1. Stress
Stress: A state of psychological tension or strain. The process by which we perceive and respond to certain events.
Stressors: Events that we perceive as either a threat or as a challenge.
Rubber band Activity
Wrap a rubberband around your hand and see if you can get it off. How do you respond? Are you annoyed, frustrated, do you see it as a challenge?

2. When we feel severe stress, our ability to cope with it is impaired.
Stress is any circumstance (real or perceived) that threatens a person’s well-being.
Preview Question 1: What is stress, and what are some of the ways we respond to stress?
When we feel severe stress, our ability to cope with it is impaired.

3. Sources of stress Stressor: Any environmental demand that creates
a state of tension
or threat and requires
change or adaptation.

4. The Stress Response to Public Speaking

5. Stress and Stressors Stress can be adaptive.
In a fearful or stress- causing situation, we can run away and save our lives.
Stress can be maladaptive.
If it is prolonged (chronic stress), it increases our risk of illness and health problems.

6. Stress and Stressors Stress is a slippery concept.
At times it is the stimulus (missing an appointment) and at other times it is a response (sweating while taking a test).

7. Different types of Stress
Distress- stress that stems from acute anxiety or pressure
Eustress- positive stress which results from striving toward a challenge

8. Hassles & Uplifts Hassles- minor, day-to-day stressors
Uplifts- an activity or situation that makes a person feel good, this protects from stress

9. Everyday hassles- Lazarus
Pressure: A feeling that one must speed up, intensify, or change the direction of one’s behavior or live up to a higher standard of performance.
Frustration: The feeling that occurs when a person is prevented from reaching a goal.

10. Everyday hassles
Conflict: Simultaneous existence of incompatible demands, opportunities, needs, or goals.

12. Uplifts List
We tend to let the little things bother us… so why don’t we let the little things uplift us?

13. Stress and Stressors
Stress is not merely a stimulus or a response. It is a process by which we appraise and cope with environmental threats and challenges.
Bob Daemmrich/ The Image Works
Preview Question 2: What are three main types of stressors?
When short-lived or taken as a challenge, stressors may have positive effects. However, if stress is threatening or prolonged, it can be harmful.

14. 3 Types of Stressors Catastrophes Significant Life Changes
Unpredictable large scale events
Nearly everyone appraises catastrophes as threatening
Significant Life Changes
Can be good or bad
Young Adulthood is most stressful time for most
Daily Hassles
Day to day issues, that we all face

15. Significant Life Changes
The death of a loved one, a divorce, a loss of job, or a promotion may leave individuals vulnerable to disease.
Take the life changes scale

16. SSRS- Holmes & Rahe
If a person has less the 150 life change units they have a 30% chance of suffering from stress.
life change units equates to a 50% chance of suffering from stress.
Over 300 life units means a person has an 80% chance of developing a stress related illness.

17. Cultural Stressors
Acculturative stress- Stress that an immigrant might feel when they move to a different place
Assimilated
Individual adopts the cultural norms of host culture over their original culture
Separation
Individual rejects the dominant culture in favor of holding onto their original culture
Integrated
Individual adopt the dominant norms while still maintaining their host culture
Marginalized
Individual rejects both the dominant and the original cultural norms

18. Types of Conflicts
When you need to make a decision between two options….
LIKE/WANT- Approach
DON’T LIKE/WANT- Avoidance

19. Approach-approach conflicts
You must choose between two attractive options
Do I want to go to the movie or to the mall?
Do I want an unlimited supply of Sour Patch Kids or Swedish Fish?

20. Avoidance-Avoidance conflicts
You must choose between two disagreeable options
Do I want to do my physics or math homework?
Do I want to go to a boring family party or study?

