Coping with stress

Learning Obj
- What is coping
- Coping with internal resources
o Personality variables
o Coping styles
- Coping with external resources
o Social support
- Stress management

Stress Moderators
- Modifies how stress is experienced
- Internal and external resources (or impediments)
o They modify how stress is experienced
o They modify the effects of stress
- May augment or diminish the relationship between stress and illness

What is coping
- Defined as the thoughts and behaviours used to manage internal and external demands of the stressful
situation
o Coping is dynamic
  A set of responses
 Resources, values, commitments and a particular environment with its own
resources, demands and constraints
 Not a one time action
- Coping encompasses
o Many actions/reactions to stressful circumstances
o Emotional reactions are part of coping
- Internal
o Personality
 Negative affectivity (neuroticism)
 Hostility, anxiety and depression
o More profound reaction to stressors
o Forms core of “disease-prone personality”
 Coupled with social inhibition and isolation (type D personality)
especially toxic
 Increases cortisol levels and leads to poor health habits
 Can create a false impression of poor health when none exists  seek medical
attention even when not sick
 Pessimistic attributional style
 Explaining negative life events as
o Internal
o Stable → will happen again
o Global → this is happening to me now, as well as other domains like friends
 Optimism
 Good  Less likely to show pessimistic attributional style, better outcome
 See things in more positive ways
o Promotes active and persistent coping efforts
o Fosters sense of control
 Sometimes experience short term physiological costs
o Feeling stressed when expectations are not met since persistent in pursuing
goals
 Broaden-and-Build Model
 Global vs local perspective
o Positive events broaden our attentional span > > >
 Global vs local perspective

Positive mood will broaden our attentional span → manifests in novel thoughts, activities,
relationships and diff experiences :) → opportunity (from openness to experiences) to build more
resources → enhanced health, survival and fulfilment → happy mood again!

Resources to combat with stress!

Picking which one similar to the top to test if person is more global or local perspective

