Chapter 11: Stress on Health/Well Being
What is distress?
- negative feeling of stress
How does Hardiness relate to stress?
- It is in people who tolerate stress exceptionally well or seem to thrive on it & are open to change; commitment, challeneges are not threats, feel as if they can control their outcomes; growth mindset - ie I lost of job = not a prob! new career!
What is the autonomic nervous system?
- It is the part of the nervous system that covers the involuntary activities of your body; there is a set of peripheral nerves that help manage the body's resources most efficiently in response to threats.
Do men and women respond to stress in the same way?
- NO! from evolutionary perspective females had the responsibility to care for offspring, so when a threat appears, hiding or quieting offspring may be a more effective means of avoiding harm than trying to flee while pregnant or with an infant and males had to protect and fight
Can you treat stress?
- No! But you can learn to cope with stressful events and choose how to respond to it. -ie. all my books fell out my book bag. I can choose to say "its ok, there are worse things!" which will mean I decided that it is not worth stressing about or I can choose to stress about it.
How does Resilience relate to stress?
- The ability to recover after stress or "bounce back"; ability to cope in the face of adversity
Which personality type is more prone to stress and thus health issues?
- Type A bc they can get stressed more easily bc physiological responses to these emotions can cause overstimulation of sympathetic NS
What is the alarm stage?
- Your body releases hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. It causes many immediate physical changes in your body that boost your physical abilities (Your heart beats faster, your breathing speeds up, and your muscles tense) to either fight or run away. Your body also decreases immune resistance making you less able to cope with additional stressors; initial symptoms the body experiences when under stress. You may be familiar with the "fight-or-flight" response, which is a physiological response to stress. This natural reaction prepares you to either flee or protect yourself in dangerous situations. Your heart rate increases, your adrenal gland releases cortisol (a stress hormone), and you receive a boost of adrenaline, which increases energy. This fight-or-flight response occurs in the alarm reaction stage.
What is problem-focused coping?
- a positive type of coping in which people take direct steps to confront or minimize a stressor; generate alternative solutions, weighing the costs and benefits and choosing between them; actually fixes problem - good strategy - effective in long run
What is secondary appraisal?
- after we perceive stressor we ask ourselves whether or not we have the resources to deal with the stressor; part of coping where people decide how to manage and respond to a stressful stimulus; "can i handle the stress or not?", either "yes, i can"= you dont experience stress or "no, i cant"= you do experience stress - this appraisal determines if we will feel stress or not
What is a stressor?
- an environmental event or stimulus that provokes a stress response
What are non coping strategies?
- anxious avoidance/escape - safety behaviors - rationalization
What is the parasympathetic nervous system role in stress response?
- as cortisol comes back to pituitary gland through circulation it creates a negative feedback loop causing the body to calm down; feed and breed; allows body's physiological responses to slow down and return to normal state so we can do normal evolutionary things like feed and breed (ie. digestion comes back, HR decreases)
What is the fight or flight response?
- behavioral and bodily/physiological response to stress that help prepare a person or animal for dealing with potential danger
What is the stress response?
- behavioral, mental or physical response to stressors
What did hans seyle believe?
- biological aspect of stress; we all respond to stress in the same way - proven wrong bc each person has a dif response to stress
What happens when we see prolonged activation of sympathetic nervous system response?
- chronic stress/body is in fight or flight response for extended periods of time we see negative effects - the hormones released and their physiological responses are OK for short term but bad for long term - ie. things that happen during short term like increased HR, vasoconstriction of blood vessels can cause health issues related to heart and we also see decrease in immune response as the body tires from hard work associated with constant arousal
What are the 2 ways of managing stressors?
- cognitive appraisal= primary appraisal and secondary appraisal
What other ways can we have positive coping strategies?
- downward comparison= positive type of coping where we compare ourselves to those who are worse off - give positive meaning to ordinary events
What is emotion a product of?
