Saint James High School

Curato St., Brgy. 5, Buenavista, Agusan del Norte

SEC Reg. No. PW00001134
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PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT
Information Sheet No. 4

Topic: Coping with Stress

MELCs:
1. Discuss understanding of mental health and psychological well-being to identify
ways to cope with stress during adolescence EsP-PD11/12CA-Id-4.1
2. Identify causes and effects of stress in one’s life EsP-PD11/12CS-If-5.2
3. Demonstrate personal ways to cope with stress and maintain mental health EsP-
PD11/12CS-Ig-5.3

Objectives:
At the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
1. identify the sources of stress and its effects
2. explain that understanding stress and its sources may help in identifying ways to
cope and have a healthful life
3. develop a stress management in coping stress and maintaining mental health

Discussion
Just like problems, stress is a part of us. We all go through this regardless of our
gender, social status and age, therefore, no one exempts, but its impact depends on
how we deal with it and we can encounter it anywhere, may be at home, at school
and in our community and even within ourselves. Also, we have different coping
styles and different experiences, the important is we deal with it and will not allow
ourselves to be consumed by stress for it gives us negative effects and most likely is
depression to committing suicide and or being ill. In reality, Adolescents are more
prone to stress for they have been experiencing major changes in all aspects in their
lives. Thus, this lesson is very much helpful to you.
A stressful experience is caused by something that occurs either within the individual
or from environment. A past painful experience can linger in our memory and make
us feel depressed. Conflicts with other people cause us difficulty ending up in stress.
Common stressors among students may come in the form of academic demands.
We say that stress is the effect while stressor is the cause.

What is Stress? Exams, deadlines, research paper, school projects demand time
and attention. Family expectations, conflicts, frustration and disappointments
sometimes lead to an overload of emotional tension and stress. When we are under
stress, we feel tense, nervous and sometimes jittery. We could not even concentrate
in our work. Whether we are aware of it or not, so many things around us can create
stress. We may have gotten used to noise everyday and we are not even aware that
it is causing us stress. A stressful condition can happen suddenly like a calamity or a
n accident.

Fight or Flight Syndrome by Hans Selye, an Austrian-Canadian endocrinologist,

associates stress with mental, emotional and physical states produced within the
organism in response to stimulus (either internal or external) that is perceived as
threat. It is physiological reaction accompanied by faster heart rate, muscle tension
or dilation of pupil when a person perceives threat in order to survive danger. The
“fight and flight”syndrome is our initial reaction to stress.
Chronic and severe stress is a threat to health. Prolonged stress dampens our
immune system. It can dull our system because we get used to it. Prolonged stress
causes fatigue and eventually diseases set in. Researchers has shown that stress
can lead to medical disorders like gastric ulcers, heart disease, asthma and even
skin disorders. Thus, it is important that we identify the sources of stress before they
build up and cause us strains and serious illness.

Sources of Stress
A stressor is but anything that induces a stress response. It may be physical, mental,
emotional, social, psychological, economic or even spiritual in nature. Physical
stressors may come in the form of pollution, a congested place or a high level of
noise. It may also include fatigue, pain, shock, trauma and other physiological
conditions in our body. Mental stressors include academic overload, reviewing for
exams, running after deadlines or situations that call for sustained mental effort.
Social, emotional and psychological stressors are somehow interrelated because
they involve relating with other people. As we interact with others, we encounter
conflicts and disappointments leading to feelings of frustration, tension, anxiety and
even anger or depression. Economic stressor may involve one’s socio-economic
condition such as limited financial resources to meet our essential needs in life.
Lastly, stressor affecting our spirituality involves loss of joy and peace or disturbance
of tranquility.
Effects of Stress
The effect of stress cannot be easily felt except in case of trauma where the incident
happens quickly and intensely such as car accident or parental separation. Stressors
that happen almost everyday take time before they finally take a toll on our health.
Sometimes we get used to it that we simply ignore the signs of stress. Think of
ticking bombing or a whistle kettle. Before the bomb explodes and before the kettle
starts, whistling takes some time. The same happens in prolonged stress. Our body
and our mind can no longer take the pressure, thus, causing fatigue that eventually
lowers the immune system. You often get colds and cough when your body is under
stress -- a physiological process that our body undergoes when under prolonged
stress.

