Stress Management paper

Introduction

Learning all through the coursework, some terms like stress, bad stress, good stress, distress, eustress, and even stressors are tossed around in the text. After reading, learning, and clarifying context clues about stress, it comes to crucial understanding the meanings the fore mentioned phrases and how they flow with the course teachings. We all suffer daily from the pressures of juggling and managing our family, social engaging’s, work, and extracurricular activities. There is not enough time during the day to get everything done that needs to be done. We all wish for longer days and longer nights just to be able to catch up when we need to. Surprisingly enough, this is the many reasons we suffer from occasional bouts of stress. Stress can influence your health mentally and or physically. Everyone handles it differently. Stress-related illnesses, including weight gain or weight loss, lack of sleep, isolation, and depression. These stressors can be quite harsh on an individual mentally and physically. When your body experiences stress, a surge of hormones are released to prepare your body for fight or flight responses.

The term stress in itself carries many definitions based upon how each of the researchers that have studied it to understand it. However, this is the definition that I found intriguing; stress refers to when the body and the mind are demanded to adapt to a new or change in a phenomenon. This definition seems the most appropriate because it accommodates both good and bad stress. It suggests that it entirely depends on a person’s reaction to a situation, how they conceive a situation; it is through this that stress can come out as either positive or negative. (Olpin & Margie Hesson, 2008)

Other terms like a stressor refer to a trigger of stress; that is, trepidations in an environment or system that disturb an organism’s ideal functioning. It automatically triggers a response that is referred to us as stress in an attempt to turn things around and regain homeostasis once again. Stressors can either be psychological or physical, and they equally pose a significant challenge to any living organism. As per a study that was carried out on the neural basis of stress, responses to stressors are precise in numerous levels, and as a result, integrating peripheral and neural systems, an organism can arbitrate the behavioral and physical changes, thus simplifying the stress responses. There are specific parameters of specific stressors that determine the magnitude of a stress response. Looking at the other terms, eustress, this is what we call good stress or rather, the positive stress such as the one that makes you wake up each morning to go to work or study for a forthcoming exam. Distress, on the other hand, refers to bad stress. That means that the stress that negatively drains you of positive energy and outshines your ability to handle a situation. (Kozusznik & Peiró, 2016) Stress can be perceived in two ways; the acute stress that arises due to an instant stressor and appears quickly and disappears. Chronic stress refers to a stress that is experienced for long, and it is as a result of a problem that stays around for quite a long time.

Self-assessment;

Moving on to the assessments, the term speaks for itself. Self-assessment is learning about triggers and related stressors that create stress to oneself. The self-assessment tool is meant to measure stress, and through which one can figure out what causes stress, symptoms of when one is stressed, and how to deal with the stress, for instance, a stress response is primarily determined by our perception of an event, transition, or problem. Finding a balance in our lives and managing our stress can be a challenge. An essential first step is recognizing the degree to which we are affected by the stress in our lives and then move toward strategies to make it better. Everyone at some point experiences stress, taking keen interest to understand how to assess one’s stress, here are the few ways through which self-assessment can be actualized; (Olpin & Margie Hesson, 2008)

Resting heart rate;

With a stopwatch handy, checking one’s heart rate when relaxed and been resting for at least 30 minutes. Feeling your carotid pulse on your neck or radial pulse on your wrist, count the beats that you feel in one minute. Compare it to the average heart rate of about 70 to 80 beats per minute. This will help you to understand if your heart rate is higher than usual. If it is, then there is a possibility that stress or any other conditions may be the cause.

Breathing rate;

Sitting on a chair with a backrest, using both hands, one placed on your abdomen region and the other on your heart region, sit upright, and feel your breathing. In 60 to 120 seconds, you could have synchronized with your breath. Inhale deeply and hold your breath. Gauge if the hand on your abdomen moves, while the other does not or the one on the chest does while the one on the abdomen does not or both the hands move simultaneously. This will help you to determine if you breathe from your chest rather than your abdomen, and if that is the case, then you possibly have stress.

Respiration rate;

As a continuation of the breathing rate exercise above, and with the aid of a stopwatch, find the number of normal breaths that you take in within 60 seconds. Compare it to the average respiration rate of between 12 to 16 breaths per minute. From this comparison, determine if your respiration rate is elevated. And if it is, that is terrible news because of stress is on the table.

Stress-o-Meter;

Walk back in time for a month and try to remember as much as possible how things have been unfolding for the past 30 days.  Compare it to the stress-o-meter rating, where one refers to a stress-free life and ten a stress-ridden life. If your score falls above five on the scale, then you have stress.

Perceived Stress Scale (PSS);

In the course work, the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) is also one of the stress assessment tools that I learnt about. Being one of the most prevalent instruments that can help us comprehend how various situations affect our perceived stress and feelings. Just like the Stress-o-Meter, this tool targets our thoughts and feeling in the past one month. A set of questions that look similar but require one to honestly and quickly answer the questions. In studying answers to these questions, the final score on the PSS can either categorize you as either being a high-stress category or a low-stress category case. (Olpin & Margie Hesson, 2008)

According to Garden, 2020, the PSS goes a long way to aid in gauging the perception of stress. Thus in stress management, PSS will give direction on how to understand the extent to which various situations in an individual’s life can be assessed to be stressful. Through studying these situations, it easy to tell how overloaded, uncontrollable, and unpredictable life is. With the easy to understand items and the easy to grasp response alternatives along with general nature questions, PSS can be employed in community samples and does not require a lot of education.

