Stress

Frustration

• is defined as the blocking or hindering of goals we are seeking.

• Most frustrations are relatively minor, if we can keep them in perspective. The problem is that since there are so many of them, we can get buried and lose that sense of perspective.

• Some minor frustrations are still hard to handle for almost anyone – try those irritating busy signals seven calls in a row.

• And frustrations can be serious, as when someone doesn’t have the skills to play a particular sport or lacks some other talent in an activity that is special to him or her.

Conflicts

• Conflicts are particularly difficult to deal with because they demand a decision.

• A conflict, then, is a situation in which we must decide between two or more alternatives (to do one thing or another, or to do or not to do something).

• Conflicts will not go away by themselves. These are four types of conflict.

1. Approach-Approach Conflict- The approach-approach conflict is not all that bad. It involves two attractive alternatives. - We have to choose between two things we want to do (approach). - For example: There are two movies you want to see for example, but you have money for only one. You have to choose.

2. Approach-Avoidance Conflict- The approach-avoidance conflict can be distressing. - One part of the situation makes it attractive, but the other part makes you want to run away. - Example: You want to go out with someone, say, but are afraid you won’t really be liked. - The process of trying to decide what to do can leave you drained and feeling hopeless for the moment.

3. Avoidance-Avoidance Conflict- You can’t win with the avoidance-avoidance conflict, the worst of the three because it involves to unattractive alternatives.- Example: If you don’t go to the dentist, your teeth will rot (bad), but if you do go, he or she will bring out the drill (also bad).

4. Double Approach-Avoidance Conflict- The double approach-avoidance conflict is the one we face most often. - It is called “double” because there are both good and bad parts no matter which way we do. - Example: if you have a vote on whether your family moves to another city, the school might be better, but you aren’t used to it; special new friends could be there, but you have to leave behind those you already know and care about.

Conflict is normal

• They can’t be avoided. • Still a steady diet of painful conflicts, especially

when one feels alone and not supported, can result in feelings of hopelessness.

• After a while, a person in this situation will begin to make incorrect decisions or will be unable to make any decision, and eventually he or she can develop psychological and physical symptoms from the steady drain on the body and psyche.

Anxiety

• Conflict and frustration lead to anxiety, a feeling of dread that something is seriously wrong and that disaster sits right around the corner.

• Anxiety results when we cannot resolve a conflict or when frustration builds too high.

• Any feeling of helplessness when we are trying to solve problems can lead to anxiety, and this, in turn, can become a general feeling that we can’t cope.

• If such anxiety goes on for a long time, it can eventually do a person in.

• Severe attacks of anxiety can cause a rapid heartbeat, fatigue, breathlessness, chest pains, dizziness, fainting, feelings of doom, and headaches.

Stress

• Stress is defined as the physical pressure and strain that result from demands or changes in the environment.

• Stress arises whenever we have to readjust. • Conflict, frustration, and anxiety can all lead to

stress. • But any kind of change, even a positive one,

causes stress, because we must adapt to a new environment.

Good Stress

• For example, meeting new people can be a very stressful situation. Most of us are uncomfortable if the person we are meeting is someone we want to like us or someone who might be important to us.

• But since never making any new friends or getting a job or leaving home is much worse than stress, we have to go ahead and do these things.

• In fact, in these cases, stress turns out to be a good thing because it keeps the body going, and this, in turn, keeps us moving toward a new goal.

• Similarly, at least in theory, stress from doing homework is good in the long run because one learns. When stress is “good,” leading to something desirable, it is called eustress.

• Stress is not necessarily a bad thing, in and of itself.

• Its impact is relative to the individual: what is terribly difficult for one person can make another person feel interested and alive.

Bad Stress

• How we view a particular problem has a lot to do with whether stress is bad or good. Moving to another city, for instance, can be seen as a chance to make a new and better life for ourselves, or it can be seen as a hassle and a loss.

• Making up your mind to make the best of a situation – even though this is often easier said than done – can work wonders in terms of how stress affects you.

• On the other side of the coin, the negative effects of stress are many.

• These include confusion, inability to make decisions, avoidance of people, as well as, eventually, physical or psychological illness.

• When stress is “bad,” or overwhelms our ability to cope, it is called distress.

Physical Changes with Stress

Two types that we will be looking at:1. Fight or Flight Response

2. Human Response

http://www.bemindful.co.uk/mbsr/test

My Stress Results

• Your stress score is: 24• With a score of 40 being for the highest stress

possible.