21. Approach-avoidance
You find yourself in a situation that has both enjoyable and disagreeable consequences
Asking your boss for a raise
Going to a Bulls game when it’s snowing
Going to the dentist to get rid of a cavity
Do the conflict worksheet

22. Physical Response to Stress
What happens to our body when we are stressed out?

23. The Stress Response System
Cannon
fight-or-flight response marked by the outpouring of epinephrine and norepinephrine from the inner adrenal glands, increasing heart and respiration rates, mobilizing sugar and fat, and dulling pain.
Prepares your body for an emergency…activates the sympathetic nervous system
ACUTE STRESS

24. General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) Hans Selye
In response to LONG- TERM (CHRONIC) STRESS

25. Phase 1: Alarm Sympathetic nervous system kicks in Heart rate zooms
Blood flows to muscles
Feel the faintness of shock

26. Phase 2: Resistance
Resources have been mobilizied in Phase 1, now ready for fight
Your adrenal glands pump stress hormones (Adrenaline) into your bloodstream
You are fully engaged at this point
Your body adjusts and learns to live with the stress

27. Phase 3: Exhaustion Body soon begins to run out of resources
You become much more vulnerable to illness
Fearful rats lived 100 days shorter

28. Stress and Illness General Adaptation Syndrome

29. Stress and Illness General Adaptation Syndrome

30. Stress and Illness General Adaptation Syndrome

31. Stress and Illness General Adaptation Syndrome

32. Stress & Susceptibility to Disease
A psychophysiological illness is any stress-related physical illness such as hypertension and some headaches.
Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) is a developing field in which the health effects of psychological, neural, and endocrine processes on the immune system are studied.
Preview Question 4: How does stress make us more vulnerable to disease?

33. Stress and Colds
People with the highest life stress scores were also the most vulnerable when exposed to an experimental cold virus.

34. Stress Effects and Health
Stress and AIDS
Stress and Cancer
Stress and Hearth Disease

35. Stress and AIDS
Stress and negative emotions may accelerate the progression from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).
UNAIDS/ G. Pirozzi

36. Stress and Cancer Is there a link? Results are mixed
+ Increased risk for cancer among individuals that experience helplessness, depression or grief
+ 5.5 time greater risk for those who reported high workplace stress
- Holocaust survivors and P.O.W do not have an increased risk

37. Stress and Cancer
Stress does not create cancer cells, but it may affect their growth by weakening the body’s natural defense against multiplying cells
Researchers disagree on whether stress influences the progression of cancer.
However, they do agree that avoiding stress and having a hopeful attitude cannot reverse advanced cancer.

38. Stress and the Heart
Stress that leads to elevated blood pressure may result in coronary heart disease, a clogging of the vessels that nourish the heart muscle.
Leading cause of death in North America
Plaque in
coronary artery
Artery
clogged
Researchers studied 40 accountants
Major spike in cholesterol and risk of heart disease around April 15

39. Psychoneuroimmunology
B lymphocytes fight bacterial infections, T lymphocytes attack cancer cells and viruses, and microphages ingest foreign substances. During stress, energy is mobilized away from the immune system making it vulnerable.
Lennart Nilsson/ Boehringer Ingelhein International GmbH

40. Health-Related Consequences
Stress can have a variety of health-related consequences.
Kathleen Finlay/ Masterfile

41. Tend & Befriend
refers to the fact that people often manage threats by caring for offspring and seeking social support in time of stress
social support reduces risk of illness and death

42. Personality Types
Type A is a term used for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people.
Type B refers to easygoing, relaxed people (Friedman and Rosenman, 1974).
Type A personalities are more likely to develop
coronary heart disease.

43. Life-Style Modification
Modifying a Type-A lifestyle may reduce the recurrence of heart attacks.
Ghislain and Marie David De Lossy/ Getty Images

44. Feelings of Control How much control do you want?
Internal Vs. External

45. Internal Locus of Control
The view that we are in control of our own destiny
Achieve more in school and work
Act more independently
Less likely to feel depressed

46. External Locus of Control
The view that chance or outside forces control fate
Learned Helplessness
Hopelessness and passive resignation an animal or human learns when unable to avoid repeated aversive events
Seligman experiments

47. Fig In the normal course of escape and avoidance learning, a light dims shortly before the floor is electrified (a). Since the light does not yet have meaning for the dog, the dog receives a shock (non-injurious, by the way) and leaps the barrier (b). Dogs soon learn to watch for the dimming of the light (c) and to jump before receiving a shock (d). Dogs made to feel “helpless” rarely even learn to escape shock, much less to avoid it.

