Week 4: Stress

Psychologists define stress as the body’s physiological and psychological response to a condition that threatens or challenges an individual and requires some adaptation or adjustment. A stressor is a stimulus or an event that is capable of producing a stress response.

Below is a scale to find an individual’s Life Stress Score:

At the heart of Hans Seyle’s concept of stress is the General Adaptation Syndrome, the predictable sequence of reactions that organisms show in response to stressors. It consists of three stages: the alarm stage, the resistance stage, and the exhaustive stage (Selye, 1956).

Lazarus’s Cognitive Theory of Stress - Richard Lazarus (1966: Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) contends that it’s not the stressor that causes stress but rather a person’s perception of it.

Stress Reduction Techniques (MayoClinic.org)

Meditation - Meditation has been practiced for thousands of years and has many benefits. Practicing meditation can help with concentration, relaxation, inner peace, stress reduction and fatigue. It may also help relieve anxiety, depression, pain and insomnia. When combined with conventional medicine, meditation may improve physical health, such as heart health, rheumatologic conditions and digestive problems.

Deep breathing - Breathing from your diaphragm (muscle under the rib cage) to establish a pattern of slower, deeper and more efficient breathing.

Progressive muscle relaxation - Tensing and relaxing the muscle groups throughout your body to reduce muscle tension and calm anxious feelings.

Resilience Training - Resilience is your ability to adapt well and recover quickly after stress, adversity, trauma or tragedy. Learning to balance the demands placed on you with your available resources; finding meaning in life; controlling the controllable; and seeing life's situations as challenges or opportunities rather than overwhelming obstacles.

For my research, I continued to hand out questionnaires to upper school students, aged 14-17.