Stress

Stress

Stress is an unavoidable dilemma that occurs in each and every person’s life no matter how rich or poor an individual may be. According to Leahy (2012 p. 425), stress is any event or circumstance that strains or exceeds an individual’s ability to cope. Since stress affects everyone in their own way, the way one person might handle stress could be the total opposite of how another individual might handle that same stressor. The way a person deals with stress is called coping. According to Leahy (2012 p. 443), coping is attempts by individuals to deal with the source of stress and/or control their reactions to it. There are three different coping strategies that help with deal with stress, problem-focused, emotion-focused, and avoidant-focused. Problem-focused strategies focus on changing the environment itself, or how the person interacts with the environment. An example of a problem-focused strategy would be active coping, or actively trying to remove or work around a stressor or to ameliorate its effect. Emotion-focused strategies change a person’s emotional response to the stressor. An example of an emotion-focused strategy is having an emotional support system by seeking encouragement, moral support, sympathy, and understanding from others. The third coping strategy is avoidance, or efforts by an individual to avoid the stressor altogether. By having good coping skills you not only lower your stress, but also lower your chances of developing a stress related illness. According to “A General Propensity to Psychological Distress and Cardiovascular Outcomes,” a research article on stress and your cardiovascular system, prolonged chronic stress, such as depression, have been implicated in increased cardiovascular problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and a stroke. The article also states that once you’re sick, stress makes it harder to recover.
The Holmes-Rahe life stress inventory is a stress test that measures your stress...

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