WHAT CAUSES STRESS?

Definition of stress: the reaction of your body & mind to threatening or challenging events in your life.

The man who studied stress? Hans Selye (known as the father of stress, no not the father of soul).

Selye believed that the cause of stress, which he called stressors occurred on two levels:

Eustress - that which produces positive stress

Distress - that which produces negative stress.

HOW DOES STRESS AFFECT THE BODY?

The body's response to stress occurs in 3 stages:

1. Alarm Stage - in this stage the body releases a substance known as adrenaline into your bloodstream. Adrenaline gives you a burst of energy and causes many other physiological changes to occur:

• increased heartbeat

•Increased amount of blood in the muscles

•Increased breathing rate

•The pupils widen

•There is an increase in the production of sweat

•There is a decrease in the production of urine

•There is a decrease in the digestive system

In the alarm stage your brain is alert, able to take in information, and it is ready to react. This reaction is called the fight or flight response.

2. Resistance Stage - this is where the body tries to recover from the alarm in the first stage. This is because the stressor remains in the body, the body cannot restore homeostasis. The body begins to function at higher than normal levels. As a result, the body becomes tired, irritable, and less able to handle any additional stress, or to fight off colds, flu, etc.

3. Exhaustion Stage - Exhaustion occurs if the stressor remains. In this stage the body is worn down and no longer has enough energy to fight off the stressor. This can lead to illness, impaired judgment, and possibly death, if not removed.

Therefore the three physiological response to continuous stress, including the alarm, resistance and exhaustion stages is known as the General Adaptation Syndrome.

Ranking stressors by high school students

this is ranked in what we call "life change units" with

"O" being no stress and "100" being the highest level of stress

101 - Getting married

92 - Being pregnant & unwed

87 - experiencing death of a parent

81 - Acquiring a visible deformity

77 - Going through a parent's divorce

77 - Becoming an unwed father

76 - Becoming involved with alcohol or drugs

75 - Having a parent jailed for a year or more

69 - Going through a parent's separation

68 - Experiencing the death of a brother/sister

67 - Experiencing a change in acceptance by peers

64 - Having an unwed, pregnant teenage sister

64 - Discovering you have been adopted

63 - Having a parent remarry

62 - Experiencing the death of a close friend

62 - Having a visible congenital deformity

58 - Having a serious illness, requiring hospitalization

56 - Failing a grade in high school

55 - Not making an extra curricular activity

55 - Experiencing the serious illness of a parent

53 - breaking up with your girlfriend/boyfriend

53 - Having a parent go to jail for 30 days or less

51 - Beginning to date

MEETING LIFE'S CHALLENGES

A. Growing up psychologically means developing coping mechanisms to meet life's challenges.

B. A coping mechanism or strategy is the way of dealing with uncomfortable or unbearable feelings or situations.

C.Development of an adult identity means having a unified sense of self, of ones roles and place, and of one's own uniqueness; it means realistic self-assessment and the ability to interact with others.

D. Identity evolves through interaction with the world. Early identity is based on modeling of others. Eventually it becomes more individual and stable.

Achieving realistic self-esteem means knowing one's self - worth.

a.self-esteem refers to how much you like yourself & feel good about yourself. Self -esteem is grounded in love and positive feedback received in childhood.

b. those who do not have a stable self-concept have conflicting, polar views of themselves, which makes it impossible to see themselves and others realistically.

c. teens and adults all run into situations that challenge their self-concept, and they choose to react in several ways…….from acknowledging that something went wrong and starting again, to denying that anything went wrong and blaming someone else, to developing a lasting negative self-concept in which they feel bad, unloved, and ineffective or demoralized.

Defense mechanisms allow people to rearrange thoughts and feelings to resolve conflict.

When coping strategies occur at the unconscious level, they are called defense mechanisms. The seven most common defense mechanisms include:

Compensation - making up for a weakness in one area by excelling in another area.

Rationalization - making an excuse for actions or feelings.

Denial - refusing to recognize the existence or an emotion or problem.

Reaction Formation - behaving in a way opposite to the way you are feeling.

Projection - putting your own faults onto another person.

Regression - returning to immature behaviors to express emotions.

Humor - using humor to cover or express your true emotions.