Coping Strategies Can Be Viewed as Either _______ or _______ Focused.

Coping with Stress

Coping with stress is the process by which a person consciously attempts to main, minimize, or tolerate stressors and problems in life.

Learning Objectives

Requite examples of adaptive and maladaptive strategies for coping with stress

Key Takeaways

Central Points

• Coping is the process of spending mental, conscious energy on dealing with issues in life. Mechanisms used to cope with stress attempt to overcome or diminish the amount of stress experienced.
• Coping mechanisms can be categorized into three broad types: appraisal -focused, which affects thought associated with the stressor; problem-focused, which affects the stressor itself; and emotion -focused, which affects the feelings associated with the stressor.
• Coping strategies can be either positive or negative. Positive or adaptive strategies decrease the amount of stress perceived and experienced, while negative or maladaptive strategies diminish symptoms of stress without addressing the real problem or disorder.
• Coping power varies to the extent that a person perceives a situation as stressful (primary appraisal) and decides he/she has the necessary resource to deal with what has been labeled stressful (secondary appraisal).
• Coping-strategy selection varies amongst people and populations based on situational, sexual, personal, and cultural differences.

Key Terms

• dissociation: A defence force machinery through which certain thoughts or mental processes are compartmentalized in social club to avoid emotional stress to the witting mind.
• sensitization: The increase in behavioral response post-obit repeated applications of a particular stimulus.

Coping with Stress

Coping is the procedure of spending conscious endeavor and energy to solve personal and interpersonal issues. In the case of stress, coping mechanisms seek to master, minimize, or tolerate stress and stressors that occur in everyday life. These mechanisms are ordinarily called coping skills or coping strategies. All coping strategies have the adaptive goal of reducing or dealing with stress, just some strategies tin can actually be maladaptive (unhealthy) or only ineffective. Maladaptive behaviors are those that inhibit a person's ability to adjust to detail situations. This type of beliefs is often used to reduce i's anxiety, merely the consequence is dysfunctional and non-productive. The term "coping" usually refers to dealing with the stress that comes after a stressor is presented, just many people also use proactive coping strategies to eliminate or avoid stressors before they occur. Personal pick in coping strategies is determined past personality traits and type, social context, and the nature of the stressor involved.

Coping Strategies

While psychologists disagree on the specific classification of the hundreds of coping strategies bachelor today, distinctions are often made among various contrasting strategies. The three nigh common distinctions are appraisal-focused, problem-focused, and emotion-focused coping strategies.

Appraisal-Focused Strategies

Appraisal-focused strategies attempt to alter thought processes associated with stress. People alter the way they think near a problem by approaching information technology differently or altering their goals and values.

Problem-Focused Strategies

Problem-focused strategies aim to bargain with the cause of the trouble or stressor. People endeavour to modify or eliminate the source of stress by researching the trouble and learning management skills to solve it.

Emotion-Focused Strategies

Emotion-focused strategies address the feelings associated with the stressor. People modify the emotions that accompany stress perception by releasing, distracting, or managing their mental land.

A typical person volition employ a mixture of all of these strategies when attempting to cope with stress. Skill or prowess at employing these strategies changes over fourth dimension.

Adaptive vs. Maladaptive Strategies

Coping strategies can also be positive (adaptive) or negative (maladaptive). Positive coping strategies successfully diminish the amount of stress beingness experienced and provide constructive feedback for the user. Examples of adaptive coping include seeking social back up from others (social coping) and attempting to learn from the stressful feel (significant-focused coping). Maintaining good physical and mental health, practicing relaxation techniques, and employing humor in hard situations are other types of positive coping strategies. Proactive coping is a specific type of adaptive strategy that attempts to conceptualize a problem before it begins and set a person to cope with the coming challenge.

Negative coping strategies might be successful at managing or abating stress, but the result is dysfunctional and non-productive. They provide a quick set up that interferes with the person's power to interruption apart the association between the stressor and the symptoms of anxiety. Therefore, while these strategies provide brusk-term relief, they actually serve to maintain disorder. Maladaptive strategies include dissociation, sensitization, numbing out, anxious avoidance of a problem, and escape.

