Coping with Stress
Posting season is approaching. Is this your final year being posted in the US? Are you posted out this APS? Are you preparing for your final move? Did you just move to the US? Do you know where you are going to be posted next? Have you moved for the first time without your children? Are your children transitioning to a new school, just finished school or moved out from the house? Are you experiencing these situations exactly like your spouse, children, or friends? For some, these situations can be exciting but for others, they can be stressful. But what is actually stress?
What is Stress?
According to the APA (American Psychological Association), stress is defined as the physiological or psychological response to internal or external stressors. Stress involves changes affecting nearly every system of the body, influencing how people feel and behave. For example, it may be manifested by palpitations, sweating, dry mouth, shortness of breath, fidgeting, accelerated speech, augmentation of negative emotions (if already being experienced), and longer duration of stress fatigue. Severe stress is manifested by general adaptation syndrome. By causing these mind-body changes, stress contributes directly to psychological and physiological disorder and disease and affects mental and physical health, reducing quality of life.
Recognize Stress
A situation is only stressful if you interpret it as being stressful. Researchers were not able to identify common specific stressful situations but rather identified common components within them. For a situation to be stressful, it must contain one or more of the following ingredients.
Ingredients for Stress
| Threat | Emotions |
| Novelty | Something new you have not experienced before |
| Unpredictability | Something you had no way of knowing could occur |
| Threat to the Ego | Feeling your competence as a person is questioned |
| Sense of Control | Feeling you have little or no control in a situation |
(Dickerson and Kemeny, 2004)
How to Cope with Stress
Coping refers to our thoughts and actions used to deal with a threatening situation. Since we are all different and have various responses to situations, we will try to choose the most appropriate coping strategies for us. There are many strategies, but here are two sets of coping skills you can choose from in solving the problem and/or managing your emotional response. Problem-Focused addresses the cause of the situation in trying to change it, and Emotion-Focused addresses our emotional response when the situation is out of our control, or we do not want to or can’t change it.
Efficient Coping Strategies
Coping strategies are different depending on the situation and the person; here are some good coping strategies.
- Be Positive!
Look at each obstacle you encounter as a learning experience.
e.g., you may not have done well on a task, but that has motivated you to change the way you proceed and that will be more effective for next time. - Make the choice not to over-react to stressors and deal with them one at a time
e.g., take a few deep breaths and carry on. - Take an objective view of your stressor
e.g., is preparing dinner for 12 people really that horrible? - Communicate!
Don’t ruminate or bottle up your emotions, as this will lead to an explosion later on. - Accept yourself (and others)
No one is perfect and there is always room for mistakes. - Make connections with people
Social support is key! - Deal effectively with mistakes
i.e. Learn from your mistakes and apply them to future decision making. - Deal effectively with successes also!
This will build on your competence. - Develop self-discipline and control
e.g. train yourself to study harder in preparation for your final exam, or train yourself to work out four times a week to lose those pounds you gained since last Thanksgiving dinner! - Maintenance!
Practice, practice, practice for a long life of resilient living!
Now that you know how to recognize your stress and the different coping strategies, you just need to find the coping strategies that work best for you and apply them to your daily life. (Source: www.humanstress.ca)
Tools to Cope with Stress
The World Health Organization (WHO) has published a guide Doing What Matters in Times of Stress. It is an illustrated guide that helps you cope with stress and gives you practical tools like Grounding, Unhooking, Acting on your Values, Being Kind, and Making Room. The guide is available in many languages and in audio versions as well. Please follow the link to access the entire Guide: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/331901/9789240003910-eng.pdf