Stress Factors
1. Physiological factor - Hans Selye, an Austrian-Canadian endocrinologist,
proposed the General Adaptation Syndrome to explain our body’s response to stress
and is consists of three stages: a) Alarm stage you probably remember that there
was a burst of energy at the onset of a stressor b) Resistance stage followed by a
resistance or attempt to adapt to the stressor and c) Exhaustion stage finally a feeling
of tiredness or fatigue when the energy is already depleted.
2. Psychological factor - this stems from one’s own mental and emotional reactivity
patterns to environmental factors such as persons, places, or events. In other words,
there are individual differences in the way we appraise or interprets a situation. Our
appraisal may or may not elicit a stress response. When we are overwhelmed with
stress, it is not only the body that suffers but our mind and behavior as well. We feel
lonely and depressed. Others become forgetful, irritable and anxious. Some tend to
isolate themselves from others.
Below is a list of common signs and symptoms of stress that we may have
experienced.
Cognitive Symptoms Emotional Symptoms
- memory problems - moodiness or irritability or short temper
- inability to concentrate - agitation (inability to relax)
- poor judgement - feeling overwhelmed
- seeing only the negative - sense of loneliness
- anxious or racing thoughts - depression or general unhappiness
Physical Symptoms Behavioral Symptoms
- headaches - eating more or less
- back pains - sleeping too much or too little
- diarrhea or constipation - isolating oneself
- frequent colds - procrastinating
- rapid heartbeat - forgetting or neglecting obligations
- dizziness

Coping Strategies
How we handle stress depends on several factors such as the person’s
characteristics, the situation and the type of stressor that he or she faces. People
differ in their coping styles. There are people who are easily discouraged and fearful
but there are also people who are confident and sees problems as challenges.

Richard Lazarus, an American psychologist and professor, defines coping as a

cognitive or behavior response to stress aimed at managing or reducing stress. A
situation is stressful depending on how one perceives it. In his appraisal theory,
Lazarus talks about two components of cognitive appraisal, the primary appraisal and
secondary appraisal. Primary appraisal, he evaluates the meaning of the situation
and checks if it will affect him. The secondary appraisal involves how one feels about
the situation. For instance, when a person recognizes that there is a threat, he or she
may confront such situation and say, “Tell yourself the difficulties are not important”
or “for everything bad, there is also something good”. A change of thinking is one
way to cope with psycho-social stressors.
1. Emotion-focused coping - response involves shame and embarrassment, fear
and anxiety, excitement and depression. It is necessary to learn how to control our
impulses to be able to take the appropriate action. However, there are people who
have weak control over their impulses or they no control over the situation. For
instance, binge eating and drug use focus on the emotional reaction to stress. This is
used when a person has no capacity to deal with the source of the problem. Thus, he
or she uses different strategies to deal with the problem such as avoiding, distancing,
accepting the situation or turning into alcohol or asking professional help.
2. Problem-focused coping - deals with the stressors directly in practical ways.
People with problem-focused coping take control of their situation by removing the
source of stress or reducing the effect of stressors. They may also get enough
information or research on the nature of their problem so that they can better
understand the cause of their stress. For instance, a woman who undergoes
battering may read books, articles or search the internet to better understand the
nature of battering. This is an alternative people use when we think we can solve the
problem after assessing it. Several steps can be used in problem-focused coping
such as defining the problem, looking for alternative solutions, learning new skills to
deal with stressors and reappraising to find new standards of behavior.

Emotion-focused coping Problem-focused coping

Eating more or less Talking with the concerned person
Sleeping more or less Researching about the problem
Shouting or crying Takling with friends, about their opinion
Excessive playing computer games Strategizing
Drinking alcohols, smoking, drug using Finding alternatives