Coping Abilities

The chapters to tolerate or cope with stress varies among people. The root of stress is the cognitive appraisal of an event as stressful or stress-inducing. Master appraisal is the extent to which a person perceives an upshot equally benign or threatening and harmful. Secondary appraisal is the estimation of whether a person has the resources or abilities necessary to deal with what has already been deemed stressful. An private tin finer cope with stressors by appraising stressful situations and having conviction in their ability handle situations that are stressful.

Encephalon regions associated with stress: The brain is a vital element in the experience of stress, because the mind must both perceive an effect every bit a stressor and judge the ability to deal with that stress.

Variations in Coping Abilities

Coping power and strategy pick vary depending on personality, gender, and civilization. A person with a positive demeanor and outlook on life will perceive less stress and be improve equipped to handle stress when information technology does arise. Those people who apply a static view of the world will perceive more stress and exist less adept at addressing the stressor in their lives. Men and women also assess stress differently simply tend to cope with stress similarly. Evidence shows that men more than often develop career- or work-related stress, while women are more than prone to stress near interpersonal relationships. The small amount of variation in coping-strategy pick shows that women volition appoint in more emotion-focused coping while men tend to use trouble-focused strategies.

Civilisation and Coping Strategies

Civilization and surroundings also affect what coping strategies are practically bachelor and socially acceptable. Some cultures promote a head-on approach to stress and provide comforting environments for managing stressful situations, while others encourage independence and self-sufficiency when information technology comes to coping with stress. A person'south perception of stress and ability to cope with that stress are products of many different influences in life.

Managing Stress Through Conventional and Alternative Medicine

Stress management resources aim to control or diminish a person's level of stress through both conventional and alternative methods.

Learning Objectives

Dissimilarity conventional and alternative approaches to stress management

Primal Takeaways

Key Points

• Resources in stress management aim to control or allay a person's level of perceived and experienced stress.
• Current approaches to stress management are based on the transactional model, which states that a person must perceive an event as a stressor and doubt their power to cope with that event in order to experience stress.
• Conventional methods focus on the stressor itself, using prove-based approaches to either removing or coming to terms with the stressful situation.
• Alternative methods focus on the ability of the person to cope, and they use non-show-based approaches to aid a person reframe or redesign their concept of stress.

Key Terms

• stressor: An ecology condition or influence that stresses (i.e., causes stress for) an organism.
• transactional model: A model of stress direction that states that an imbalance between perceived stress and the ability to cope determines the level of stress a person experiences.

Stress Management Resources

Stress management resource aim to control a person'southward level of stress, whether chronic and recurring or acute and unique. Stressors are constantly nowadays throughout life, and then 1 of the major keys to overall wellness and happiness is the effective direction of stress. The symptoms of stress tin touch both the torso and the mind. They range in severity depending on the person and the circumstances involved. Stress management techniques provide a style to cope with stress and its symptoms to promote and maintain general well-beingness. There are several different approaches to the management of stress including conventional medicine, alternative medicine, and self-aid therapies. The effectiveness of each of these strategies remains difficult to fully assess as the field still requires additional research in this area.

Approaches to Stress Direction

Studies of stress take shown that it is acquired by singled-out, measurable life events accounted stressors. Life stressors can be ranked by the median caste of stress they produce. This finding led to the belief that stress was somehow outside of or beyond the control of the person experiencing stress. Further study into this belief yielded a slightly different result. While external stressors tin can produce valid and measurable stress in the body, this reaction is entirely dependent on the appraisal formed by the stressed person. Not only does an event demand to exist perceived as stressful, just the individual must also believe that the pressure of the consequence outweighs his/her power to cope. This theory of imbalance between demands and resources is now called the transactional model of stress. Modern stress-management techniques were modeled from this idea that stress is not a predetermined, direct response to a stressor just rather an changeable perception of deficiency on behalf the private. This precept allows stress to be controlled by the person and provides the footing for most stress direction techniques.

