Stress, Health and Coping

1. Stress, Health and Coping

2. What exactly is Stress?

3. A couple definitions include: • When events are perceived as exceeding your ability to cope with them • The collective physiological and emotional response to any stimulus that disturbs an individual’s homeostasis (balance.)

4. What events might cause you stress?

5. Some examples include: • taking out a loan • failing a test • Impending birth of a baby • Watching a hockey game • Some form of loss • Finding a new home • Interacting with your in-laws • A new relationship • Traffic • Loud noise • graduating from college

6. Negative Effects of Stress Include: • Impaired Task performance • Burnout • Posttraumatic Stress Disorders (PTSD) – • Psychological problems and disorders • Health problems • Chi/Energy does not flow freely in body=>energy gets stagnant=>disease • Relationship with self and Interpersonal relationships suffer

7. How many symptoms of excess stress do you experience? • Are you easily startled or irritated? • Are you increasingly forgetful? • Do you have trouble falling or staying asleep? • Do you continually worry about events in your future? • Do you feel as if you are constantly under pressure to produce? • Do you often use tobacco, alcohol, or other drugs to help you relax? • Do you feel as if you have less energy that you need to finish the day? • Do you have recurrent stomach-aches or headaches? • Is it difficult for you to find satisfaction in simple life pleasures? • Are you often disappointed in your self or others • Are you overly concerned with being liked or accepted by others? • Have you lost interest in intimacy or sex? • Are you concerned that you do not have enough money?

8. To help us understand stress, let’s also consider the biopsychosocial model

9. The Biopsychosocial Model Highlights: The belief that physical health and illness are determined by the complex interaction of biological, psychological and social factors. Stresses can be physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, interpersonal and environmental.

10. The Biopsychosocial model is a more holistic approach to health than simply the biomedical model. • The Biomedical Model is unable to fully account for health because it focuses primarily on biomedical treatments • We need to also consider the person’s psychology as an important factor to how one manages stress • In other words, we need to explore the Mind-Body, also referred to as psychosomatic, connection

11. In this presentation, we will focus on the physical, emotional, and psychological causes and remedies for stress.

12. There are two primary physiological responses to stress, which include: • Fight-or-flight response (Walter Cannon) • Selye’s General Adaptation Syndrome • Alarm • Resistance • Exhaustion

13. Experiencing fight or flight over prolonged periods of time, can negatively affect our various bodily systems including: • nervous, endocrine, muscular, skeletal, digestive, reproductive, urinary, and skin, among others. • And create disease or “dis-ease”

14. Let’s first start with understanding how taking better care of our bodies can help manage stress: • Physical exercise (increases endorphins, feel better, sleep more deeply, increased potential to wake up more refreshed or catch up on much needed sleep) • Eat foods that nourish you (complex carbs, protein, fruits and vegetables) and avoid foods that may make you feel lethargic (refined sugar, flour) • Breath: diaphragmatic breathing is simple, effective, and doesn’t have to be done all at one time (ie. 20 min. of meditation at night); can also be done throughout day (waiting at stop light, in line at bank, at doctor’s office, or in traffic) build practice of consciously connecting to breath and bringing self present. This will also help you to remember to breath when anxiety strikes. • Toning also helps (sound calms and requires us to breath) • Mindfulness: bringing attention to internal bodily sensations and environment (as we practiced earlier in the semester).

15. In other words, we need to: • Learn to use our bodies to deepen our understanding of what is going on for us. • And, develop a relationship with body (by tuning in, trusting and paying attention to it!

16. Often underlying the physical stress is the emotional and psychological stress that we can learn to manage better and consequently positively affect our physical stress.

17. Our Emotional Life is largely influenced by: • Our Relationships, whether they be professional and personal—with significant others, family members, children, relationship with society (including sexism, racism, any form of discrimination, acculturation=stress that results for the pressure of adapting to a new culture).

18. How do you communicate your feelings in order to get the support you need? • What does it take to have healthy conversations? • You need courage to speak up and communicate how you feel. • It takes trial and error, also known as practice, which is not always comfortable and can be stressful! • Also, you need to have the tools such as knowledge of “I” statements, how to bring up a complaint with out making the other person feel as defensive, how to talk in a way that promotes win-win vs. win over. • And, of course show appreciation for the other person’s willingness to work with you or listen to you (that is if they do) or at least it is important information for you to have if they don’t.

