1- introduction. (Erien & Sarah)
In psychology, stress is a feeling of pressure. Stress is a fact of life, you cannot avoid it, but you can learn to manage it. Small amounts of stress may be considered beneficial for health. Positive stress helps improve athletic performance. It also play a factor in motivation, adaptation and reaction to the environment. Excessive amounts of stress, however may lead to badly harm. Stress can increase the risk of stroke, heart attack, ulcers, mental disorders and etc. Stress can be external and related to the environment, but may be created by internal perceptions that cause a person to feel anxiety or any other negative emotions.
Besides that, many of life’s activity can cause stress, especially work, relationships and money problem and when stressed out, it can affect the way we feel or think or behave and the way our body works. Sleeping problems, sweating, anxiety, loss appetite and difficulty concentrating are common signs of stress.
Later on, we also explain about coping strategies that can help safely and effectively reduce the vulnerability to experiencing severe negative stress.
2- Def. & nature of stress. (Erien & Sarah)
Stress usually can be described as a feeling of being overloaded, wound-up tight, tense and worried. The definition of stress is pressure that experienced by a person so that he/she will adapt or adjust themselves. Stress is caused by “stressor”, which is a stress-causing factors. It can be caused by both good and bad experiences. Stressful events can have an impact on health and lead to disease when coping efforts fail. When people stressed out by something happening around them, the bodies will react to release chemical into the blood. The chemicals will give people more energy and strength, which can be a good thing if for example the stress is caused by some physical danger. But this can also be a bad thing, if their extra energy and strength make them cannot control the emotional in response.
The type of stress is divided between high and low level. The stressed intensity we usually feel in response to a specific event has to do with how much we need to accomplish the goals or needs of that situation. Usually when we have nothing much to do, we don’t experience stress that much. Vice versa, when we have a lot of things to do, we tend to feel very much stressed out.
Generally, many people do not like go through the extremes of stress. But sometimes people do not like a total lack of stress for a while. This condition is called boredom. Most people tend to seek is the middle way, which is balance between a lack of stress and too much stress. They like some challenge and excitement in life, but not the thing that make them feel overwhelmed by it.
How vulnerable people are personally to becoming stressed out depends on a kind of factors, including the biological makeup, perception of the ability to cope with issues, characteristics of the “stressor” such as its intensity, timing, and duration and the stress management skills. While some of these factors (such as genetics and often, the characteristics of the stressor itself) are not under direct control, some of the other factors are.
3- Types of stress. (Abdullah & Zulaa)
Nobody is isolated from stress. Everyone must experience stress because it is one of our life’s parts. A huge stress can affect health and relationship negatively, whereas too little is a source of boredom. The key is to find the balance that is best for you. Generally, stress can be divided into two types: positive and negative.
A) Positive “good” stress:
Positive stress is called “Eustress” which is the stress that happens during pleasant situations. It may surprise you, but certain stressors can lead to positive outcomes. Eustress can help to increase confidence, teach and improve new skills and enhance motivation. Examples for eustress include the excitement of buying a new home, getting married, or the feeling you get from a good workout.
B) Negative stress: (To be completed by Zulaa)
4- stress causes and responses. (Abdullah)
Things that cause stress are called “stressors”. They are the requirements, changes and pressures you handle. They can range from daily conflicts, like losing your car keys, to major life events, like a change in your job or getting married.
A stress response is how we react to a stressor. The way you perceive your stressors determines the intensity of your stress response. So whether or not you feel stressed depends on your perception of the situation and how you react to it.
A stress response by itself is not a negative thing. In fact, your body reacts to stress in order to help you cope. Yet over time, the physical changes that occur in response to stressors can be damaging. Most people find that they cope better with some stressors than others, and that their stress response varies depending on other life factors. At the same time, we can usually identify our individual patterns and coping style.
A stressor and a stress response can be demonstrated by the following example: when you realize that even though you made every attempt to be on time, you are going to arrive a few minutes late for a very important meeting. That is a “stressor”. On the other hand, the “response” can be your breathing and heart rate quicken. Your body releases extra energy into your bloodstream. Your blood flow increases to your large muscles. This stress response allows you to walk more quickly to get to your meeting faster.
5- effects of stress on your life. ( Amin).
When a person is on a stressful state right at that moment their body releases a somatic reaction. Their nervous system starts working right away releasing hormones either to fight this stress or take off. This process is called fight because at that moment our heart beats faster than usual and we start to sweat. This is called acute stress which is short term and temporary and our body recovers from it pretty quickly.
But if you are having a chronic stress which is much more long-term it can lead to more serious health issues. A lot of wear and tear can be put on your body because of the constant rush of stress hormones. And your body might end up aging more quickly and you are falling sick more frequently.
