Stress & Coping

By

Prof. Mallika Banerjee

Life would be simple indeed if all of our needs automatically satisfied. In

reality however many obstacles, both personal and environmental prevent
this ideal situation. Such obstacles place adjustive demands on us and can
lead to stress. The term stress has typically been used to refer both to the
adjustive demands placed on an organism and to the organism internal
biological and psychological responses to such demands. In other words it
can be referred to the adjustive demands as stressors, to the effects they
create with in an organism as stress.

It is probably not necessary to point out that life can be stressed. Everyone
faces a different mix of adjustive demands in life and anyone of us may
break down if the going gets tough enough. Under conditions of
overwhelming stress , even a previously stable person may develop
temporary psychological problems and lose the capacity to gain pleasure
from life. This breakdown may be sudden or gradual. Today’s stress can be
tomorrow’s vulnerability.
Stress has many definitions , different psychologists defined stress from
their different angle. There is a growing recognition of the true cost of
neglecting person’s mental health and wellbeing. According to Lazarus (1990
– 1993) “stress is the anxious or threatening feeling that comes when we
interpret or appraise a situation as being more than our psychological
resources can adequately handle”. Stress can be conceptualized from two
angles :-

 Stress as a stimulus
 Stress as a Response

Stress as a Stimulus
Situations external to an individual function as a stimulus. The orientation is
toward identifying causes of stress within the environment. Stress,
therefore, was viewed as an independent variable. The stimulus-based
model of stress was based on an engineering analogy of stress: People have
variable in-built resistance to stress, but if the stress becomes too great, it
can cause permanent damage.
Stress as a Response

Stress as an adjustment process constitutes the response definition. Stress,

seen in the form of an appropriate fight or fight reaction necessary to return
the organism to homeostasis. Following this, stress can be defined as a non-
specific physiological response elicited in an organism which followed three
sequential stages. This process can be termed as the general adaptation
syndrome that consists of an alarm (initial shock and counter shock),
a resistance, and an exhaustion phase.

So, it can be said that ‘stress’ lies in the persons perception of the balance
between the demands on them and their ability to cope with those demands.
Stress is simply the body's response to changes that create taxing
demands . There is a difference between Eustress and Distress. Eustress a
term which denotes positive stress, and Distress refers to negative stress. In
daily life, we often use the term "stress" to describe negative situations. This
leads many people to believe that all stress is bad for them, which is not
true.

Eustress, or positive stress can

 motivate the person,
 encourage to focus energy,
 help perceived target as within coping abilities,
 lead feelings of excitement,
 improve performance etc.

In contrast, Distress, or negative stress has the following characteristics:

 causes anxiety or concern,
 can be short term or long term,
 is perceived as beyond coping abilities,
 feels unpleasant,
 decrease performance,
 can lead to physical or mental problem.
Stress is the reason for two thirds of the total visits to the Physician. It is
also the leading cause of the coronary artery diseases, cancer, accidents and
respiratory diseases, it aggravates hypertension, insomnia, diabetes, herpes,
multiple sclerosis, etc. Besides, stress that continues for long periods of time
can lead to poor concentration, irritability, anger, and poor judgment.

Stress leads to marriage breakups, family fights, road rage, suicides and
violence.

The concept of stress has conceptualized in at least three ways –

 Some have looked at stress as a stimulus that produces feeling of
tension. Stressors can include physically disrupting events such as
earthquake significant life event charges such as getting married or
having a new baby and consistently taxing situation such as living in a
dangerous neighbourhood or having to deal with unreasonable boss.
 Other have approached stress as the physical and psychological
response to stressors. In this view stress is the internal feeling
generated in response to events or situation (Coyne etal 1982).
 In third view of stress – as a process involving an interaction between
the person and his/her environment (Lazarus etal 1999).

What are the biggest causes of present day stress, and how do these lead to
such high levels of tension?

The main causes of stress that arise due to the external environment are
studied by many researchers. From the extract of those studies, following
are the biggest causes of present day stress levels in modern societies:

1. Financial Problems
2. Workplace Stress
3. Personal Relationships
4. Health
5. Irritants

These main causes of stress are taking their toll on today’s urban man in the
shape of stress related diseases in general.

Besides, there are particular factors for children’s stress, anxiety, depression
etc.
For children family life is extremely important.

