1. Managing Stress and Coping with Life's Challenges
Ask students to write down their top five current stressors. Next ask them to if they fit into either Relationships, Money or Time Categories. You might want to reflect back on the lists as you go through this chapter and encourage discussion on resolutions.

2. OBJECTIVES
Define stress and examine its potential impact on health, relationships, and success in college and life.
Explain the phases of the general adaptation syndrome and the physiological changes that occur during them.
Examine the physical, emotional, and social health risks that may occur with chronic stress.
Discuss sources of stress and examine the unique stressors that affect college students.
Explore stress management techniques and ways to enrich your life with positive experiences and attitudes.
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3. What Is Stress?
Stress is a series of physiological responses and adaptations to a real or imagined threat to one's well-being.
A stressor is a physical, social, or psychological event or condition that upsets homeostasis and produces a stress response.
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4. What Is Stress? (cont.)
Eustress, a positive stress, presents opportunities for personal growth.
Distress is a negative stress that can have a detrimental effect on health.
Acute stress is a short-term physiological response to an immediate or perceived threat.
Episodic acute stress occurs when regularly reacting with wild, acute stress about one thing or another.
Chronic stress is an ongoing state of physiological arousal in response to ongoing or numerous perceived threats.
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5. Several factors influence one's response to stressors, including
What Is Stress? (cont.)
Several factors influence one's response to stressors, including
Characteristics of the stressor
Whether it is predictable
Whether it occurs often
Biological factors
Past experiences
Stressors may be tangible, such as a failing grade on a test, or intangible, such as the angst associated with meeting your significant other's parents for the first time. Importantly, stress is in the eye of the beholder: Each person's unique combination of heredity, life experiences, personality, and ability to cope influences how the person perceives an event and what meaning he or she attaches to it. What "stresses out" one person may not even bother the next person.
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6. Your Body's Response to Stress
When stress levels are low, the body is often in a state of homeostasis.
This is a balanced physiological state in which all the body's systems function smoothly.
Stressors trigger a crisis-mode physiological response, after which the body tries to return to homeostasis.
General Adaption Syndrome (GAS): a three-phase biological response to stress.
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7. GAS-The Alarm Phase
You first experience the fight-or-flight response, which is one of our most basic, innate survival instincts.
The cerebral cortex triggers an autonomic nervous system (ANS) response that prepares you for action.
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8. GAS-The Resistance Phase
During the resistance phase the body tries to return to homeostasis.
Because some perceived stressor still exists, the body does not achieve complete calm or rest – it stays activated, causing a higher metabolic rate in some organ tissues.
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9. GAS-The Exhaustion Phase
A prolonged effort to adapt to stress may lead to allostatic load or exhaustive wear and tear on the body.
This exhaustion phase occurs when the physical and emotional energy used to fight the stressor has been depleted.
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10. The General Adaptation Syndrome
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11. The Body's Acute Stress Response
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12. Effects of Stress on Your Life
Forty percent of deaths and seventy percent of diseases in the United States are related wholly or partly to stress.
Stress is often described as "a disease of prolonged arousal" that leads to a cascade of negative health effects.
The longer you are chronically stressed, the more likely the negative health effects.
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13. Effects of Stress Physical Intellectual Internal
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14. Common Symptoms of Physical Stress
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15. Physical Effects of Stress
Stress and cardiovascular disease
Long-term stress impacts heart rate, blood pressure, heart attack, and stroke. Stress is one of the key modifiable risk factors for heart attack.
Stress and diabetes
Controlling stress is critical for preventing weight gain and other risk factors for type 2 diabetes as well as for short- and long-term diabetes management.
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16. Physical Effects of Stress (cont.)
Stress and Digestive Problems
Causes for digestive disorders are often unknown but it is assumed that an underlying illness, pathogen, injury, or inflammation is present when stress triggers nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps, and gut pain or diarrhea.
Some relaxation techniques are particularly helpful in coping with stressors that make digestive problems worse.
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17. Physical Effects of Stress (cont.)
