copyright 2008 Cheryl K. Hosken, BSN, MS Psych.
Starting with this lecture we will discuss various psychological problems and methods of treatment. Each lecture covers topics that could be an entire semester of study for someone who is training to become a psychologist or psychiatrist. These lectures do not qualify you, our students, to practice psychotherapy, but rather are meant to help you understand these illnesses and know when to advise someone to seek treatment by a specialist.
Causes of Stress
Stress is a complex set of reactions made by a person who must adapt to changing situations. Stress is a response one makes to real or perceived threats to one's sense of security. The sources of stress are call stressors. There are many stressors, but we will discuss three of them - frustration, conflict, and life events. Stress is not necessarily a large catastrophic event, such as the death of a loved one, but continuous exposure to minor events, such as a demanding job.
Frustration-Induced Stress
In our study of motivation, we saw that motivated behavior is directed toward a goal. The internal processes (drives) or external stimuli (incentives) push us toward positive goals and push us away from negative goals. Of course, we know that we do not reach all of our goals. Have you always gotten everything you wanted? Have you always been able to avoid unpleasantness, pain, or sorrow? Do you know anyone who has?
Sometimes we may be totally prohibited from reaching a goal. At other times, our progress toward a goal is more difficult than we would like. In either case, we are frustrated. Frustration is the blocking or slowing of behavior toward a goal. The blocking may be total and permanent or partial and temporary.
Stress that is the result of frustration is a normal, commonplace reaction. Frustration is a stressor and the stress it produces is a fact of life. In no way does frustration imply weakness, pathology, or illness. What matters is how individuals react to stress.
Meditate Word By Word On These Verses:
Luke 22:40-45.
The source of the stress may be of little significance. But in order to respond in a positive way to stress, it is helpful to find out what is the source of the particular stressor that keeps us from our goals. There are two basic types of frustration: environmental and personal.
Question:
1. Did Jesus have stress? How did Jesus deal with stress? (See John 11:33-38; Matt. 14:22-23; Matt. 24:13-21)
Environmental frustration is the blocking of one's goal-directed behavior by someone or something in the their environment. We talk about the source of frustration, not using the words fault or blame because they are terms of evaluation. An example of this is the following: You are late for class and waiting for a bus. The bus never comes and you must walk for 30 minutes to get to class. You are late and tired. You are frustrated by the environment around you: you want to be in class, but for some reason the transport system is not working.
Question:
2. What is an environmental stress?
(Only one of the following answers is correct.)
A positive way to respond to stress.
Internal or personal causes of frustration.
The blocking of goal-directed behavior by something external.
Occasionally, we are frustrated because of an internal or personal reason. This is personal frustration. For example: Olga wants to be a concert pianist, but her instructor tells her that she does not have the talent or the skills to reach that goal. If she persists in her wish to be a concert pianist, she will be frustrated. The process of aging can be stressful. Older people have difficulty doing things they once did with ease. They may feel stress that is a result of personal limitations.
Question:
3. Describe a time of stress when you know the Holy Spirit has given direction or revealed answers to problems for you.
Conflict Induced Stress
Sometimes we are unable to satisfy a particular drive or motive because it is in conflict with other drives or motives that are influencing us at the same time. Stress can come from conflicts within our own motivational system. With motivational conflicts there is a choice to be made. Sometimes the choice is easy and the stress associated with making the decision is light. If the decision is difficult, the stress of making the decision and living with it will be greater. For example, a person may want to be a missionary to a foreign country and yet there is a great need for him to stay home to care for his fatherless family. Whichever choice he makes will be stressful and may cause stress in his life for a long time.
Question:
4. How can conflict bring about stress?
(One or more of the following answers may be correct.)
There may be a difficult decision with no easy solutions.
Conflicts within our own motivational system can cause stress.
One drive cannot be satisfied if a person satisfies another drive.
When talking about conflict, we think of positive goals that one wishes to achieve and negative goals that one wishes to avoid. There are 4 major types of stressful motivating conflicts:
1) Approach-Approach Conflicts
This type of conflict is when a person is caught between two or more alternatives and each of them is positive. If alternative A is chosen, the desired goal will be reached, if B is chosen, a different desirable goal is also reached. This is a conflict since the two goals and alternatives are not available at the same time. A person has to choose one or the other. When the approach-approach conflict is resolved, the person has a positive reaction no matter which alternative is chosen.