- emotion is a product of arousal(amygdala) and cognition(frontal lobe); stress is an emotional response to an environmental trigger and the final experience of stress depends on how the situation is appraised(the secondary appraisal determines if we experience stress from the situation) - not just physiological response but also cognitive, so how we choose to label these stressors
What are daily hassles?
- everyday irritations that cause small disruptions, the effects of which can add up to a large impact on health - negative stress
What happens to body in chronic stress?
- exhaustion of sympathetic nervous system and decreased immune response and decreased wbc count, increase HR, vasoconstriction of blood vessels from release of cortisol and hormones (hormones causing heart to work harder) which will cause illnesses like heart failure. Chronic high levels of glucose will cause weight gain, and we will see unhealthy behaviors like overeating, addictions, smoking, alcoholism, drug abuse
What is the ABCDE model?
- explains how to change explanatory style and how to learn optimism A. activating event (ie. cooking with people) B. belief about event (ie. the product is going to suck bc other people will change my idea) C. consequence (ie. frustrated) D. dispute belief (ie. it's ok bc I get to learn to work with people) E. consequence (ie. positive feeling/outlook bc im not looking at the negatives)
What are mediating factors?
- factors that can increase or decrease the likelihood that a stressor will elicit a stress response these mediating factors are important for determine final experience - mediating factors= personality, coping strategies, social support
What is the tend and befriend response?
- females' response to stressor by protecting and caring for their offspring and form social alliances rather than fight or flee in response to threat.
What is the role of amygdala in stress response?
- fight or flight center/primary emotional response center that connect to frontal lobe which creates emotional experience
How does your body respond to stress?
- fight or flight response; any stressor, so anything that invokes challenge, threat, etc will cause a fight or flight response but the intensity of that response will differ - ie. when I see a bear I scream and run away vs. when a person cuts in front of me in line I am shocked but I ignore it bc it is not worth stressing about
What is social support?
- good relationships help support with daily living tasks and knowing that others care
What is the general adaptation syndrome?
- hans seyle; a consistent pattern of physical responses to stress that consists of 3 stages: alarm, resistance and exhaustion
What is stress?
- hans seyle; a non specific response of the body to ANY demand on it so any time body has to change and respond to the environment in some way your body is going to register a change in a generalized function; set of behavioral, mental and physical processes that occur as an organism attempts to deal with an environmental event or stimulus that is perceives as threatening
How do we determine whether a person has stressful even according to Lazarus?
- if person gets to secondary appraisal is how we distinguish between a person who is and isnt experiencing stress - if you feel you can cope with stressful event then you have minimum level of stress - if you cant cope with stressful event then you experience high stress
What is coping?
- investing conscious effort to solve prob in an effort to minimize stress/conflict
How does cognitive appraisal help you cope with stressful events?
- it allows you to think about what is worth being stressed out about or not, it also helps in how you train your brain into handling stressors in the future
What are the physiological response during fight or flight response
- it boosts physical abilities while reducing activities that make the organism vulnerable, by postponing less critical processes(digestion) and increasing physical reactions by the sympathetic NS by increasing HR, blood supply from skin and digestion to muscles and brain. The immune system will also kick in bc the body will most likely be exposed to attack(infection/disease).
How does coping modulate stress?
- it can reduce the likelihood of exhibiting the negative effects associated with stress
What is major life stressors?
- large disruptions especially unpredictable and uncontrollable catastrophic events that affect central areas of peoples live - occur infrequently and can be positive or negative
What are the 2 types of stressors?
- major life stressor and daily hassles
What is emotion-focused coping?
- managing emotions related to problem; a type of coping in which people try to prevent having an emotional response to a stressor; adopt strategies to numb the pain; distraction - not a good strategy, it will not solve the problem or prevent it from happening again - only effective in short run
What is the effect of mediating factors on stress?
- mediating factors like personality, coping strategies and social support can minimize or magnify the effects of stress
What is the importance of marriage?