Stress and libido
Too much stress can affect libido at any age.
In men, loss of libido is a major source of sexual dysfunction in marriages.
In women, fluctuating reproductive hormones and irregular menstrual cycles can cause major emotional swings.
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18. Intellectual Effects of Stress
A recent survey showed that 50% of respondents felt overwhelmed by all they had to do in the past 2 weeks; 46.9% reported being exhausted, and 18.7% felt overwhelmed by anxiety during the same time period.
About 39% felt they had been under more-than-average stress in the past 12 months; 9% reported tremendous stress.
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19. Intellectual Effects of Stress (cont.)
Stress, memory, and concentration
Acute stress has been shown to impair short-term memory, particularly verbal memory.
New research has linked prolonged exposure to cortisol to shrinking the hippocampus, the brain's major memory center.
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20. Internal Stressors Appraisal and stress
How we appraise the demands and potential stressors results in the experience of stress.
Appraisal is the interpretation and evaluation of information provided to the brain by the senses, unconsciously.
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21. Internal Stressors (cont.)
Self-esteem and self-efficacy
Self-esteem is how you feel about yourself.
Low self-esteem and stressful life events significantly predict suicide ideation, the desire to die, and thoughts about suicide.
Self-efficacy is the belief or confidence in your skills and performance abilities.
High self-efficacy predicts a number of health behaviors in college students and developing self-efficacy is vital for coping with and overcoming academic pressures.
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22. What Causes Stress? Psychosocial stressors Adjustment to change
Hassles: Little things that bug you
The toll of relationships
Academic and financial pressure
Frustrations and conflicts
Overload: a condition in which you are overly pressured by demands
Stressful environments: background distressors in the environment, such as pollution, allergy aggravators, or tobacco smoke
Bias and discrimination
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23. Managing Stress in College
Practice mental work to reduce stress
Assess your stressors and solve problems
Change the way you think and talk to yourself
Develop a support network
Find supportive people
Invest in your loved ones
Cultivate your spiritual side
Manage emotional responses
Fight the anger urge
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24. Managing Stress in College (cont.)
Learn to Laugh, Be Joyful, and Cry
Get Positive
Assess what is happening today.
Choose optimism.
Think of setbacks as opportunities for growth.
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25. Taking Physical Action
Exercise regularly.
Get enough sleep.
Learn to relax.
Eat healthfully.
- Avoid sympathomimetics, substances in foods that produce (or mimic) stresslike responses.
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26. Managing Your Time To improve time management Do one thing at a time.
Clean off your desk.
Prioritize your tasks.
Find a clean, comfortable place to work, and avoid interruptions.
Reward yourself for work completed.
Work when you are at your best.
Break overwhelming tasks into small pieces.
Remember that time is precious.
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27. Managing Your Finances
Several factors are converging to increase today's students' financial woes
A recession, reducing job opportunities
Students carrying a disproportionate amount of credit card debt
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28. Lessen Your Financial Stress
Develop a realistic budget.
Pay bills immediately and consider electronic banking.
Educate yourself about how to manage your money.
Avoid tempting credit card offers.
Do not get into debt.
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29. Consider Downshifting
It's important to consider the following before downshifting:
Plan for health care costs.
Determine your ultimate goal.
Make both short- and long-term plans for simplifying your life.
Complete a financial inventory.
Select the right career.
Consider options for saving money.
Downshifting involves a fundamental alteration in values
and honest introspection about what is important in life.
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30. Deep Breathing Exercises Relaxation Techniques
Ways to Manage Stress
Deep Breathing Exercises
Relaxation Techniques
Progressive muscle relaxation
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31. Diaphragmatic Breathing
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32. Relaxation Techniques for Stress Management
Meditation: A relaxation technique that involves deep breathing and concentration
Visualization: The creation of mental images to promote relaxation
Progressive muscle relaxation
Massage therapy
Biofeedback: A technique using a machine to self-monitor physical responses to stress
Aromatherapy
Hypnosis
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33. Progressive Muscle Relaxation
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