STRESSSS!!!!!

     
    Prior to the topic for this week, I am sure that all of us are familiar with this word. Stress. What do you know about stress? Literally, what does stress means? And what causes us become stress. Does writing this blog makes us stress or stress is just our feeling about it?  Stress also can occur to all people, from a street hawker to a CEO of a company, all of them experience stress. Now, on this post I will elaborate and make it clear to all of you what is stress and all the elements of stress plus with the ways to manage stress.

   Now we start with what does the word stress means. From my previous class, stress is the word used to describe the physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses to event that we perceive as threatening or challenging. In the easier word, stress is how you response to events that happen in your life. Cognitive here means all of the process that involve when we are thinking. Now you have know the meaning of stress, let's proceed to the cause of stress which is called stressor. 

Stressors

 Stressor is the events that cause a stress reaction. Stressor can be a daily event in our life such as get awake early at the morning or something much more bigger event such as the earthquake and flood. Surely, the people in Ranau, Sabah probably will experience stress resulted from the earthquake and I feel sympathy for them. 

  

 The way we perceive the stressor can effect the consequences of stress in our life. Stressors can be classified into two categories : eustress and distress. Eustress is mainly about the positive effect of stress. It is also can be related by the adequate amount of stress that can promote health and good attitude towards us. As an example, as a college student may perceive examination week as a stressful week. However, researchers stated that the stress that the student experienced during the examination week is actually helping them to success in their examination. This is because the stress that the student experienced is actually drive the student to put extra effort in their study, thus their examination result will show great mark. However, if the college student fail to cope with the stress, as they found that the burden to revise their study is too big and unaccomplished, they will fail in managing the pressure and will lead to terrible examination result. This effect of this undesirable stimulus which is the burden to revise the subject is called distress. 

Cognitive Factors of Stress 

Cognitive Appraisal Approach is about the mind set of people on thinking about a stressor will effect on how the stressor will be stressful or not. According to Richard Lazarus, there are two process which will determine the how stressful a stressor will be. The steps are primary appraisal and secondary appraisal.

Primary Appraisal

Primary appraisal is the first step whether the stressor is classified as a threat, challenge or a harm or loss to the individual. It also determine whether the stressor as a threat or not. As an example, a student will think that he or she will fail in the upcoming examination as he or she does not attending the class for a month. So, they will perceive the absence of a month will become a threat to them as they do not have the knowledge to face the examination.It the student has studied well in his class, then the student should not have problems in facing the examination and hence no stress occur to the student. 

Secondary Appraisal 

If the person perceive the stressor as a threat to them, they will find the available resources to overcome the stressor. Resources such as social support, money, time, energy and other potential resources can be used to deal with the stressor. As an example, for the student that doesn't has absence for a month in the class, he or she can use another ways to overcome the problems in revising and acquiring the knowledge such as make a group discussion with friends to accelerate the gaining of knowledge. Then, with this method, the student can cope with the stressor and success in the upcoming examination. 

OK. Now let's move on to the causes of stress, As we all know, the causes of stress can be as small as annoying sound of a crying baby to the big event such as earthquake and flood. 

Causes of Stress

The first cause of stress is catastrophe. Catastrophe means an unpredictable event that occurs in a large scale and usually causes terrible effect to the people. Hurricane, tornado, earthquake, tsunami are examples of catastrophe.

Sabah earthquake also cause the damage on buildings.

Major live events can also contribute to stress. Every experience of a person has can be the cause of stress. The adjustments made on certain event happened in our life will sometimes cause stress. Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe believe that any event in life that require adjustments and changes can lead to stress, They made a scale named Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) to measure the amount of stress in a person life by including the major life event which propose certain value known as life change unit. In this scale, the death of spouse is ranked on the highest position and minor violations of the law is among the lowest. 

SRRS scale

There is another scale that is specifically designed for college student. It is called College Undergraduate Stress Scale (CUSS). It is different than SRRS as it is more focus on life events that could happen to college student.

CUSS scale

Hassles or daily annoyances can also contribute to stress. We often heard about student live in a boarding school get bullied by other student. Bully fall in this category. Hassles are differ according to age and environment. As an example an old man maybe experiencing difficulty in reading without glasses and a small child maybe having a problem being teased by their friends. These daily annoyances can lead to mental stress as it is an unfavorable condition for them. 

PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS IN STRESS

Pressure

Pressure is when a person having a urgent demand to do something. It will cause the person to work harder and quicker. The example of pressure is when a cartoonist needs to send the cartoon on the deadline day. The cartoonist has a pressure on himself in completing the works faster to meet the deadline day. 

Uncontrollability

Uncontrollability is where a person does not has the power or capacity in a particular situation. Lack of power to control the situation will cause stress as we somehow like incapable in dealing with the situation. As an example, a doctor will experience stress if he cannot save a patient live because lack of equipment in the hospital. 

Frustration

Frustation happens when people are blocked from achieving their desired goal. Frustation can lead to persistent which the person will do anything to overcome the frustation. Aggression is another response to frustation and it will cause harm to other people. For less threatening effect, displaced aggression occurs when people released their stress caused by frustration to another things or people. There is another way to response to frustration which is escape or withdrawal. During escape, drugs are used to make the people forget about the stressors and stress for a short time. This method however is not permanent to escape from the stress. 

Conflict

There are four types of conflict:

- Approach-approach conflict

A person should choose between two desired and attractive goals

- Avoidance-avoidance conflict

A person should choose between two undesired and goals

- Approach-avoidance conflict

One goal has it own pro and cons and a person should choose whether to agree it or not.

- Multiple approach-avoidance conflict

A person may has two or more goals or options to consider and it is the most difficult one as it involves many options to be weight up.

PHYSIOLOGICAL REACTIONS TO STRESS

Autonomic nervous system is the system that responsible to involuntary actions to manage stress.

General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)  is mainly about on how our body react when adapting to certain stressor. There are three main stages in GAS which are alarm, resistance and exhaustion.

Example on how GAS works

SOCIAL FACTORS INFLUENCE STRESS REACTIONS

Poverty

Lack of accomodation can lead to stress. The main problem for people nowadays is money. Without money, all things will be difficult for us. The failure to get money will lead to hardship in life that increases the stress among people. 

Poverty in a village

Job Stress

Many stressor can occur in a workplace such as racism, huge workload and unfair policy among the worker. The condition of the workplace could contribute to the stress among the workers too. 

Culture

Acculturation is the process to adapting to new culture and the dominant culture will be the dominant one. There are four categories of acculturation which are :

- Integration

- Assimilation

- Separation

-Marginalization

COPING WITH STRESS

There are two methods to cope with stress which are :

-Problem-focused coping

This is the method where we try to eliminate the sources of the stress itself.

-Emotion-focused coping

This method focus on our feeling towards the stressor. We can cope with stress if we change our feeling on the stressor itself. It will reduce the emotional impact on us thus makes us to deal with the stressor more efficiently.

-Meditation

Meditation is the exercise on out mental process to help us refocus to achieve calmness in our consciousness mind. There is concentrative meditation which focus the mind to forgot the daily problems and stresses by focusing to repetitive unchanged stimulus in our body (heartbeat). Meditation helps to prevent chronic pain and depression.