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What is Stress?

What is Stress?. A physiological response? Particular emotions? A major life event? A minor life event? A circumstance? A conflict between two competing drives? . What do adolescents find stressful?. Academic Interpersonal: Family Peer: Friends, romance

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What is Stress?

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  1. What is Stress? • A physiological response? • Particular emotions? • A major life event? • A minor life event? • A circumstance? • A conflict between two competing drives?

  2. What do adolescents find stressful? • Academic • Interpersonal: • Family • Peer: Friends, romance • Girls: Network events (stress of caring)

  3. Stress Appraisal • Stress is in the ‘eye of the beholder’

  4. Lazarus and Folkman: Primary Appraisal Process Appraisal influenced by characteristics of circumstance (e.g., intensity, duration), and by individual differences (e.g., temperament, attachment history, previous trauma)

  5. Lazarus and Folkman: Secondary Appraisal Processes “Coping: constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person.”

  6. Lazarus and Folkman: Secondary Appraisal Process

  7. Problem-Focused Coping • Coping efforts intended to act on the stressor • Examples: (e.g., generating alternative solutions; talking to someone who can help one eliminate a problem)

  8. Emotion-Focused Coping • Coping efforts which are intended to regulate the emotional states associated with or resulting from the stressor • Examples: see the silver lining, acceptance, cognitive avoidance

  9. Different Theoretical Approaches to Coping • Coping Resources • Coping Styles • Coping Efforts

  10. Coping Resources • Relatively stable characteristics of the self or the environment that facilitate successful adaptation to stress. • Individual resources: • problem solving, interpersonal skills • Emotional resources (for example, ability to relax, tolerance for negative emotion, self-worth) • secure working model of attachment • Environmental resources: • social support networks • financial resources • community resources

  11. Coping Styles • Individual’s coping tendencies that are relatively stable across situation and across time • Example: Approach vs. Avoidance • Approach: move closer to stressor. Tendency to focus on and respond to potential for reward, positive emotion. • Avoidance: move further away from stressor. Greater focus on a negative/defensive system, potential for punishment or failure, inhibit approach. • Example: 15 year old boy, attracted to girl.

  12. Coping Efforts • Specific coping cognitions, feelings, behaviors • Examples: Evaluation, willful cognitive distraction, positive reappraisal, venting, seeking emotional support, constructive stress relief, direct action • Assumption: not sufficient to study characteristic resources or styles, because coping efforts can vary across time, situation

  13. Coping as Effortful • “Effortful” implies executive control over lower-order systems (e.g., approach vs. avoidance) • For example, attentional control • Ability to shift attention away from stress, to soothe self. Ability to direct attention to sources of safety • However, too much attentional avoidance missing important information in environment, and missed opportunity to learn to cope. Must attend to stress as well.

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