o Psychological control
 Perceived control
 Closely related to self-efficacy: one’s actions to obtain a specific outcome in a
specific situation will be successful
 Secondary control
 Maintains that through collaboration with family and friends leads to successful
coping  control is shared with significant other people in one’s life
 Fosters physical activity
 Basis for interventions to promote good health habits, cope with stressful events and
improve treatment effectiveness
 Control-enhancing interventions
 Use information, relaxation and CBT to reduce anxiety, improve coping, promote
recovery
 Might be aversive if it gives people more responsibility than they want
o High self Esteem
 Tied to effective coping
 Most protective at low levels of stress
 High levels of stress can overwhelm benefits of self-esteem
 They have better health habits
o Additional Psychosocial Resources
 Conscientiousness
 High conscientiousness likely to live an old age
 More successful at avoiding harmful situations
o Consequently have lower stress related biomarkers
 Self confidence and easy going disposition
 Oddly, cheerful people die sooner
o Might be more careless
 Being smart
 Emotional stability
 Religion
 Provides a belief system and way of thinking about stressful events
o Lessens distress and enable people to find meaning
 Spiritual beliefs may lead to better health practices
 Organized religion provides a sense of group identity
 Resilience
o Coping style
 A propensity to deal with stressful events in a particular way
 Avoidance (minimizing) vs approach (confrontative, vigilant)
 Approach related more successful on the whole
o Pays a short term price in anxiety and physiological reactivity but better off
in long term
 Avoidance
o May not work well with chronic stressors but work well with ST eg. Dentist
(ST) vs ongoing job stress (LT)
 Problem-focused vs emotion-focused
 Problem-Focused
o Involves attempts to do something constructive about stressful conditions
o Work-related problems benefit from this
 Emotion-Focused
o Involves efforts to regulate emotions experienced due to stressful event
o Health problems lead to more of such coping (simply must be accepted)
o Emotion focused: ruminating vs emotion-approach
 Emotion approach
 Involves clarifying, focusing on and working through
emotions experienced
 Improves adjustment to many chronic conditions and
medical conditions
o How to make oneself feel better
 Emphasize that there are different strategies available – flexible copers (can use
either or when needed)
 No 1 – 1 match between avoidance/approach vs problem/emotion
 Available for any individual but what type depends on
o Type of stressors
 Work related tends to evoke problem
 Relationship/health tends to evoke emotion
o Age
 Young children tend to do problem-focused strategies
 Emotion only emerges in adolescence
 Middle ages tend to adopt problem focus
 Elderlies tend to adopt emotion focus
o Resources
 When adequate resources, tend to adopt problem-focused
 When demand > resources, tend to adopt emotion-focused
o Perceived Control
 Little control, tend to adopt emotion focus
 May appear that problem is more adaptive but not the case
o In real life, there are cases that problem focus is not possible
 Death of family/friends
 Proactive coping
 Dealing with stressors before it appears
o Requires ability to anticipate or detect potential stressors
 And coping skills for managing them
 Plus self-regulatory skills
 Understudied as stressors are less likely to occur as intensely
 Brief COPE assesses commonly used coping styles
 Coping with HIV
 Social Support or Seeking information
 Direct Action
 Strategies of distraction, escape or avoidance
  Emotional regulation/ventilation
 Personal growth
 Positive thinking and restructuring
- External
o Time
o Money, SOL, education
o Children, friends family
o Presence of positive life events
 correlates to internal resources (optimistic ppl tend to see positive things in difficult times →
becomes external resource → more resilience to cope w stress)
o Absence of other life stressors
o Social support (pg.152)
 The meaning it conveys
 That we are valued/cared about
o Sense of acceptance etc
 Types of social support
 Tangible
o Lending money
 Informational
o Giving information to deal w stressor
 Emotional
o Assurance, that you deserve better etc to feel better about self
 Receiving social support
 Benefits and costs
 Invisible support (shown to be best, most helpful!!)
o Shown to be the most helpful
 Support is given from target to recipient
 But recipient does not know about it (maintain self esteem)
 Thus they do not feel like they are getting extra help
 Perceived social support
o Lack of perceived social support is detrimental to health
o Recipient needs to have perception that they are receiving support
 Individual must feel that help is available when needed
 Providing social support
 Cultural differences
o Types of social support
 Tangible + informational more problem focused provision
 Emotional = emotional
o Self-esteem is highly emphasized in individualistic cultures
 Problem focused might undermine their self image
 Inefficacious
 Codependent
o Collectivistic cultures are more reserved and less comfortable in expressing
emotions
 Problem focused works better
o (In seeking) European Americans more likely to ask for social support than
Koreans
 Individualistic cultures more likely to ask for social support
 Three possibilities
 Collectivistic more reserved, tend to keep problems to self
 Asking help seems to be a burden to others
o Seems to be the most problematic
  In collectivistic cultures, do not need to ask for help
o Unsolicited social help present without seeking it
 Collectivistic cultures find support seeking to be less effective
 Due to concerns about relationships
o Also has genetic predisposition to draw on social support networks
 How does social support affect stress-illness link
 On psychological distress
o Lacking social support is a stressor
 On physiological/neuroendocrine response
 Beneficial effects on cardiovascular, endocrine and immune systems
o Dyadic coping: effects of each member of a couple on the other’s coping,
can be seen both in similar coping styles and in their underlying biology
 On illness and health habits
o Acute stress paradigm
 Found that social support would minimize illness of participants
 Nasal drops containing virus D:
 Less accumulation of allostatic load
 Theoretical models
 Direct/main effects hypothesis
o Social support is generally good (that social support is as good as money,
anytime anywhere)
 Buffering hypothesis
o proposes that social support is helpful only when needed, ie. during stressful
events
 Research shows that both are correct
o Effects are bidirectional
 Giving social support
 Also has beneficial effects on mental and physical health
 How to enhance social support
 People need to be encouraged to
o Recognize possible sources of support
 Where to find and who is willing to give
 The match between support and resources available
o Intimate ones for emotional, experts for
informational
 Too much or overly intrusive social contact may make stress
worse
o Some benefits for health behaviours but produce
psychological distress
 Matching Hypothesis
 Social support most effective when it meets the needs the
stressful situation creates
o Draw on these resources effectively
o Build the resources
- Outcomes
o Reduce/eliminate stressors
o Adjusting
o Maintain a positive self-image and emotional equilibrium
o Continuing satisfying relationships with others
o Enhancing prospects of recovery
o Returning to prestress activities
o Keeping physiological systems reactivity relatively low
Stress Management
- Skill training
o Three stages
 Identify stressors
 Acquire skills for coping with stress
 Practice skills for coping with stress
 Time management
o Plan and establish priorities, avoid wasting time
 Assertiveness training
o Identify stress carriers (people) and techniques to confront them
o need to know when to say no, when it is enough, when ppl throw their
emotional garbage to you
 Self-disclosure skills etc: so ppl know what you need :) not only about
communicating to others, writing too!

 Combat Stress Now (pg. 150)

 Identifying stressors
o Learn what is stress and effects of it
o Learn it is not inherently stressful, but it is a consequence of
appraisal/individual’s perception of it
 Monitoring stress
o Observe their own behaviour and record circumstances and reactions
 Identifying stress antecedents
o Focus on what happens just before they experience feelings of stress
 Avoiding negative self-talk
 Completing take home assignments
 Acquiring skills
 Setting new goals
 Engaging in positive self talk (provide one self w encouragement) and self instruction
(reminding oneself of specifc steps required)
o Mindfulness meditation and acceptance/commitment therapy
 Teaches to strive for a state of mind of heightened awareness of the present
 Without becoming distracted or distressed by stress
 Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR)
 Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT)
 Form of CBT: acceptance of problem, incorporates acceptance of a problem,
mindfulness, commitment to behaviour change
o Self-affirmation
 Feel better about themselves
 Writing about important social relationships most impactful
 Reduce defensiveness in response to threat
 Do before exam haha
o Expressive writing
o Relaxation training techniques
 Deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation training, guided imagery, etc
o Practicing good health habits
o Working on the cognitions and emotions
- Scientists found that comfort foods does switch off stress 2003
o Does not mean that it is good
Stress and eating

Comfort food does help reduce stress wor, but not good in long term. studies in rats, → human

Primitive parts of brain more active, other parts more diminished → it is biological too! Neural pathways,
self-control. So cant just have willpower! Coping mechanism! Those who perceived they were under stress
also affect. So if u perceive yourself as under stress, try changing mindset too.

Biological basis doesnt mean it is good for us!

Habitual use of these foods results in abdominal obesity -- which is not good.

Enhancing social support

- Networking
- Internet-based social support