Conventional Methods

Conventional methods of stress management are almost popular in the Western globe. These methods are called conventional because most people are familiar with them and their effects on stress. Some conventional methods of reducing stress include psychiatric therapy and feet-reducing medications. As with traditional medicine, conventional methods of stress management tend to focus on evidence-based approaches to both the stressor and the experience of stress. While some conventional methods comprehend the power and effectiveness of counseling and therapy in stress management, they oft rely on medication to reduce stress. Sometimes, the social back up factor of therapy lonely tin can be enough to lift a person out of a debilitating state of stress. Conventional methods tend to face up the stressor head-on and suit a person'southward life to either avoid or abate a item blazon of stress.

Alternative Methods

Culling methods of stress management have traditionally been pop in regions of the world exterior of the United States, just they continue to gain influence in the Western world. As with alternative medicine, culling stress therapies are not rooted in the scientific method, but rather have not-bear witness-based healing effects. These methods tend to focus on the person experiencing stress, providing methods for mental reframing or direction. Culling methods such every bit yoga, meditation, and visualization embrace the transactional model of stress by empowering the stressed person to either view the state of affairs differently or believe in their capability to cope. The transactional model of stress is a framework that emphasizes one'southward ability to evaluate harm, threats, and challenges, and results in an enhanced ability to cope with stressful events. Individuals focus on the nature of thought and stress, and are encouraged to develop heightened security and positive thinking when it comes to stressful situations. Alternative methods are gaining prevalence as personal anecdotes and research keep to reinforce their effectiveness. Other alternative methods to stress direction include meditation, deep breathing, relaxation techniques, spending time in nature, humor, spas, and social activity, among many others.

Alternative stress management: Yoga is a popular alternative stress-management resource. In yoga teaching, the 7 chakras are believed to be the source and manifestation of all stress and disease in the body.

The Value of Social Support in Managing Stress

Social support, the perception or reality of care or help from others, is vital to successful stress management.

Learning Objectives

Discuss the roles of different kinds of social support in stress management

Primal Takeaways

Cardinal Points

• Social support is the perception or actualization of intendance or aid from a social network. Social coping refers to the seeking of social support in the presence of stressful situations.
• Social support tin can exist emotional, tangible, informational, or can come from companionship that is either subjectively perceived or considerately received. Structural support is the size of the social network bachelor, while functional support is the type of back up the network can provide.
• Social back up provides for the successful management of stress and stressful events. Information technology has positive furnishings on both the mind and torso.
• The two main theories of social support and stress management are the buffering hypothesis, which is supported past the social and coping theory, and the direct-effects hypothesis, which is supported past the relational regulation theory.

Key Terms

• tangible: Real or concrete.
• sociability: The skill, tendency, or holding of being sociable or social, of interacting well with others.

The innate sociability of humans plays a role in every moment of a person'south life. Accordingly, social support is the cardinal to many human accomplishments, including the successful management of stress. Social support is the perception or reality that one is cared for, has assistance from others, and is a fellow member of a supportive social network. Social back up is so important that social isolation tin lead to depression, feet, and other negative emotions. In fact, feelings of social isolation are one of the principal triggers of suicidality. Supportive resources tin be emotional, tangible, intangible, informational, and companion-based.

The term "social coping" refers to a person seeking social support while nether stress. The two principal models of social back up are the buffering hypothesis and the straight-effects hypothesis, both of which describe a positive relationship between social back up and stress management.

Types and Sources of Social Back up

Social support can be categorized in several different means. Emotional support is the presence, warmth, and nurturance that provides the individual with a sense of value, esteem, credence, or amore. Tangible support is the offering of a material service, such equally financial support, that provides concrete aid to another person. Informational support is the provision of communication, guidance, or suggestion that enables individual trouble-solving. Companionship support is the presence of another person who provides a sense of belonging and engagement.

Social support: The presence of a social network that tin can either exist expected to provide or actually provides social back up can have extremely positive effects on the experience of stress and successful stress management.