Some choices we have are very serious. For example, a student who has ability in both music and medicine. When he applies for colleges, he must make a decision to become a doctor or a musician. Both of these alternatives are good, but only one can be chosen. The consequences of such a conflict make it a stressor to the person who has to choose.
2) Avoidance-Avoidance Conflict
Perhaps the most stressful conflict is the avoidance-avoidance conflict. In this type of conflict, a person is faced with several alternatives, and each one is negative. To be in such a conflict, is to be in a box so that no matter which choice is made, the result is unpleasant.
This type of conflict is not unusual in the work setting. For example, perhaps there are not enough nurses in a hospital, so as a result, the nurses must work longer hours even though they receive no higher pay and few days off. Each of these alternatives is not good, but the situation remains. The alternative would be to leave and lose one's job. The result is stress.
3) Approach-Avoidance Conflicts
In this situation, the person considers only one goal. The situation is a conflict because the person would like very much to reach the goal, but it has both positive and negative aspects. It is a matter of "Yes, I'd like to.... Well, I'd rather not.... Maybe I would.... No, I wouldn't.... Yes.... No." Consider the possibility of entering into a relationship with someone you think is special. On one side, the relationship might be rewarding and wonderful. On the other side, the relationship might fail and you are rejected.
Question:
5. What kind of conflict did the Apostle Paul have in Acts 21:10-15?
(Select the best answer.)
Environmental stress.
Approach-avoidance conflict.
Personal stress.
4) Multiple Approach-Avoidance Conflicts
This type is most common of conflicts that adults have. This type of conflict is faced with a number of alternatives and each one is positive or negative. An example of this is making a visit to a foreign city. What will you see one what day and when? If you have children, they will also want to see various things. This means that you must constantly be making decisions. This is not an earth-shaking dilemma, but for each place visited, this is a decision to be made with a positive and negative aspect.
Question:
6. What are the four types of motivational conflict?
Question:
7. What kind of conflict will an older person face if he must have his leg amputated?
Life-Induced Stress
The changes that occur in one's life span are potential sources of stress. Research shows that the death of a spouse gives the most stress, followed by divorce, pregnancy, and trouble with an employer. Along with the high stress is a higher incidence of illness. Oftentimes people who are injured while at work have a high level of stress from family problems or trouble at work.
Income, educational level, and occupation are related to stress. Those people with adequate food, housing and health care feel more secure and thus have less negative life events. Persons with low finances have fewer resources to deal with stress when it occurs. Being a working mother is more stressful than being a working father. The stress of coping with a life-threatening disease and long treatment can be as burdensome as the disease itself.
Question:
8. What could be a stressor for a handicapped person?
(One or more of the following answers may be correct.)
Having trouble with an employer.
Dealing with treatment of a life-threatening condition.
Coping with a life-threatening disease.
Some psychologists have demonstrated that stress may not come only in a dramatic change of life such as the death of a spouse. Stress may come through many little, irritating happenings in our lives such as traffic that moves too slowly, dishes that break, electricity that is shut off, inconsiderate cashiers, and many others. A pensioner may miss his comrades in the workplace and their conversations at mealtime. Therefore, stress may not be so much a reaction to an event itself, but to the adjustments it creates in life.
Significant stress for teenagers includes the following: having thoughts of losing your parents or someone else dear to you, being asked many questions all at once, having a high level of noise at school, being around angry people, and having someone call you "stupid".
The events we have in life as stressors are not always negative or unpleasant. Many events we anticipate to or consider changes for the better can bring problems we did not think of as stress. For example, relatives may be very happy about a wedding of a daughter or son since it is a pleasant event. However, the planning and the cost of such a wedding may cause stress at the same time.