• A score over 10 means that stress is causing a significant and negative impact on the quality of your life.

Fight or Flight Response• In the wild, animals are designed to deal first of all with physical safety.

The key to safety for them is an environment that remains the same. • For example, an animal will sleep as long as everything around it is

calm. • Any change in the environment, such as an unusual sound followed by

some type of movement immediately signals the possibility of danger. • Some life-threatening events could be about to happen, and the sound

and movement are warning signs: there might be a predator creeping up.

• As a result, the vision and hearing systems of all animals are physically designed to detect immediately any change in the surroundings. Thus, any kind of change triggers a physical alarm. That is nature’s design.

Fight or Flight

• The animal’s body is fully mobilized to do one of two things – fight or flee. There is no third choice.

• Thus begins what is called the fight or flight reaction.

• In nature, the animal wins, loses, or escapes. If the battle is won or the animal runs away, special chemicals are then sent through the body to cancel out the ones that were triggered in order to handle the emergency.

The Human Response• The major parts of the human that respond to emotional stress are the

higher brain, the part we do our thinking with; the lower brain, the animal part that controls all the basic bodily functions; and the adrenal glands that sit to the right and left and above the kidneys and that stir up the body’s activity level.

• Here are three examples of the kinds of things that can trigger an emotional response:

1. anticipating having an operation; 2. going out on a first date with a new person; 3. having to accept the fact that a loved one has died. • Notice that all three of these human problems involve a psychological

change because they deal with mental issues. This does not reduce their potential for distressing us; instead, it makes them harder to handle than real life-and-death physical struggles.

• Thus, the body can’t tell the difference between a physiological and a psychological threat and will respond in the same way to either kind of “danger.”

• If we were able to solve these problems immediately, the human body would go back to normal quickly, as it does with animals. But because our concerns are often more abstract than physical, it is tough to find an end to them. Hence, the stress lasts a long time, and eventually it can cause physical problems because we are running (on the inside) at full alert too much of the time.

In each case, the higher brain assumes that threat and danger exist. It signals the lower brain about the emergency. The lower brain secretes a special chemical called the stress hormone, which signals the adrenal glands to send to the body adrenaline. This causes the muscles to tense, the heart to beat faster, and the liver to send out more sugar to be used by the muscles when we either fight or flee.

Examining Stress

• Some stress results from change, whether the change is good or bad. Two stress researchers estimated the amount of change involved in certain life events and called their estimates life change units (Holmes & Rahe, 1967). I have copied their results below.

• This table is interesting because it shows how upsetting certain events can be.

• For example, serving a jail term and getting married are not that far apart as stressors. But one would hope that the changes involved in getting married would be “good” stress and not bad.

Bodily Effect of Stress

• One study that supports this belief examined 32 sets of male identical twins. In each pair, only one had heart problems.

• When the researchers looked into the history of each set of twins, they found that the ones whose hearts weren’t working well had much more trouble with their marriages, took little time off, drove themselves too hard at work, and overall were less satisfied with their lives.

• Solution: we can overcome or avoid all kinds of problems if we can find some satisfaction within ourselves and some meaning in our lives.

Stress and Personality TypesType A • Always running full speed ahead • They can make people uncomfortable because even if you get them to sit

down, they don’t really seem to be with you in a conversation. • They are impatient, thinking of other things, and can’t be corralled long

enough to share what they’re thinking or feeling. • They keep comparing how they are doing with how others do. But all type A’s

don’t seem to suffer major problems. • The ones who do are those who distrust others and are angry most of the

time. The type A’s who see others as a threat, who misinterpret events, and who refuse to accept that they act the way they do are the ones most prone to physical disorders such as heart problems.

Type B • Opposite of type A.• Open to change and are flexible, who enjoy life because they don’t put

competition first• Like a variety of activities.

One study compared over 150 male executives from the same company.

• Roughly half the group had become physically ill following some stressful life events, and the other half had not.

• Both groups had experienced roughly the same kinds of stress with the same severity, so they didn’t differ in that respect.

• Analysis of the men showed that those who didn’t get sick were type B’s - those more open to change and who viewed problems more as a challenge than as a threat.

• They felt that they were in control and could do something to improve themselves and their environment.

• These studies suggest how critical it is to be a little more flexible and to try out a few things, while accepting upsets without letting them eat up your insides.

• Doing this should not require a complete personality change, just a little loosening up and giving things a chance.

• The hardest part is figuring out what is important and what isn’t, and then forgetting those things that aren’t.