- most imp relationship bc it prevents illnesses associated with stress
What is exhaustion stage?
- occurs only if a stressor continues for a long time, and person remains in resistance stage for prolonged period of time. the bodys ability to respond to stress declines and physiological systems begin to fail
How does personality traits influence stress and whether we have increase in health problems?
- particular set of personality traits can lead to health issues bc they can be more prone to stress
How does stress and negative emotions increase health problems?
- people cope with these states through behaviors that are bad for health - stress causes wear and tear to heart, overstimulation of sympathetic NS causing high BP, constriction of blood vessels, changes in blood chemistry, greater build up of plaque in arteries - stress causes weaker immune system so body is more prone to illness
What is a Type B personality?
- personality type characterized by noncompetitive, relaxed, easy going
What is type A personality?
- personality type that describes people who are competitive, driven, hostile(biggest risk factor), ambitious, impatient, inability to relax, urgent
What is eustress?
- positive feeling of stress
What are the 2 types of coping?
- problem focused and emotion focused
What is the role of the pituitary gland in stress response?
- releases ACTH to tell adrenal gland to release hormones like cortisol and adrenaline in response to activation of amygdala
How does stress interfere with immune system?
- short term stress boosts immune system, whereas chronic stress weakens it bc it puts strain on different physiological functions like the heart and increases risks of health issues. The hormones released cause physiological responses only meant for short term so prolonged physiological responses can cause straining
What is primary appraisal?
- stressors we meet on a day to day basis, where the stressor is either harmful, threatening or challenging; perceiving stressors - perceive; part of coping that involves making decisions of whether a stimulus is stressful or not
What is learned optimism?
- teaching oneself to think positively - explanatory style= when something happens how do you explain success and failure - these people view positive events as more permanent, pervasive, and personal - these people view negative events as not permanent, pervasive and personal
What is the evolutionary aspect of flight or flight response?
- the body need to respond immediately to stressors for survival and reproduction, it was adaptive bc our ancestors had to run away from predators or stand their ground and fight
What is the sympathetic nervous system role in stress response?
- the division of the autonomic nervous system that arouses the body creating physiological responses, mobilizing its energy in stressful situations; fight or flight - the sympathetic nervous system was built for short term duration of threats so we see negative effects for long term stress
What is the Lazarus model?
- the physiological experience of stress involves 2 appraisals
When do we usually adopt the problem focused coping method?
- usually when we perceive stressors as controllable and are experiencing moderate levels of stress
What is resistance stage?
- when stressor lasts longer, the body physically prepares for a longer, more sustained attack against stressor, so resistance/body's defenses/immune system increases, but the bodys physical fight against stress is not sustainable (ie. increase in wbc count, antibodies, etc); After the initial shock of a stressful event and having a fight-or-flight response, the body begins to repair itself. It releases a lower amount of cortisol, and your heart rate and blood pressure begin to normalize.
Can personality determine what coping strategy you adopt?
- yes!
Can you use multiple strategies to manage stress?
- yes!
Does the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system change throughout the day?
- yes! in the morning, 30 min after waking up body dumps lots of cortisol to arouse the body and wake up, towards end of day body will decrease release of cortisol and adrenaline causing body to relax and go to sleep
Can stressors be positive and negative?
- yes, some stressors can be negative like earthquake, while some can be positive like a job promotion
How does spirituality help cope with stress?
- you find yourself in a group of people who are involved and care for one another; social support - they often promote healthy behaviors and sense of meaning
What are the steps of stress response(fight or flight)?
1. amygdala activates 2. activation of amygdala will activate pituitary gland which will release ACTH 3. ACTH will cause adrenal gland to release hormones like cortisol and adrenaline into body 4. hormones cause physiological effects like increase HR, dilated pupils, decrease digestion, increase immune response
What is the immune system?
The body's defense against invading microorganisms(allergens, bacteria, viruses)