In any case, a type of support can be either perceived or received. Perceived back up is a subjective, personal feel or judgment that support will exist offered when needed and that such support will be effective. Received back up is the objective, specific help that is offered in a fourth dimension of demand.

Social back up tin can also be measured in terms of structural or part support. "Structural support" refers to the size of a person's social network, while "functional support" refers to the types of support that network can provide. Social networks encompass sources of support including families, friends, romantic partners, counselors, and organizations.

Social Support and Stress Direction

Social support plays a major role in successful stress management. Social back up reduces psychological distress and promotes adjustments that annul loftier stress levels. People with low amounts of social support report higher instances of depression, anxiety, and mental disorders. For these people, stressful situations create higher amounts of panic, phobia, and disorder than for those with high social support. Social support also bolsters physical health, which can counteract many negative effects of stress.

The 2 dominant models of social support are the straight-effects hypothesis and the buffering hypothesis.

Co-ordinate to the direct-effects hypothesis, social support provides ameliorate health and wellness benefits all the time, regardless of whether the person being supported is currently experiencing stress

According to the buffering hypothesis, in dissimilarity, social support provides such benefits most strongly when someone is supported while experiencing stress. Proponents of this hypothesis theorize that support serves as a protective layer, creating psychological altitude betwixt a person and stressful events.

Both of these hypotheses promote the theory that social support aids in successful stress management. The stress and coping theory aligns with the buffering hypothesis; it states that social support protects people from the bad wellness furnishings of stressful events past influencing thought and coping ability. This is based on the transactional theory, which argues that stressors are only stressful when perceived as such. Social support works by promoting adaptive appraisal that in turn leads to increased coping power.

The relational regulation theory focuses on the relational attribute of perceived social support (not necessarily the same as actually provided social back up). The relational aspect is that an individual's perception of social back up is based on additional factors such every bit their ain emotions, feelings about the other person, and interpretations of their conversations.

Maintaining Motivation

Maintaining motivation is one of the keys to successful stress management and the promotion of overall well-being.

Learning Objectives

Discuss the human relationship between stress and motivation

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Stress produces numerous symptoms, which vary according to persons, situations, and severity. These can include a turn down in physical or mental health. Research has found that maintaining good wellness has a positive influence on reducing and coping with stress.
• Pocket-sized amounts of stress may be desirable, beneficial, and even salubrious: positive stress plays a function in motivation, adaptation, and reaction to the surround. Excessive amounts of stress, however, will hinder performance and decrease motivation.
• When an individual becomes overstressed, energy that would otherwise be used for motivational management is shifted to manage stress. The focus of the stress takes an immediate precedence and the motivational free energy is focused on the stressor.
• Maybe the most effective strategy, though ane that is oftentimes difficult to put into practice, is shifting from a pessimistic to an optimistic point of view. Research has found that maintaining a positive outlook on life is one of the most effective ways to manage stress.

Key Terms

• motivation: An incentive or reason for doing something.
• stress: An emotional or mental feeling of strain and/or pressure.

Effects of Stress on Health

In psychology, stress is a feeling of strain and pressure. Stress produces numerous symptoms, which vary according to person, situation, and severity. Problems resulting from stress include decline in concrete health or mental health, a sense of beingness overwhelmed, feelings of anxiety, overall irritability, insecurity, nervousness, social withdrawal, loss of appetite, depression, panic attacks, burnout, loftier or depression claret pressure, skin eruptions or rashes, insomnia, lack of sexual desire (sexual dysfunction), migraine, gastrointestinal difficulties (constipation or diarrhea), center problems, and menstrual symptoms. Research indicates that stress may besides play a role in the development of tumors.

Research has constitute that maintaining proficient wellness has a positive influence on reducing and coping with stress. Behaviors such every bit do, meditation, deep breathing, good eating habits, and getting plenty slumber can aid individuals better handle stress. Unfortunately, stress can have a negative touch on the motivation to maintain these healthy behaviors.