 Fighting and/or separation of parent is a major source of stress for

kids. It is the main source of their feelings of safety and security.
 Excessive routine work
 Reduction of leisure time
 Competition, even within play/extra-curriculum
 Unhealthy comparing
 Unhealthy demand of achievement
 Unhealthy noisy enviouronment due to Industrialization and/or
Urbanization

Coping

It can be said that psychological stress requires a judgment that

environmental and internal demands tax or exceed the individual’s resources
for managing them. This judgment and the individuals effort to manage and
shape the stress experience are conceptualized in terms of the two
interacting process, viz., Appraisal and Coping.
The cognitive appraisal of stress depends upon thoughtful evaluation of
whether the event threatens the individual’s well being and resources are
available for meeting and dealing with the threat. (Cohen etal 1983).
Coping can be defined “as the cognitive and behavioural efforts made to
master tolerate or reduce external and internal demands and conflict among
them”. (Folkman etat 1980). The term coping encompasses atleast two fairly
distinct concepts –
Coping resources : which refers to personal material and social assets that
people have in a varying quantities.
Another is Coping strategies : which refers to habitual behaviour and
cognitive styles in approaching problems. It falls into two major functional
categories :
 Problem solving efforts and
 Emotion focused coping :
The goal of problem focused coping is to reduce the demand of the
situation or enhance one’s resources to deal with it. Emotion focused
coping involves attempt to regulate or reduce the emotional
consequences of the stressful event. So, it can be said that coping
strategies are the tool to be used by resilient people.
Personality type and resilient behaviours provide protection from the
experience of depression and resilience can increase the risk of not being
depressed. (Edward etal 2005). Phillp (2005) examined resilience factors or
characteristics that assist individuals to thrive from and in adversity. These
protective factors are part of an individually general make up. Some of these
factors are considered genetic, such as personality that is out going and
social. Tusaie etal (2005) study revealed that trait optimism as the strongest
individual predictors of adolescent resilience when framed within Lazarus’s
theory of stress and coping.
It can be said that the factors of resilience will enhance flexibility among the
individual while they confronting with stressful situation and personality
traits help to promote these factors.

It can be said that to become a resilient people, persons should use problem
focused coping, emotion focused coping for some cases and also social
support coping strategies when necessary and they should be agreeable and
conscientious by nature to make good adjustment in home, health, social,
emotional and educational adjustment areas.
So, the final recommendation of the study toward the society, more
specifically, to the psychologists that these are the qualities, if developed by
counselling, may help a person become resilient. The resilience helps the
person to cope in a healthier or better way while dealing with future
catastrophic events. In turn, it will help them for leading happier life.

Some strategies to practice good coping in life:

There are four basic psychological needs exist within almost all human
being. These are:

 Protection – secure and safe

 Love – accepted, belongs and understood

 Self esteem – worthy person

 Self fulfillment – need to do what he is best sited for

Much of individual behavior is a response to one or more often a composite

of these four basic needs. The stress occur when there is/are actual or felt
inability to utilize defenses to meet any one or more of these basic needs
when dealing with reality. Now, the question is, why individuals use defense?
Because-

 It enables him to distort reality what he perceives.

 Helps him to perceive reality selectively.
  Helps him to either permanently or temporarily escape from the
threatening reality.
 Defend his basic needs from reality perceived as threatening.
 Meet the demands of basic needs more effectively.

When basic need of protection threatened individual uses Reconstituting

defense, i.e., withdrawal,

When acute need of love threatened, uses Reality distorting – denial,

When acute self esteem threatened, uses Rechannelizing - fantasy

Some Coping Strategies to develop resilience are:-

Dysfunctional – Avoidance
Functional – Direct action or indirect action

Direct Action -Action with expectation of changing the stress causing

environment

Pallitative modes -Thoughts and actions to relieve to emotional impact of

changes

Action Plan:-
 Cultivating Belief in Self
 Independent interaction with the environment
 Developing inner directed personality
 Developing self coping mechanism
 Shifting focus
 Reducing blind drug intake &relying on genuine problem solving
strategies
 Cultivating positive habits
 Yoga, meditation, sports, breathing exercises etc.
 Promoting culture of family
 Introducing compulsory exercise- inner/outer
 Identifying stress prone persons & situations
 Introducing counselor
 Making annual holidays
From the angle of personality, never develop following types of personality
by habit

 Masochist :Deriving the pleasure by hurting ownselfe, i.e., self denial,

expiatory physical suffering such as that of the religious flagellants etc.

 Type ‘A’ personality: Those who strive diligently to achieve, are time -
conscious, tense, unable to relax and active.

 Externally localized: Attribute the causes of the incidents to external

world like fate, other persons etc.

Develop strong Ego Functions, particularly, Drive Control and Mastery

Competence.

 Drive control-controlling of affects and impulses.

 Mastery competence-sense of mastery over the work done.

If individual can exercise these factors with the help of counselor or on

his/her own they can easily develop resiliency within themselves or in
others. It will in turn help the society to reduce stress and thus exercising
effective coping.