the lemons back, having a minor heart attack while doing so.

Ø  Type B people gather all the lemons and make lemonade.

Ø  Type C people don’t say anything but fume inside where no one can see.

Ø  Type H people gather the lemons, make lemonade, sell it, turn it into a franchise business, and make millions.

So, which type of personality are you? Whichever you are, enjoy your life!

Before I proceed to the next subtopic, I will tell you the other personal factors that have an influence on people’s reactions to stressors (in addition to personality type). One of these factors is the attitude that people have toward the things that happen to them in life. They are optimists and pessimists. Optimists are people who expect positive outcomes while pessimists are people who expect negative outcomes. For an optimist, a glass is half full, whereas for a pessimist, the glass is half empty. Research shown that optimism is associated with longer life and increased immune-system functioning. Meanwhile, the pessimists had a much higher death rate than did the optimists.

Okay, let us proceed to another subtopic which is stress and social factors. As stated earlier, much of the stress in everyday life comes from having to deal with other people and with the rules of social interaction. Social factors increasing the effects of stress include poverty, stresses on the job or in the workplace, and entering a majority culture that is different from one’s culture of origin. One of the more serious effects of workplace stress is a condition called burnout. Burnout can be defined as negative changes in thoughts, emotions, and behaviour as a result of prolonged stress or frustration, resulting in both mental and physical exhaustion (Miller & Smith, 1993). Symptoms of burnout are:

      Exhaustion

      Extreme dissatisfaction

      Pessimism

      Lowered job satisfaction

      A desire to quit

College students can also suffer from burnout when the stresses of college life-term papers, exams, assignments, and the like-become overwhelming. This condition can be lessened when a person at risk of burnout is a member, within the work environment, of a social group that provides support and also the motivation to continue to perform despite being exhausted (Halbesleben & Bowler 2007).

I am sure that there are some of you that will further your study in another country. So, you may be facing with the acculturative stress, a stress resulting from the need to change and adapt a person’s ways to the majority culture. The way you choose to enter into the majority culture can have an impact on the degree of stress you will experience (Berry & Kim, 1988). There are four methods of acculturation:

Integration

The individual tries to maintain a sense of the original cultural identity while also trying to form positive relationship with members of the majority culture.

Assimilation

The minority person gives up the old cultural identity and completely adopts the majority culture’s ways.

Separation

Is a pattern in which the minority person rejects the majority culture’s ways and tries to maintain the original cultural identity.

Marginalized

Neither maintaining contact with their original culture nor joining the majority culture.

You may be heard of the term social-support system. What is that exactly? For your information, social –support system is the network of family, friends, neighbours, co-workers, and others who can offer support, comfort, or aid to a person in need. They are giving help to those people who are having problems or stress in their lives so that they can live a healthy lives. People with good social-support systems are less likely to die from illness or injuries than those without such support. So, always try your best to help your friends in need!