48. Optimist Vs. Pessimists
Optimists explain bad events as result of external, unstable, and specific causes
Pessimists explain bad events as due to internal, stable, and global causes

49. Explanatory Style
People with an optimistic (instead of pessimistic) explanatory style tend to have:
More control over stressors
Better moods
Stronger immune system
Cope better with stressful events

50. Developing an Optimistic Outlook
Martin Seligman - having optimistic outlook is a wise coping strategy and in many cases optimists have better physical and mental health than pessimists
Optimism - how a person explains causes of bad events

51. Adjustment Strategies for Becoming More Optimistic
1. Identify thoughts and feelings you have after something unpleasant happens
2. Become aware of your pattern of thinking when you experience unpleasant events
3. Distract yourself from your pessimistic thoughts
4. Dispute your pessimistic thoughts
McGraw-Hill
©2006 by the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

52. Biofeedback, Relaxation, and Meditation
Biofeedback systems use electronic devices to inform people about their physiological responses and gives them the chance to bring their response to a healthier range.
Relaxation and meditation have similar effects in reducing tension and anxiety.

53. Coping With Stress

54. Coping: the ways we try to change or interpret circumstances to make them less threatening.
Maladaptive Coping
Adaptive Coping
Delay stress and it intensifies
Produce self-defeating outcomes
Ex.: I will fail no matter what
Withdraw from others
Realistically evaluates the situation
Deal with the emotional aspects of the situation.
Focuses on preserving important relationships

55. Coping with Stress
Reducing stress by changing events that cause stress or by changing how we react to stress is called problem-focused coping.
Emotion-focused coping is when we cannot change a stressful situation, and we respond by attending to our own emotional needs.
Preview Question 5: What are some of the things that influence our ability to cope with stress?

56. Types of Coping Problem-focused coping Emotion-focused coping
Tries to directly change or manage a threatening or harmful stressor.
Most effective when you have the personal control
Emotion-focused coping
Tries to relieve or regulate the emotional impact

57. Coping Classifications
Over the long term, problem-focused coping is usually more effective than emotion-focused coping
Emotion-focused coping involves drawing on beliefs, values, and goals to modify the meaning of a stressful situation
McGraw-Hill
©2006 by the McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

58. Problem Focused Coping Strategies
The GOAL is to change or eliminate the stressor
Confrontive coping:
using aggressive or risky efforts to change the situation
Planful problem solving:
efforts to rationally analyze the situation,
identify potential solutions,
and then implement them.

59. Emotion Focused Coping Strategies
Escape–avoidance strategy
Shift attention away from stressor and toward other activities
Seeking social support
Turn to friends, relatives, or other people for support
Distancing
Putting space between you and your stressor to minimize or eliminate its impact
Denial
Refusal to acknowledge that the problem even exists. (Complicates Issue)
Positive reappraisal
Minimize the negative impacts by focusing on the positive meaning

60. Aerobic Exercise
Can aerobic exercise boost spirits? Many studies suggest that aerobic exercise can elevate mood and well-being because aerobic exercise raises energy, increases self-confidence, and lowers tension, depression, and anxiety.

61. Biofeedback, Relaxation, and Meditation
Biofeedback systems use electronic devices to inform people about their physiological responses and gives them the chance to bring their response to a healthier range.
Relaxation and meditation have similar effects in reducing tension and anxiety.

62. Spirituality & Faith Communities
Regular religious attendance has been a reliable predictor of a longer life span with a reduced risk of dying.

63. Intervening Factors
Investigators suggest there are three factors that connect religious involvement and better health.

64. END OF SLIDES

65. Human Flourishing
Coping With Stress
Managing Stress Effects

66. Human Flourishing
Psychologists and physicians have developed an interdisciplinary field of behavioral medicine that integrates behavioral knowledge with medical knowledge.
Mind and body interact; everything psychological is simultaneously physiological.

67. Promoting Health
Promoting health is generally defined as the absence of disease. We only think of health when we are diseased. However, health psychologists say that promoting health begins by preventing illness and enhancing well-being, which is a constant endeavor.

68. Social Support
Supportive family members, marriage partners, and close friends help people cope with stress. Their immune functioning calms the cardiovascular system and lowers blood pressure.
Bob Daemmrich/ Stock, Boston

69. Managing Stress Effects
Having a sense of control, an optimistic explanatory style, and social support can reduce stress and improve health.
Preview Question 6: What tactics can we use to manage stress?