Understanding the Impact of Stress on Your Life

1. Topic: Stress & Anxiety • Aim: How can stress affect a person’s life? • Do Now: List 5 stressful situations you might find yourself in. These should be real to your life. Make your list in ascending order (#1 is the least stressful situation, #5 is the most).

2. Stress Discussion: • How would you define stress? • What are some situations that someone your age might find stressful? • What are some things you personally find stressful? • Thinking back to stages of development, what are some things/situations people at different life stages (children, adults, old people) might find stressful? • Do you think certain professions/activities are more stressful than others • Why do you think our body feels a sense of stress at all?

3. So what is stress anyhow? • The anxious or threatening feelings resulting from our appraisal of a situation and our reaction to the demands of it. • Distress (negative): anxiety or pressure that takes a toll on mind and body • Eustress (positive): results from striving and challenging oneself

4. Stressor: a stress-producing event or situation (examples?) • Stress Reaction: the body’s response to a stressor (examples?)

5. Stress and Illness: Stress can be adaptive. In a fearful or stress- causing situation, we can run away and save our lives. Stress can also be maladaptive. If it is prolonged (chronic stress), it increases our risk of illness and health problems.

6. General Reactions to Stress: • Anxiety: a vague, generalized apprehension or feeling of danger • Anger: the irate reaction likely to result from frustration • Fear: the usual reaction when a stressor involves real or imagined danger

7. Reactions to Stress: Fight or Flight Response • Physical responses designed to prepare a person for self-defense • Adrenal glands stimulated to produce hormones that increase energy • This adrenaline allows to body breathe faster and thus use energy more quickly • If stress lasts too long, the body’s resources are used up

8. The Stress Response System: Canon proposed that the stress response (fast) was a fight-or-flight response marked by the outpouring of epinephrine and norepinephrine from the inner adrenal glands, increasing heart and respiration rates, mobilizing sugar and fat, and dulling pain.

9. General Adaptation Syndrome: Stressed individuals go through three phases. EPA/ Yuri Kochetkov/ Landov

10. Stressful Life Events: • Chronic Stress by Age

11. Stress and the Heart: • Type A Personality: • Term for competitive, hard-driving, impatient, verbally aggressive, and anger-prone people • Type B Personality: • Term for easygoing, relaxed people

12. Stress and the Immune System: • During stress, energy is mobilized away from the immune system making it vulnerable.

13. Coping with Stress Discussion: • What are some ways (healthy or unhealthy) that people deal with stressful situations? • Why do you think some people have better coping mechanisms (they can deal with stress better) than others? • How well do you personally deal with stress? • Do you feel stressed often?

14. Coping with Stress: Reducing stress by changing events that cause stress or by changing how we react to stress is called problem-focused coping. OUR SENSE OF CONTOL IS THE DIFFERNCE! Emotion-focused coping is when we cannot change a stressful situation, and we respond by attending to our own emotional needs.

15. Explanatory Style: People with an optimistic (instead of pessimistic) explanatory style tend to have more control over stressors, cope better with stressful events, have better moods, and have a stronger immune system.

16. Social Support: Supportive family members, marriage partners, and close friends help people cope with stress. Their immune functioning calms the cardiovascular system and lowers blood pressure. Bob Daemmrich/ Stock, Boston

17. Cognitive Reactions to Stress: • Difficulty in concentrating, thinking, poor decision making, feeling burned out, post-traumatic stress disorder • Unjustified suspicion or distrust of others • These continued stresses can exacerbate (make worse) existing mental illnesses, or cause physical problems.

18. Behavioral Responses to Stress: • Nervous habits, smoking, drinking more, taking drugs, feeling overly tired for no reason • Changes in: attitude, eating, and grooming habits • Responses can be positive - people risking their lives in a disaster

19. Active Coping Strategies: • Problem Solving: Confronting the situation head-on to create solutions • Control: Escaping situations, or dealing with in a way that makes them less stressful

20. Aerobic Exercise: Many studies suggest that aerobic exercise can elevate mood and well-being because aerobic exercise raises energy, increases self-confidence, and lowers tension, depression, and anxiety.

21. Spirituality & Faith Communities: Regular religious attendance has been a reliable predictor of a longer life span with a reduced risk of dying.

22. Intervening Factors: Investigators suggest there are three factors that connect religious involvement and better health.

23. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): • Condition in which one has intense fear resulting from the exposure of severe trauma. Symptoms: • sense of a foreshortened future • unable to have loving feelings • feeling of detachment from others • decreased interest or participation in significant activities • lack of ability to recall an important aspect of the trauma, and / or efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations connected with the trauma in which they experienced

24. Are certain people at higher risk? • Males are at lower risk than females. • A study shows that overall, women experience more traumatic events than men, particularly those events relating to being victims in crimes. • The majority of men with PTSD were affected from warfare, and sexual assault probably has the most impact on women. • One can develop PTSD at any age, including childhood.

25. We will now watch National Geographic: Stress - Portrait of a Killer. • You are responsible for completing the assignment that goes along with it.

26. Topic: Stress & Anxiety, and fear • Aim: How can stress & anxiety impact a person’s life? • Do Now: List 5 stressful situations you might find yourself in. Make your list in ascending order (#1 is the least stressful situation, #5 is the most).

27. Anxiety Disorders: • Define ‘anxiety’ • List a situation that makes you feel anxious -these could be personal situations, situations at work, or situations at school

28. Anxiety Disorders - Overview: • Most common mental disorders in the U.S. • At least 19% of the adult population suffer from at least one anxiety disorder in any given year • All are more common in women, except for OCD • Except for Panic Disorder, ages of onset are most likely going to be in childhood or adolescence • Anxiety Disorders cost $42 billion each year in health care, lost wages, and lost productivity

29. Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD): Excessive anxiety and worry occurring more days than not for at least 6 months, about a number of events. The person finds it difficult to control the worry • 3 or more of the following symptoms • Restlessness or feeling keyed up or on edge • Being easily fatigued • Difficulty concentrating or mind going blank • Irritability • Muscle tension • Sleep Disturbance

30. Fears: • What are some things that you are afraid of (however minor or major) • Why are you afraid of these things?

31. Phobic Disorders: • When severe anxiety is focused on a specific object, animal, activity, or situation that seems out of proportion to the real danger involved it is called a phobia.

32. Anxiety Disorders: Social Phobias • Social • Fear public scrutiny and embarrassment • Most common phobia • Hypothesized causes • Extreme shyness in childhood perpetuates social phobia into adulthood

33. Acrophobia: Heights Aquaphobia: Water • Gephyrophobia: Bridges Ophidiophobia: Snakes • Aerophobia: Flying Arachnophobia: Spiders • Herpetophobia: Reptiles Ornithophobia: Birds • Agoraphobia: Open spaces Astraphobia: Lightning • Mikrophobia: Germs Phonophobia: Speaking aloud • Ailurophobia: Cats Brontophobia: Thunder • Murophobia: Mice Pyrophobia: Fire • Amaxophobia: Vehicles, driving Claustrophobia: Closed spaces • Numerophobia: Numbers Thanatophobia: Death • Anthophobia: Flowers Cynophobia: Dogs

34. Panic Disorders: • Experience of a sudden attack of intense anxiety • People feel intense dread, even that they may die • Typically experienced shortly after a stressful event

35. Typical Obsessions and Compulsions • Doubts (e.g. Did I turn off the stove? Did I lock the door? Did I hurt someone?) • Fears that someone else has been hurt or killed • Fears that one has done something criminal • Fears that one may accidentally injure someone • Worry that one has become dirty or contaminated • Blasphemous or obscene thoughts Checking Cleaning/washing Doing things a certain number of times in a row Doing and then undoing things Doing things in a certain order, with symmetry Mental acts such as praying, counting, etc

36. The Learning Perspective: Learning theorists suggest that fear conditioning leads to anxiety. This anxiety then becomes associated with other objects or events and is reinforced. Investigators believe that fear responses are inculcated through observational learning. Young monkeys develop fear when they watch other monkeys who are afraid of snakes. John Coletti/ Stock, Boston

37. The Biological Perspective: Natural Selection has led our ancestors to learn to fear snakes, spiders, and other animals. Therefore, fear preserves the species. Twin studies suggest that our genes may be partly responsible for developing fears and anxiety. Twins are more likely to share phobias. Generalized anxiety, panic attacks, and even OCD are linked with brain circuits like the anterior cingulate cortex.

38. Episode of Obsessed: • http://www.aetv.com/obsessed/video/?bctid=1040983681001&vid=AETV_MRSS_Hulu