Understanding Stress

This week we have another great post from our student blogger, Samantha Ege:

            We have all felt stress at some point or another. Stress feels differently for everyone. Stress may cause your chest to feel tight, may make you start sweating, and give you butterflies in your stomach. But stress is not as unfathomable as we make it out to be. Stress is the reaction after excessive strain that results when coping resources become inadequate (Deckers 168), or in other words, stress is your reaction after a traumatic event combined with a lack of coping skills. It’s important to understand the common symptoms of stress so you can pinpoint what exactly made you stress-out and how to deal with it.

            The symptoms of stress can be divided into 3 branches: physical, psychological, and behavioral symptoms. Physical symptoms refer to the body’s sympathetic nervous system, or the “fight or flight” response; they encompass the weakening of the body’s immune system (Deckers 169). Being overly stressed can cause you to experience headaches, indigestion, the common cold, or influenza (Deckers 184). Psychological symptoms are the feelings of anxiety, boredom, depression, irritability, and just an overall negative mood (Deckers 170). An individual would be a bit irritable when he or she has a lot of things on their plate. Behavioral symptoms refer to the poor life and health choices that we tend to make when we are stressed (Deckers 171). We tend to over eat and eat poorly, consume excessive amounts of alcohol and drugs, and we lose sleep.

            These symptoms communicate to your brain that you are stressed and that you need to do something about it; knowing the symptoms of stress can help you understand what gets you stressed, which are called “stressors” (Deckers 172). There are many ways to classifying types of stressors, major or minor, short-term or long-term, and distress or eustress, just to name a few. When a stressor is classified as major, it refers to something that occurs occasionally but still has a huge effect on you. For example, a death in the family would be classified as a major stressor. But when a stressor is minor, it refers to everyday hassles, or those annoying things that you have to do every day; for example that annoying coworker at your office, or doing laundry. Stress can also be classified as short-term or long-term, both terms are self-explanatory but can be explained with more detail. Short-term stress or “acute stress” possesses a short duration time and a clear endpoint, similar to the kind of stress that studying for an exam would entail. While long-term stress, or “chronic stress” occurs over long periods of time, for example a nasty divorce. And finally, stress can be defined as distress or eustress; distress is the unhealthy stress that can do sever damage to your body and mind, but eustress is the stress you need to feel when you are in dangerous situations (Deckers 173).

            An abundance of distress, especially, can lead to serious physical and psychological disorders; along with stress weakening the immune system, it can also lead to the development of Acute Stress Disorder. Acute Stress Disorder is the feeling of fear or helplessness to a traumatic event that could result death or injury, within the span of a month, for example studying for GRE for a few weeks and then taking the exam. However if it is more than one month it is classified at Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, or “PTSD” as it’s commonly known as. This is the reaction to a stressful situation that results in the person experiencing distressing recollections, physiological reactivity, and social impairment along with avoiding stimulus that reminds them of the traumatic event (Deckers 180). War is a strong example for PTSD, many veterans after months, or even years, of combat experience PTSD when they come back to their home country. PTSD can be very detrimental to your wellbeing.

            There are ways to cope with stress, fortunately. According to the Appraisal Theory, formulated by Lazarus et al, in 1986, we are in charge of what stresses us out, basically. The Appraisal Theory describes primary and secondary appraisal of stress. Primary appraisal is in regards to what the event means (analyzing it), while secondary appraisal refers to how you think you can, or should, cope with it (Deckers 190). In other words, you are in control of how you react to certain situations. Also, there are two main types of coping, emotion-focused and problem-focused. Emotion-focused is focusing on the emotions that you are feeling that the moment of stress and coping in the best way to get rid of those negative feelings; which isn’t the best way to cope with stressful situations. But problem-focused coping deals primarily with fixing the problem that is causing your stress (Deckers 191-192). Furthermore, seeking social support can relieve stress, whether that is with friends, family, or a counselor, social support is very important to a person’s wellbeing (Deckers 193). And finally, according to Pennebaker, expressive writing helps alleviate stress; writing about stress occasionally can help relieve your stress, but you shouldn’t do it everyday because you don’t want to keep reliving the event you’re writing about (Pennebaker 2004).

            Understanding what stress is and how you can cope with it is vital to dealing with stress in the future, and will ultimately lead to a healthy lifestyle.

 References

Deckers, Lambert. Motivation: Biological, Psychological, Environmental. Fourth ed. Boston: Pearson, 2014. Print.

Lazarus, Richard S., Susan Folkman, Rand J. Gruen, and Anita DeLongis. "Appraisal, Coping, Health Status, and Psychological Symptoms." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50.3 (1986): 571-79. APA PsycNet. American Psychological Association. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.

Pennebaker, James W. "Theories, Therapies, and Taxpayers: On the Complexities of the Expressive Writing Paradigm." Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 11.2 (2004): 138-42. Wiley Online Library. Iowa State University. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.

What Mindfulness Is Not...

Mindfulness seems to be one of the newest "buzz words" in modern culture. People are taking license to use the word and the concept in ways that it was not intended. A while back, a colleague  posted an article entitled "Is Mindfulness Making You Ill?" As I read the article I became increasingly frustrated with the inaccurate picture the article painted about mindfulness. I wanted to comment in this blog post about what mindfulness is not.