Some of the following physical conditions might arise if you are having short term stress
· Annoyance
· Tiredness
· Sleeping disorder
· Concentration Disorder
· Distressed stomach
· Petulance
If stress is long term it can cause a series of health conditions. Some of them are as follows
· Downheartedness
· Abnormal Blood Pressure
· Arrhythmia
· Atherosclerosis
· Heart attack
Cramps, constipation, and diarrhea
· Weight gain or loss
· Changes in sex initiative
· Fertility issues
· Flare-ups of asthma or arthritis
However sometimes stress can be better for our life. It can create a little positive pressure and by that we can actually sometimes push our limits and come up with a better output. It sometimes challenges us and provides us with more focus and ending up being one of the reasons behind our success.
Therefore, stress can also
· Act as a persuader to us and can allow us to carry out a task at higher levels of accomplishment
Keep us striving in our lives by proposing us challenges
6- indicators of stress. (Zulaa)
7- stress and stimulants. (Danny)
Stress and stimulants.
What are stimulants?
Stimulants are something you take that contain chemicals which can boost or release more chemicals through your nervous and body system. Excessive taking stimulants can had bad side effect in long term. Many of stimulants causes stress to body, specifically the adrenal glands, where our natural energy production leading to adrenal fatigue.
Types of stimulants.
There are several types of stimulants which are legal and illegal stimulants.
Legal stimulants:
· Coffee ( containing theobromine, theophylline, caffeine).
· Tea ( containing caffeine).
· Energy drinks ( containing caffeine).
· Chocolates ( containing theophylline).
· Alcohol (Small doses).
· Cigarettes. ( Nicotine)
Illegal stimulants:
· Drugs.
Effects of stimulants to the body.
· Increases heart rate.
· Lowers blood sugar.
· Increases blood pressure.
· Speeds up loss of vitamins and minerals.
· Increase blood cholesterol levels.
Ephedrine (Adrenaline) : Works more specifically on the norepinephrine receptor in the nerve cell. Small amounts of norepinephrine will be gained when the cell released it, but in the presence of ephedrine, very high amounts of norepinephrine in the synapse (space between nerve cells) will be gained when the cell released it. When this happen, it can caused increasing the heart rate, relaxation of bronchioles (part of the lung) and blood pressure.
Preventing negative effects of stimulants on the body.
There are several ways to fight negative side effect of stimulants which are supplements, foods and lifestyles choices that can preventing it.
· Supplements : containing adaptogenic herbs for example Ginseng, which helping our body to adapt physical and mental stresses.
· Foods : containing high levels of serotonin, melatonin, tryptophan,vitamins B,C and Magnesium can decrease our level of stress. Besides that, organic oats, nuts/seeds, tart cherries, bananas, dark leafy greens, grapes, dark chocolate, turkey, and many other whole foods also can helped decreasing it.
· Lifestyle changes : Execises will be best way to reduce our stress level such as meditation, yoga, jogging and others. Besides that, doing things that we like for example, playing video game, travelling, drawing and many more can also decrease our level of stress. Then, reducing or stop from taking caffeine, alcohol and refined sugar can be included in having good lifestyles.
8- Inability to deal with stress: (Abdullah)
Inability to deal with stress is very dangerous. It may lead to depression and depression might guide to suicide. People who have depression have the same symptoms to stress, except the symptoms can last for long period that stay for weeks. Because of the symptoms stay long, the effect on the person’s body, mental and behavior is really serious unlike the temporary stress. To deal with stress, it is important to realize that clinical depression is an illness and requires treatment. Based on NIMH the National Institute of Mental Health, 80% of people who went for treatment started to feel better within just few weeks.
9- Coping strategies. (fatin, haree)
Coping Strategies
How People Cope With Stressful Situations
Coping occurs in response to psychological stress and usually triggered by any changes in an effort to sustain mental health and emotional well-being. Life stressors are also known as negative events, for example, the death of a loved one, divorce, loss of things, loss job, etc. Positive event in life such as marriage, birth, new job, new house etc. can also become life stressors; this is because we need to use coping skills to adapt it. In coping strategies, things that we use to adjust to the changes that occur in our life are the behaviors, thoughts and also emotions.
Stresses plays the most important part of everyone’s daily live. Basically, people learn to either manage their own stress or other ways, for example get some type of medication to help to control their self. As we normally know, in this world today, there are many effects and reasons of stress but unfortunately only a few ways to help people to manage and also to maintain a good and healthy life style. Worrying, racing thoughts, anticipation, fear, evaluation of self, anxiety and assessment of the importance of the event in our lives are the several types of stressor’s that we all have to face at some point in our lives.