19. Relationships can also bring up a lot of: • Fear (even though it can remain unconscious, it can still cause anxiety!!) • Important to look at past and see where we left parts of our vital self behind (ie. Childhood—what is still left unresolved with parents or others, is there anything that can help us with our healing process: therapy, writing a letter to the person, talking to the person directly?) • What fears do we have of the present or future? Might these fears be unconsciously causing some anxiety?

20. Additionally, how might we: • Overcompensate for what we fear • Often our overcompensation of our fears guide much of our entire life, without our conscious awareness. • For example, if we fear abandonment because our father left us as a child, then we might either continue that exact cycle or do the exact opposite and go out of our way to people please and make sure we rescue others out of fear of another person leaving us again (like our father) • Isn’t it amazing how our emotions and psyche work.

21. This is just one example, what is your biggest fear and how do you overcompensate for it?

22. Dr. Margaret Wehrenberg, author of Stress Solutions: Effective Strategies to`Eliminate Your Stress suggests: • Feel your feelings: instead of suppressing them “To know you are angry doesn’t require you to show you’re angry” And showing anger has its place as well. • Have a little fun: laughter is the key. Do what you love and love what you do. When you feel good, you attract goodness, you perceive good in others and the world. When you fill up on yourself, can give more from this full place instead of the depleted place that leaves little for others and self. • Also, it is said that when you are able to laugh at a situation, it does not control you.

23. Lastly, let’s discuss how our psychology affects our stress: • Whether or not we experience stress depends largely on our cognitive appraisal of an event and the resources we have to deal with the event (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Tomaka & Others, 1993) • A generic example of cognitive appraisal is “Do you see the glass as half full or half empty.”

24. Dr. Wayne Dyer says Change Your Thoughts and You Can Change Your Life: • What he means by this is that our thoughts are powerful and often go unnoticed. • However, our thoughts create our reality, which means we are creating our lives without conscious awareness, hence the mess we often create for ourselves. • He also has two categories of thoughts: • those that “match” with what will best serve us • those that don’t match up or as he states a “no match”

25. It is important to first catch your negative thinking and change the thought to a constructive one that is aligned with what you actually desire for yourself. • Once, you become increasingly aware of your thoughts, then, you can shift them from a “no match” to a “match.

26. For example, you feel you do not have enough money and your “no match” thought might be: “I never have enough money.” • Dr. Dyer would say that what we put our attention on we create, even if it is negative and unproductive. • Let’s say, instead we shift our “no match” thought to a “match” with: “I am always provided for and I live an abundant life.” • You can shift your “match” thought to a productive phrase that works for you. Just make sure you are stating it in the affirmative of what you do want and not what you don’t want.

27. Other psychologists say: • Worry well, but only once • Have a designated time in the day to worry (ie. 10 minutes after breakfast on Tuesday and Thursday mornings) this way when you start to worry you can tell yourself that you already worried and that you will have another chance to worry at the scheduled time.

28. Another suggestion for dealing with psychological stress includes: • Learn to Plan instead of Worry • Turning it off: Having a time in the day when you do not worry. (ie. Al-Anon’s idea of “God Box” to hold slips of paper, each with a worry written down that the person is turning over to God or the Universe, or your higher self, you choose). • Or, Writing in your journal everything that concerns you and relishing the peace of mind that ensues. • Kabat-Zinn recommends having a time in the day when you allow yourself to just be and not do anything (could include meditation, but it doesn’t have to).

29. The Importance of Managing Stress: • To get clarity and increase performance level. • Easier on your body, when stress level are low, your health increase. • Have a clear sense of mind • Give body chance to achieve balance and recover from Fight or Flight mode • Increase ability to connect to oneself: emotionally, physically, and spiritually • Increase ability to connect to others: have more meaningful relationships • Connect more to your surroundings: enjoy the process and not just the destination

30. Some Stress-Reduction Techniques Include: • Breath • Laugh • Sleep well • Eat nutritious foods • Take one thing at a time • Practice mindfulness • Slow down • Build down time into day • Live more simply (good for you, your wallet and the environment) • Don’t dwell on the future or the past • Be aware of negative thoughts • Review unrealistic expectations • Find trustworthy people to talk to • Honor and express feelings in healthy outlets • Exercise • Find a hobby and make time for it (even if once a week) • Listen to and/or play music • Spend time in nature • Play with children • Develop a spiritual practice (prayer, meditation, yoga)

31. Next, please follow assignments listed for this week on this course’s home page.