Ardell Wellness Stress Test;

Attributed to Don Ardell, this stress assessment tool works differently compared to the other tools that we have looked at. Unlike the other tools that look at your perceptions, feelings, and thoughts in the past one month, the Ardell Wellness Stress Test looks at your social aspects of health, spiritual aspects, emotional aspects, intellectual aspects, and even physical aspects. The reason for looking at all these aspects is to offer a balanced assessment. Other differences from other assessment tools include; this tool does not provide much scientific insight, and instead, it relies on personal perceptions to grade own satisfaction as far as the spirit, mind, and body are concerned. (Olpin & Margie Hesson, 2008)

Self-actualized people that can be assumed to be immune to stress lie between +51 to +75, if one can creatively deal with circumstances in life then they lie between +25 to +50, if one can prosper but needs a little bit of skill-building and optimal health concepts, then they lie between +1 to +24. Those individuals that require training on how to deal with stress and are affected by any changes severely, then they lie between 0 to -24. -25 to -50 is for a person that needs counseling. Their life is all about pessimism, and stress is a severe issue for them. Lastly, for those who deserve dangerous psychological care lie between -51 to -75.

Student Stress Scale;

Looking at the college-aged students, Holmes and Rahe formulated this stress assessment tool; the Student Stress Scale. The main aim of this tool is to assess stress among students and determine the possibility of illness or disease as a result of stress-related events that the students might have experienced in life. As a result, this assessment is a lifetime study that seeks to rate how each life event affected an individual and the resulting change or readjustment. Not preferring any between the distress and the eustress, this tool studies both the negative and positive changes, their causes, and the likely outcome due to these events. Having done some sample studies, it has been noted that individuals with severe conditions tend to have higher scores on the assessment scale. The bottom line, this assessment tool concludes that any changes in an individual take a heavy toll on them as they put effort into adapting to the change and regain control.

As we already leaned under the definition of stress, it comes as a result of the effort required to regain stability and as much as not only changes require adaptability, the scale is designed to read each and every life events, interpret and understand the amount of effort needed to adopt a specific and cope with a given change. As a result, the scale suggests that with an increase in stress causing events in one’s life, the more stressful one is bound to be and the sicker the individual will be. Thus it gives us a connection between health and stress. (Olpin & Margie Hesson, 2008)

Targeted behavior changes;

The coursework was both informative and lifesaving. As a result, there are a few behaviors that I noted may cause unnecessary stress, and if left unchecked, then an individual, in this case, me will always have some stress to worry about. They include; personal expectations, financial decisions, and time management. If I target these behaviors, understand how to manage my time effectively and reduce unnecessary pressure and friction as a go on with my daily endeavors, set achievable expectations for myself and manage to operate within my financial allowance then I will doubtlessly win in significantly reducing some of the unnecessary stress that I have to cope with daily. (Sagui-Henson, Levens & Blevins, 2018)

Other than those mentioned under targeted behavior changes, several other factors can source stress in one’s life. It can be family life and family expectations, employment decisions, academic difficulties, relationships, living arrangements, health and physical issues, environmental stressors, daily hassles, choices, information overloads, and many others. The key lesson here, there are just too many sources of stress, and stress in our lives is simply inevitable. As a result, learning how to prevent and manage stress, for instance, through eliminating the stressors, changing one’s thinking, and even managing the stress will go a long way in leading a healthy life. (von Humboldt & Leal, 2013)

Conclusion

Through personal stress assessments, understanding the current levels of stress in one, knowing that you have stress through watching out for the various symptoms that we already learnt about while employing the various stress assessment tools as outlined above, one can be able to comprehend the psychological and physiological stress indicators as well as evaluate the effects of stress in one’s life and ultimately combat stress. In so doing, one can easily root out a few targeted behaviors such as shown above and thus manage stress.

References

garden, m. (2020). Retrieved 31 January 2020, from http://www.mindgarden.com/documents/PerceivedStressScale.pdf

Kozusznik, M., & Peiró, J. (2016). Hierarchy of Eustress and Distress: Rasch Calibration of the Valencia Eustress-Distress Appraisal Scale. Central European Journal Of Management, 2(1,2). doi: 10.5817/cejm2015-1-2-5

Olpin, M., & Margie Hesson, M. (2008). Stress management for life. Mason, OH: Thomson Custom Solutions.

Sagui-Henson, S., Levens, S., & Blevins, C. (2018). Examining the psychological and emotional mechanisms of mindfulness that reduce stress to enhance healthy behaviors. Stress And Health, 34(3), 379-390. doi: 10.1002/smi.2797

von Humboldt, S., & Leal, I. (2013). 2117 – Analyzing occupational stress, sources of stress, and stress management strategies through the eyes of consultants. European Psychiatry, 28, 1. doi: 10.1016/s0924-9338(13)77008-1