Unit THE SELF IN FACING

4
CHALLENGES
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Stress is a process by which environmental events, called stressors, threaten or challenge us. This is
the feeling that people have when they are struggling to cope with challenges related to finances,
work, relationships, environment, and other situations. Moreover, stress is felt when an individual
perceives a real or imagined challenge or threat to his/her well-being. People often use the word
stress interchangeably with anxiety, feeling anxious, fearful, nervous, overwhelmed, panic, or
stressed-out.

Stress is the body’s natural defense against real or imagined danger. It flushes the body with
hormones to prepare systems to evade or confront danger. This is known as the “fight-or-flight or
freeze” response.

According to American Psychological Association, there are three (3) types of stress.

1. ACUTE STRESS

Acute stress is usually brief. It is the most common and frequent presentation. Acute stress is most
often caused by reactive thinking. Negative thoughts predominate about situations or events that have
recently occurred, or upcoming situations, events, or demands in the near future.

For example, if you have recently been involved in an argument, you may have acute stress related to
negative thoughts that are repetitive about the argument. Or you may have acute stress that is about
an upcoming work deadline, again the stress is thought-induced. However, most often when the
thinking induced stress is reduced or removed the stress will subside too. However, if the stress
meets DSM-5 criteria, then individual may be diagnosed with Acute Stress Disorder

Acute stress causes signs and symptoms in the body + brain + emotions, but does not cause the
significant amount of damage as Episodic Stress and Chronic stress.

Short-term Effects of Acute Stress

The most common signs + symptoms:

Transient emotional distress – some combination of anger or irritability, anxiety, and

depression.

Transient muscular distress – tension, headache, back pain, neck pain, jaw pain, and other
muscular tensions that lead to pulled muscles and tendons and ligament problems.
Transient stomach, gut and bowel problems, heartburn, acid stomach, flatulence, diarrhea,
constipation.

Transient hyperarousal – elevated blood pressure, rapid heartbeat, rapid pulse, sweaty
palms, heart palpitations, dizziness, migraine headaches, cold hands or feet, shortness of
breath, sleep problems, and chest pain.

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Acute stress can present in anyone’s life. It is highly treatable and manageable. However, repeated
acute stress can become very harmful for your physical and mental health.

2. EPISODIC ACUTE STRESS

People who frequently experience acute stress, or whose lives present with frequent triggers of
stress, have episodic acute stress.

There are 2 main personality types that frequently present with Episodic Acute Stress

“Type A” Personality – Type A personality have an excessive competitive drive,

aggressiveness, impatience, abrupt, and a sense of time urgency. In addition, Type A
personality presents as reactive with hostility, and almost always a deep-seated insecurity
about performance. These personality traits create frequent episodes of acute stress for the
Type A individual. The cardiologists, Friedman and Rosenman found Type A’s to be
significantly likely to develop coronary heart disease.
The “Worrier” – The Worrier presents with almost incessant negative thoughts causing
episodic acute stress on physical and mental health. “Worry warts” project probable disaster
and negatively forecast catastrophe in almost every situation. They have core beliefs that the
world is a dangerous, unrewarding, punitive place where something awful is always about to
happen. These negative binge thinkers also tend to be over aroused and tense, but are more
anxious and depressed than angry and hostile. Their thoughts are frequently filled with “What
if….” statements that are with projected negative outcomes. They are often diagnosed DSM-5
with generalized anxiety disorder.

Signs and Symptoms of Episodic Acute Stress:

The most common signs + symptoms are similar to acute stress, but due to the extended frequent
over arousal or extended hyper arousal, there is ongoing damage and suffering.

Emotional distress – anger or irritability, anxiety and depression, short-tempered, impatient,

tense.

Cognitive distress – compromised attention/concentration, compromised processing speed,

compromised new learning and new learning memory consolidation and retrieval, and mental
fatigue.

Interpersonal relationships deteriorate.

Muscular distress – tension, headache, back pain, jaw pain, pulled muscles, tendons, and
ligament problems.

Stomach, gut, bowel problems, heartburn, acid stomach, flatulence, diarrhea, constipation,
irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

High blood pressure, rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms, heart palpitations, dizziness, migraine
headaches, cold hands or feet, shortness of breath, insomnia, chest pain, and heart disease.

Immune System Compromise: frequent colds/flu, allergies, asthma, and other immune system
compromise illnesses.

Treatment for Episodic Acute Stress. Episodic acute stress requires intervention on many
levels. The treatment requires professional help spanning many months.

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3. CHRONIC STRESS

Chronic stress is the most harmful type of stress. If chronic stress is left untreated over a long period
of time, it can significantly and often irreversibly damage your physical health and deteriorate your
mental health. For example, long term poverty, repeated abuse in any form, unemployment,
dysfunctional family, poor work environment, substance abuse, or an unhappy marriage can cause
significant chronic stress.

Chronic stress can also set in when an individual feels hopeless, does not see an escape from the
cause of stress, and gives up on seeking solutions. Chronic stress can be caused by an aversive
experience in childhood or traumatic experiences later in life.

People with chronic stress have the list of signs and symptoms previously mentioned, but the signs
and symptoms are chronic and can result in a physical and mental breakdown that can lead to
suicide, violent actions, homicide, psychosis, heart attacks, and strokes.

Treatment for Chronic Stress

When a person never sees a way out of a miserable situation, feels anxiety of unrelenting demands
and pressures for seemingly interminable periods of time. With no hope, the individual gives up
searching for solutions.