Stress and Motivation

A person's motivation to do or reach anything changes over time. Motivation tends to wane as initial excitement dissipates. Discouragement and setbacks tin can scrap away at otherwise high levels of motivation, leaving a person feeling defenseless against life's stressors. This stress tin can be either external (coming from the environs) or internal (coming from personal anxiety). Small amounts of stress may exist desirable, beneficial, and even healthy. Positive stress plays a office in motivation, adaptation, and reaction to the environment. Excessive amounts of stress, even so, may hinder performance and subtract motivation.

Theories of Motivation

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Maslow attempted to formulate a needs-based framework of human motivation, which he termed the bureaucracy of needs. According to Maslow, people are motivated past unsatisfied needs. The lower-level needs such as physiological and safety needs have to be satisfied earlier higher-level needs tin be addressed. When an individual becomes overstressed, energy that would otherwise be used for motivational management is shifted to managing stress. The individual no longer feels able to deal with bones physiological needs, because the focus of the stress takes an firsthand precedence and the motivational energy is focused on the stressor.

Maslow'due south bureaucracy of needs: According to Maslow, one must satisfy lower-level basic needs before progressing on to meet college-level growth needs. Once these needs have been reasonably satisfied, one may be able to reach the highest level, called self-actualization.

Protection Motivation Theory

The protection-motivation theory (PMT), proposed by Dr. R. W. Rogers, suggests that we protect ourselves based on four factors: (1) the perceived severity of a threatening issue, (2) the perceived probability of the occurrence or vulnerability, (3) the efficacy of the recommended preventive behavior, and (4) the perceived self-efficacy. Rogers's theory was based on the piece of work of Richard Lazarus, who looked at how individuals cope with stress. According to PMT, individuals assess a situation or a stressor, and so determine their power to deal with that situation. Threat evaluation focuses on the bodily threat or the stressor, rather than on the touch of that stressor. This demonstrates how the motivational free energy is diverted away from management and onto the actual stressor that is threatening the individual. When dealing with a stressor, an individual determines if carrying out recommended actions volition remove the threat. Self-efficacy, the final factor in PMT, is the belief in 1's ability to carry out the recommended course of activeness successfully. PMT is one model that explains why people engage in unhealthy practices, and information technology offers suggestions for changing those behaviors. If an individual feels unable to appoint in or maintain salubrious behaviors, then the individual is non likely to be motivated to pursue those behaviors.

Managing Stress and Maintaining Motivation

In addition to the benefits of maintaining good health, there are other strategies that help in maintaining motivation and handling stress. Most of these strategies are simple ones that promote personal responsibility and a positive life outlook. Mayhap the most effective strategy, though one that is ofttimes difficult to put into do, is shifting from a pessimistic to an optimistic point of view.

Positive Thinking

Research has institute that maintaining a positive outlook on life is one of the most effective ways to manage stress. If a person is living with hope and staying personally answerable, he/she will exist able to maintain higher levels of motivation through tough times. Positive thinking and hope assist a person maintain high levels of motivation, fifty-fifty when stressful events occur. Elevated excitement and anticipation can besides lower the perception of stressors through increases in mental strength and resilience. By focusing on the practiced and working toward positive goals, a person tin become more impervious to life'due south piffling problems.

Setting Incremental and Achievable Goals

Finding pocket-size means to reignite the initial excitement of a programme or project, such as reading about or researching a goal, is besides effective. Setting small goals and rewarding progress forth the way tin go along this spirit alive besides. Maintaining motivation through setting small goals and rewarding these accomplishments is an effective mode to maintain a positive outlook and good wellness. The small goals may be related to engaging in healthy behaviors or positive outlook. Positive self-talk, smiling, or a daily ten-minute exercise routine are all things that can help reduce stress.

Maintaining Social Support Systems

Finally, having a skillful social support organization is important in maintaining motivation and managing stress. Surrounding oneself with family and friends can provide encouragement and back up through stressful times. A social support system provides encouragement and self-efficacy, helps maintain a positive outlook, and allows an individual to talk about and find ways to deal with the stressor.