1. Mindfulness is not  necessarily a relaxation technique. Mindfulness can be very relaxing, peaceful, or calming. However, sometimes being present with what is currently there can cause some tension or anxiety. Mindfulness is about noticing the experience we're having in the moment, including thoughts, feelings or physical sensations.If the moment happens to be anxious or tense it doesn't mean you are necessarily doing mindfulness "wrong."
2. Mindfulness is not emptying your mind of all thought. In mindfulness we may focus our minds but we don't change what is in them. We become aware of our thoughts and learn to relate to them in a different way. The thoughts are still there. Our human minds are often busy and that is normal. When we practice mindfulness we often are practicing being aware of  and then letting go of the chatter that is in our mind. We don't try to push it away. The chatter is especially difficult when first practicing mindfulness.
3. Mindfulness is not doing nothing. In mindfulness we often strive to be accepting and non judgmental but that does not mean that we do not address things that affect our well being. Mindfulness often just creates some time and space in our thoughts for us to respond more skillfully then just reacting. So we can choose what we do instead of impulsively acting,
4. Mindfulness is not religious or a religion. Mindfulness can be beneficial for people of all races, religions, genders, and backgrounds. It does not require belief in any specific religion.
5. Mindfulness is not a panacea, a magic pill, or the fix all. Mindfulness is incredibly useful. Research has shown it to be effective at helping with stress, pain, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and many other things. It is not appropriate or applicable to everything though and it doesn't "cure" a problem but helps us to be more aware of it so we can address it. Things like trauma, suicidal thoughts, and severe eating disorders may be still more appropriately addressed with other things. 
6, Mindfulness is not difficult. Almost anyone can learn mindfulness skills with practice. They are not difficult to learn but take significant practice to develop. Much like learning anything or weight lifting, you must continuously practice in order to make progress.
7. Mindfulness is not about perfection. The goal of mindfulness is not to be perfect at it or competitive. It is about being present with our life no matter how imperfect it is. Even the most mindful people I know have moments where the struggle with being present. Their success comes in the form of returning to mindfulness after they have had an unskillful moment. It is the continued returning that is the mark of someone who is developing their practice.
8. Mindfulness is not something that should be taught by someone without their own practice. The best mindfulness teachers are people who have their own mindfulness practice and/or training. It is important that when you are learning mindfulness that there is someone available to help you deal with whatever may come up. Sometimes the best way to learn is in group classes like Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction or in individual therapy.

If you would like to learn more about mindfulness many psychologists use mindfulness in their practices. There are also many websites that offer information about mindfulness, http://www.mindful.org/ is one site that provides a variety of different articles and resources.  


  

The Key to Motivation

We have another great post from our student guest contributor Samantha Ege on motivation: 

Arthur Schopenhauer, a German philosopher in the early 1800s, stated that being motivated was “to be moved into action, or divide on a change in action” (Deckers p.2); motivation has been a popular topic for centuries and is still today. But what exactly is motivation? It’s talked about in schools, at work, and even at home; there are many definitions and branches of motivation, that have many variables contributing to it. Everyone has problems with keeping his or her own motivation, but there are ways on maintaining it.

Motivation is the reason why we do what we do and how we change our behavior. Motivation is how we complete tasks; simply, we need motivation to actually act. However, motivation alone is useless; energy, knowledge, and competence are also really important. Energy is the ability to complete an action, and it has two forms, psychological and physical energy. In other words, you must be in the right mindset and be physically able to complete a task. Knowledge is the “how,” how can you complete a task, and “competence means being capable of performing the behavior necessary to achieve a desired end” (Deckers p.9).

The ability to act is just the starting point, physically acting is where motivation is the most relevant. There are a few models that explain what can cause motivation; the most common way is dividing motivation into two categories; push and pull motivation. Push motivation is your desire to do something, usually by the effect of motives, which are internal causes of motivation; for example hunger. Pull motivation is something (externally) pulling you to do something by the work of incentive, or external causes of motivation, for instance, getting a pay check for going to work. (Deckers p.3).

There is another way you can classify motivation; motivation has internal and external causes. Internal causes are either biological, (the brain and body), psychological (the mind), or environmental (how you view your surroundings). External causes are mostly incentives – as stated earlier - there are positive incentives, that tell you to do something, and negative incentives, that tell you if you should avoid something. There are also environmental effects which is, basically, what is actually in your surroundings, not really how you interpret it.

Unfortunately, knowing how motivation works and what influences us often does not help when finding motivation is a struggle. You have probably had trouble finding motivation at least once, but there are ways to find your motivation again. Usually the reasons why we have trouble being motivated is because of the task itself. The task could be unrewarding, boring, excruciatingly long, difficult to understand, the potential rewards aren’t immediate, or the likelihood of failure is high. There are some ways that you can use to increase motivation.  One way is to visualize yourself reaching potential goals and the other is simply forcing yourself to complete the task. Visualizing the completion of goals and other tasks can help make completing a goal more probable. 

Visualization is a very powerful tool. Many of your favorite athletes may be practicing visualizing themselves winning the game or preforming well on the field. Forcing yourself to complete a task or reach a goal does not sound very appealing, however, once you have completed the task once, each time that task is required it becomes easier. Forcing yourself to complete a task is the most sure-fire way to increase your motivation. If you have ever exercised or went to a gym you likely understand this concept. Going the first time is incredibly hard but each time after is easier. With the right tools and knowledge, everyone can understand how to motivate themselves. If you are having trouble finding motivation or setting goals consider reaching out to a psychologist for assistance. 

References

Deckers, Lambert. Motivation: Biological, Psychological, Environmental. Fourth ed. Boston: Pearson, 2014. Print.

Hi! I’m Samantha Ege, and I am currently a sophomore at Iowa State University. I am originally from Carol Stream Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, and attended my local high school, where I was first introduced to Psychology. Majoring in Psychology and



being a research assistant this semester has opened me up to research and how I can conduct research in my everyday life. Although I am not sure what field of Psychology I was to pursue, I am positive that Psychology is the way to go.