Some chronic stressors or triggers stem from traumatic early childhood experiences that become
internalized and remain forever painful and present. Early childhood experiences profoundly affect
personality; often resulting in core belief systems that are created by causes of unending stress for
the individual (e.g., the world is a threatening place, you must be perfect at all times). When
personality or deep-seated convictions and beliefs must be reformulated, recovery requires active
self-examination with professional psychological help. Good news is psychological treatment is very
effective.

People with Chronic Stress require extended medical and psychological treatment that includes
behavioral and stress management.

SIGNS OF STRESS
When we face a stressful event, our bodies respond by activating the nervous system and releasing
hormones such as adrenalin and cortisol. These hormones cause physical changes in the body
which helps us to react quickly and effectively to get through the stressful situation. This is called the
“fight or flight” response.

The hormones increase our heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, metabolism, and muscle tension.
Our pupils dilate and our perspiration rate increases. Other effects include sleeping problems, chest
pains, nausea and others.

While these physical changes help us try to meet the challenges of the stressful situation, they can
cause other physical or psychological symptoms if the stress is ongoing and the physical changes do
not settle down.

These symptoms can include:

1. Headaches, other aches, and pains

2. Sleep disturbance, insomnia
3. Upset stomach, indigestion, diarrhea
4. Anxiety, anger, irritability

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5. Depression
6. Fatigue
7. Feeling overwhelmed and out of control
8. Feeling moody, tearful
9. Difficulty concentrating
10. Low self-esteem, lack of confidence
11. High blood pressure
12. Weakened immune system
13. Heart disease

Self-efficacy & Social Support

Perceived self-efficacy is defined as people's beliefs about their capabilities to produce designated
levels of performance that exercise influence over events that affect their lives. Self-efficacy beliefs
determine how people feel, think, motivate themselves and behave. Such beliefs produce these
diverse effects through four major processes. They include cognitive, motivational, affective and
selection processes.

In order to succeed, people need a sense of self-efficacy, to struggle together with resilience to
meet the inevitable obstacles and inequities of life

Self-efficacy ~Albert Bandura

Psychologist Albert Bandura has defined self-efficacy as a person’s particular set of beliefs that
determine how well one can execute a plan of action in prospective situations. In simple terms, self-
efficacy is a person’s beliefs in their ability to succeed in a particular situation.

Ways to develop and maintain Self-Efficacy:

Self-efficacy can be developed. People with high self-efficacy have been found to stop smoking the
moment they decide to do so. Dr. Bandura described four main sources of influence by which a
person’s self-efficacy is developed and maintained. These are:

1. Mastery Experiences

This refers to the experiences one gain when one takes on a new challenge and are successful at
doing so. Mastery experiences are the most effective ways to create a strong sense of efficacy.
One of the best-proven ways to learn a new skill or to improve one’s performance in a given
activity is by practicing. How can one be sure that practicing and acquiring new skills will lead to
mostly positive experiences? Simple – people tend to teach themselves that they are capable.
This positive way of thinking – believing that one is capable of achieving tasks they set out for
themselves – is a boon because part of the struggle of getting better at anything or learning
something new is making sure the person believes they are capable of carrying out said task
successfully.

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2. Vicarious Experiences

These involve observing other people successfully completing a task. When one has positive role
models in their life (especially those who display a healthy level of self-efficacy) – one is more
likely to absorb at least a few of those positive beliefs about the self. Bandura posits that seeing
people similar to oneself succeed by sustained effort raises observers’ beliefs that they too
possess the capabilities to master comparable activities to succeed.

3. Social Persuasion

Receiving positive verbal feedback while undertaking a complex task persuades a person to
believe that they have the skills and capabilities to succeed. Verbal persuasion works at any age,
but the earlier it is administered, the more likely it is to encourage the building of self-efficacy.

4. Emotional & Physiological States

These aspects can influence how people feel about their personal abilities in particular situations.
For example, if you are struggling with depression or anxiety, you might find it harder to have a
healthy level of well-being. Is it impossible to build self-efficacy while suffering from some of these
struggles? Of course not, but boosting your self-efficacy is much easier when one feels healthy
and well.

SOCIAL SUPPORT

Social support is often identified as a key component of solid relationships and strong
psychological health, but what exactly does it mean? Essentially, social support involves having a
network of family and friends that you can turn to in times of need.

Whether you are facing a personal crisis and need immediate assistance, or you just want to
spend time with people who care about you, these relationships play a critical role in how you function
in your day-to-day life.

It is social support that builds people up during times of stress and often gives them the
strength to carry on and even thrive. But social support is certainly not a one-way street. In addition to
relying on others, you also serve as a form of support for many people in your life.

Social support is commonly categorized into four types of behaviors.

1. Emotional
2. Instrumental
3. Informational
4. Appraisal

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The ways in which types of social support differ may best be illustrated using an example.

Example: A 39-year-old graduate student and mother of 2 young children is feeling overwhelmed after
being diagnosed with breast cancer.

Types of Social Support

Content Definition Application

Emotional Expressions of empathy, love Close friends and family provide hope and a
trust and caring listening ear

Instrumental Tangible aid and service Her husband decides to work from home 2
days per week to baby-sit the children while
she attends her chemotherapy

Informational Advice, suggestions, and Doctors provide facts about breast cancer and
information guidance during the treatment process. Her
mother offers advice about her own
chemotherapy treatment 3 years prior

Appraisal Information that is useful for A close friend of 15 years reminds her of all of
self-evaluation the qualities that equip her to “beat” breast
cancer (to encourage an accurate assessment
of her current situation)

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