Sometime as human being, they need to get medical treatment when experiencing stress in their live, and either given medication to help to control their symptoms. Sometimes the use of medication being helpful to control stress, but it doesn’t mean that medication can get rid of the causes of stress.
There are many different relaxation skill type training, first is cognitive therapy techniques and the second is traditional psychotherapy that can be used by psychologists as a way of relieving stress and also help people in managing the stress more accurately. Relaxation skill type training that they have been taught by the psychologists, help to monitor as well as control their physiological level. Next is cognitive therapy techniques, it teach people to look at thing that are causing the stress in their daily life and including on how to manage the result of stressful events better. Basically, traditional psychotherapy will give you a chance to change what you want to change, so people will react to life stress more effectively.
What is coping?
Coping is usually refer to the thoughts and also the action that we use to deal with a problematic situation. In other word, it’s refer to both behavioral and psychological that people use to tolerate, reduce and also lessen the stressful events.
Coping Styles
In this situation, there are many coping styles that we can use and some of that can explain more effective than others, it depends on the nature of the stressful situation. Maladaptive coping also referred to as ineffective coping mechanisms, may also to the applied to negative events or internal conflict.
Among the psychology experts, coping styles are usually assigned broad categories that can draw distinctions between methods. For example, instrumental coping (problem-focused) aims on ways to handle the issues in order to minimize the stress around the given situation. In other word, working toward to identify the areas of your life that you can turn or change, this will also help to bring out the changes in our life. Besides that, emotion-focused coping are used to deal with feelings of distress, how we feel about the stress and learn to cope with stress in life. In additions, coping is identified as being either active or avoidant. For active coping strategies involve the awareness of the stressor, it’s an attempt to decrease the negative outcome. The opposite of active coping strategies is avoidant coping, it characteristics is ignoring the issue or problem (e.g. sleeping, isolating, shopping).
As we mention above, there are two different coping strategies, problem focused strategy and also emotion-focused strategy. First, problem-focused strategy basically strategy that relies on using the active solution to automatically tackle the situation that causes people stress. There are some example that can relate to this matter:
1. Analyze what situation that we are facing right now.
Eg: pay attention to something that we want to do,
avoid on taking responsibility more than you can manage.
2. Work hard and work smart.
Eg: discipline in everything that we do if we want the result more effective,
study smart in exam week.
3. Apply something from what you have already learned in your daily life before.
Eg: if you fail on your business –
you should know what the main problem of your failing, and start the new business
steps to avoid the same mistake happen again.
Second, emotion-focused strategy are been used to control the feeling of distress, rather than the actual problem situation. Focus on your emotions:
1. Blame
Eg: blame on yourself or blame on other of the problem that occurs.
2. Brood
Eg: when you accept something without saying “no”, but in the future,
you regret, keep complaining and saying it is unfair for you.
3. Support from other parties,
Eg: talk with your bestfriend about your concern.
Express your true feeling about something that keep bothering you to someone that
close to you, and ask for their advice.
4. Deny/Avoid
Eg: Avoid everything that is related to the situation that will make you become stress,
or the other solution is meet the expert, they will give the medicine if you are in
that particular stage that need that thing, so it can help you to escape from situation.
People who struggle with addiction often employ maladaptive coping mechanisms, some addicts remain in denial or don’t know how to cope with stress in a healthy way, and other may be blaming themselves for a negative past experience either of which may lead to using a substance or behaviour to escape.
Gender differences in stress and coping styles (haree)
Gender differences in coping strategies are the habits in which men and women dissimilar in managing psychological stress. There is a fact that males often develop stress due to their careers, whereas females often encounter stress due to issues in interpersonal relationships. Research indicated that there were gender differences in the sources of stressors, but gender differences in coping were fairly small after controlling for the source of stressors” and more new work has the same exposed little differences
between men’s and women’s coping strategies when studying individuals in similar situation.
In conclusion, such differences as exist indicate that women be likely to employ emotion-focused coping and also the “tend-and-befriend” response to stress, simultaneously men have a propensity to make use of problem focused coping and the “fight-or-flight” response, perhaps because societal standards support men to be more individualistic, whereas women are frequently likely to be interpersonal. As substitute explanation for the above mentioned differences involves genetic factors.
10- Conclusion. (Amin)
Stress is something which is inevitable. No matter how much we try we would never be able to avoid it. Stress can be dangerous sometimes especially when the stress lasts for a long time.We all must never forget that stress is a part of our life that we must embrace as well as fight. We also should always keep in our mind that stress is not always harmful for us.Sometimes it can motivate us.