Reacting to Stressors in Our Lives
We need to consider what someone can do when he has stress. We might hear of people trying to cope with stress in their lives. As with many other things, people respond to stressors in different ways. Some people find weddings very stressful; others find weddings and their preparation only mildly stressful. For some people, choices are difficult to make; for others, choices are not enough, they seek challenges. The variability in stress we see among different people can also be found in the same person at any one time. For example, on one day, you may be frustrated by slow moving traffic. On another day, the same situation is not a problem to you. We need to remember that reactions to stressors vary from time to time and from person to person. Research has shown that there are some "hardy" personalities that are resistant to negative aspects of stress. They have three things that help them cope with stress:
- Challenge: being able to see difficulties as an opportunity for change and growth
- Control: the belief that a person can arrange situations to be the master of his life
- Commitment: to be engaged with life and its circumstance, not just watching life go by.
Question:
9. What does it mean to say that there are individual differences in reaction to stress?
Effective Strategies for Coping with Stress
The most effective way of coping with stress is to make changes in your behaviors. We can define learning as a relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs as a result of practice or experience. To respond to a stressor with learning makes good sense for frustration-induced stress. In a frustrating situation, the pathway to our goal is being blocked. An adaptive way to handle the stress is to find a new way to reach the goal or learn to modify our goals.
In fact, much of our everyday learning is motivated by frustration-induced stress. If you have been frustrated by forgetting your key to your apartment, you may find another place or person to store an extra set of keys for yourself. In this case you are motivated to learn a new response because of stress. Learning that is motivated by stress may also teach you the value of escape and avoidance. You may have learned that a sensible thing to do in a conflict situation is to escape or make changes in behavior. This is one way in which stress can be see as a positive force in our lives. If we are never challenged, if we never set goals, if we never face stressful situations, we miss many opportunities for growth and learning. The stress we have is unpleasant at the time, but it may produce positive consequences. .
Strategies:
1) Identify the stressor
Remember that stress is a reaction to several types of stressors. If you have stress in your life, the first thing to ask is, "Where is this stress coming from?" What positive or negative goals are involved? Is your goal directed behavior being blocked? What is the source of your frustration? What recent changes in your life are particularly upsetting? What changes in behavior are necessary for coping with this stress?
2) Remove or negate the stressor
Once the stressor has been identified, the next logical question is, "Can anything be done about it?" Do you have to stay in the situation, or can you bring change to it? If a particular relationship has become a nagging source of stress, is it time to break off the relationship? If the stress you have at work is increasing, is there another position in the company that is less stressful or do you need to change jobs? One needs to take control to turn a challenge into an opportunity. (Example of person with terminal illness.)
3) We should look at the stressors
in our lives and determine whether they are real or partly imagined threats to our well-being. Making this determination is called a reappraisal of one's situation. In other words, we remember the prayer of St. Francis - "people need to change the irritating things that can be changed, accept those that cannot be changed and have the wisdom to know the difference". One way we can help ourselves is by our "self-talk", that is simply by talking to ourselves and replacing the negative statements with statements that help us cope with a situation. For example, " Oh, if the professor calls on me, I'll embarrass myself in front of the whole class" to "I'll just do the best I can, I have prepared as well as anyone here, and this class ends in one hour."
4) Inoculate yourself against future stressors
This means to accept that stress has happened to you, will happen in future, and will pass. It is a matter of anticipation and preparation. This means that "worrying about this will not make it any better," or "no matter how bad things look, I will be able to figure out some plan to solve it". We know that surgery patients recover faster and with fewer complications if they are fully informed before surgery of what they can expect, how they are likely to feel, and what they can do to aid their own recovery.
5) Take your time with decisions
Making difficult decisions gives us stress. We may make matters worse by rushing to a decision just to make an end of the stress. We may not have all the facts to make a good decision, we need to explore all the negative and positive aspects of the alternative choices we have.
While there is not a short-term way of reducing stress, these suggestions will help you in coping with stress. There are some things you can do to combat unpleasant feelings or the effects of them.
Here are three suggestions:
- Learn ways to relax your body fully. There are training techniques, which involve consciously relaxing muscles of the body to reduce tension in them, and as a result, the body relaxes.
- Do some sort of physical exercise. It is difficult to say if physical exercise reduces stress directly or does so indirectly. We do know that exercise improves health, stamina, self-confidence, and self-esteem. An exercise program should not be one that causes stress, but that is something you can do that is enjoyable and not overly strenuous.
- Ask friends for advice. They know you and your personal life habits. They can give you support during the difficult times of life.
Question:
10. Do you think that caregivers and those being cared for need bodily exercise?
yes /
no.