The Value of Spirituality and Faith in Managing Stress

Spirituality and faith practices can improve skills for coping with stress and raise levels of happiness and general well-being.

Learning Objectives

Discuss the role of spirituality and faith in stress management

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Psychologists concur that spirituality and faith have powerful effects on stress direction and general happiness.
• Spirituality is the search for a college, existential power, while faith is the belief that such a thing exists. Practices in both spirituality and faith tin lead to greater skills for coping with stress.
• People who do spirituality and faith are able to validate their ain existences, cultivate coping abilities, view stress as short-term and external, and generate social back up for stress direction.
• All forms of spiritual and faithful practice, including meditation, contemplation, and prayer, allow for increases in stress management skills.

Primal Terms

• faith: A feeling, conviction, or conventionalities that something is true or existent; trust or confidence.
• spirituality: Business concern for that which is unseen and intangible, every bit opposed to physical or mundane.
• existentialism: A twentieth-century philosophical motility emphasizing the uniqueness of each human existence in freely making its self-defining choices.

Research in psychology on stress management has demonstrated that spirituality and organized religion take meaningful effects on the ability to cope with stress and on overall happiness. Some spiritual practices reduce stress, while others have healing or restorative powers that assist to manage or cope with certain stressors. Research has shown that religious people are generally happier than others, but not one particular religion or religious practice has been found to accept a monopoly on this miracle.

All forms of prayer, meditation, and existential contemplation activate centers in the brain that are implicated in relaxation and peacefulness, which lowers levels of experienced stress. Overall, maintaining belief in something exterior of the cocky can create meaning, peace, and a sense of purpose, all of which can sustain a person through stressful events in life.

The power of prayer: Prayer, no matter the religion or practice, can take restorative effects on the mind and body, allowing for a successful stress-management practice.

Spirituality

Spirituality can be thought of as the search for the sacred or that which is set up apart from the ordinary. It can take the form of different religions or practices, but ordinarily involves the exploration of personal being and the meaning of life. The practice of spirituality involves veneration of something ethereal and outside of the self.

Faith

Organized religion is trust or confidence in a doctrine, or holding a specific personal or spiritual conventionalities. Questions of faith cannot necessarily be settled by evidentiary support, merely are too not entirely opposed to reason. The practice of faith involves belief in what one cannot actually meet or bear witness to exist. Spirituality and religion work together to produce experiences of otherworldliness and existentialism in human life, allowing the individual to face up the unknown and unknowable in a personal way.

Effects on Well-Existence

People who encompass both spiritual practices and faithful observances have been plant to experience higher levels of happiness and more effective stress management throughout life's stressful events. The contemplation of life or ability outside of witting reality tin can provide some people with greater meaning and worthiness. In times of problem, a person tin can rely on this sense of purpose to validate beingness and cultivate the strength to cope with stress. Additionally, the reliance on a college power places the burden, or the cause of stress, into the control of the higher ability, thus relieving the person of that stressor. Faithfulness tin can also supplement feelings of hope for the future and acceptance of the past. In full general, a person will dwell less on the negative aspects of life and will instead expect dorsum at the practiced and look forward to new possibilities.

Spirituality is often skillful in groups that allow for social support and reaffirming contact with others. Equally we explored earlier, the presence of social support has been found to be vital in stress direction and coping ability. Some researchers argue that the social support function of spiritual groups serves a vital role in helping people cope with stress.

Forms of meditation, prayer, and contemplation tin can negate or allay present stress and provide resilience in the face of new stressors. Neuroscientists continue to study the effects of prayer and meditative states on the brain. A number of studies have demonstrated the positive furnishings of prayer, meditation, and contemplation on both mental and physical health. Decreasing levels of stress is i of the effects institute across several studies. Through religion and spirituality, new levels of calm and happiness can exist achieved, cultivating happiness, wellness, and health.

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-psychology/chapter/coping-with-and-managing-stress/#:~:text=Coping%20mechanisms%20can%20be%20categorized,be%20either%20positive%20or%20negative.

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