Coping with stress
Understanding Stress and Stressors
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•Stress is the anxious or threatening feeling that comes when we interpret or appraise a situation as being more than our psychological resources can adequately handle (Lazarus, 1999).
–Stressors are demands that present a threatened or actual loss or scarcity of resources (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984).
–In stress & coping, individual and contextual processes are intertwined (Sandler et al., 2000).
Risk & protective factors in stress & coping
•Risk factors: They reflect problematic individual outcomes.
•E.g., Problem behaviours
•Protective factors: They reflect strengths or resources associated with positive individual outcomes.
•Support from others, your skills, your beliefs or practices, money, time.
Understanding stress & stressors
•What resources (if any) may help you cope with these stressful experiences?
•What things can one do to cope with these experiences?
•Serious illness or injury?
•Failing an exam?
•Becoming pregnant?
•Loss of a job?
•Loss of a loved one?
•Enduring divorce?
•Living on low-income?
•Demanding roles? (e.g., mother, wife, student, worker?)
What things can one do to cope with these environmental stressors?
•Cultural traditions
•Belief systems
•Practices or rituals
•Institutions (e.g., University of Ghana)
•Economic conditions
•Social and political forces
•Poverty
•Neighbourhood crime
•Lack of health care
What resources (if any) may help you cope with these stressful experiences?
–Major life events (e.g., bereavement, divorce, job loss).
–Daily hassles (e.g., traffic jams, family arguments, conflict with roommates).
Positive stress
•Eustress is a pleasant and desirable type of stress that is healthful and keeps us engaged in situations.
•Eustress arouses and motivates us to achieve and overcome challenges.
•E.g., applying to college, winning first place in a competition, getting married, or having a child.
Two kinds of coping
1.Problem-focused coping: It is when we try to decrease stress by solving the problem through seeking information, changing our own behaviour, or taking whatever action is needed to resolve the difficulty.
2.Emotion-focused coping: It is when we do things primarily to deal with our emotional distress, such as seeking support and sympathy or avoiding or denying the situation.
Which coping strategy one chooses depends partly on the situation and on one’s own personality (Lazarus, 2000).
–E.g., one personality factor that influences whether one uses problem-focused or emotion-focused coping is how much control one believes one has over the situation
Which coping strategy to use?
•If you appraise a situation (e.g., bad exam grades) as something under your control, you can use problem-focused coping to solve this problem.
•If you appraise a situation (e.g., threats of relationship break) as being out of your control, you may first use emotion-focused coping to get over your negative emotions (anger).
–Once you calm down, you can use problem-focused coping to take some direct action to solve the problem.
Dealing with stressors:
–Emotion-focused coping is a useful short-term solution.
–Problem-focused coping is a long-term solution that involves changing our behaviours (Lazarus, 2000).
–Compared with men, women are more likely to use emotion-focused coping to seek emotional support and advice from others about dealing with stressors (Tamres et al., 2002).
Resources for coping with stress
•To deal with stressors, individuals mobilise resources for coping. These resources include personal & contextual protective factors.
–Examples of resources for coping:
a)Material resources
b)Social-emotional competencies
c)Social settings
d)Cultural resources
e)Social support
f)Mutual help groups.
g)Spiritual resources
Positive coping outcomes
•Resilience: It is the maintaining and returning to a prior level of health during stressful circumstances.
•Wellness: It is the experience of positive outcomes in health and subjective well-being.
•Empowerment: It reflects the gaining of access to valued resources
Thriving: For some people an, encounter with adversity initiates a process of growth that takes them beyond their prior level of functioning.
•Social support: It is a key resource for strengthening coping and well-being. It occurs in interpersonal relationships, providing individuals with a secure base for living and coping.
Negative coping outcomes
•Some negative coping outcomes:
–Distress
–Dysfunction
–Clinical
–Disorders
Coping therapy
•Mind-body therapy is based on the finding that thoughts and emotions can change physiological and immune responses.
•Mind-body therapy uses mental strategies, such as relaxation, meditation and social support groups to help individuals change negative beliefs, thoughts, and emotions into more positive ones.