HW410 Stress: Critical Issues in Management and

Prevention

Stress Management and

Prevention Program
Resource Guide

1
Stress Management and Prevention
Program Resource Guide

By

Bryan Essig

HW410: Stress: Critical Issues in Management and Prevention

28 April 2020
 Table of Contents
UNIT 1 THE NATU RE OF STRESS

Information to Remember.......................................................................................................3
Assignment.............................................................................................................................3
Journal.................................................................................................................................3-4

UNIT 2 THE PHYSI OL O GY OF STRESS

Information to Remember.......................................................................................................5
Assignment.............................................................................................................................5
Journal.................................................................................................................................5-6

UNIT 3 PSYCHOL OGY OF STRESS

Information to Remember.......................................................................................................7
Assignment.............................................................................................................................7
Journal.....................................................................................................................................8

UNIT 4 PERSONAL I TY TRAITS AND THE HUM AN SPIRIT UAL IT Y

Information to Remember.......................................................................................................9
Assignment........................................................................................................................9-10
Journal.............................................................................................................................11-12

UNIT 5 DEAL ING WITH STRESS: COPING STRATEGIE S

Information to Remember.....................................................................................................13
Journal.............................................................................................................................13-14

UNIT 6 REL AXATIO N TECHI QUE S 1 : BREATH IN G, M EDITATIO N, AND MENTAL

IM AGERY

Information to Remember.....................................................................................................15
Assignment...........................................................................................................................15
Journal.............................................................................................................................16-17

UNIT 7 NUTRITI ON AND STRESS

Information to Remember.....................................................................................................18
Journal.............................................................................................................................18-19
UNIT 8 PHYSICAL EXERCISE AND ACTIVITY

Information to Remember.....................................................................................................20
Assignment...........................................................................................................................20
Journal...................................................................................................................................21

UNIT 9 APPL YING STRESS: CRITICAL ISSUES F OR M ANAGEM EN T AND

PREVEN TIO N TO YOUR PROF ESSIO NAL L IF E

Information to Remember.....................................................................................................22

ADDITI ON AL INF ORM AT IO N

REF EREN CES

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 Unit

1
Unit 1: The Nature of Stress
Information to Remember:
Key Learning Point: In this unit we began to learn about stress. Stress can have many different
definitions depending on the body system being referenced. Physical stress can be lifting weights or
running, whereas psychological stress can be loss of emotional control or anxiety exceeding one’s
coping ability (Seaward, 2018).
Key Learning Point: I also learned about the stress response. The fight-or-flight mechanism in body is a
reaction to a stressor. The body will either launch into fight mode, which could mean attacking to
protect oneself, or flight meaning fleeing for safety (Seaward, 2018). There are also a lot of
physiological symptoms that are involved in the stress response like increased heart rate, increased
respiratory rate, and increased sweating.
Key Learning Point: Stress is normally divided into two different types, acute and chronic. Each of them
triggers a different response. Acute stress is an event that causes intense stress but it disappears
quickly, chronic stress is not as intense but lingers for much longer (Seaward, 2018). I learned that
chronic stress has much more of an effect on my life than acute stress. This is mainly due to my
military experience.

Assignment:
The unit one assignment involved creating a chart to reflect the wellness paradigm. The wellness
paradigm involved four different types of wellness: mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual (Seaward,
2018). The task was to create a pie chart representing the four types of wellness in order by the
precedence in our life. My order of precedence was spiritual first, physical second, mental third, and
emotional fourth.

Journal:
This was a very difficult exercise for me to do. I am not usually the one to calm my mind
before I do anything, especially eating. Eating has always been a time where I get to sit down with
my family and discuss how each of our days went and be able to tell stories of the different things that
we did. Talking about these things normally makes my mind go back to that exact moment as I tried
to explain it to my wife. Mindfulness is about being fully aware of whatever is happening in the

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present moment (Stahl & Goldstein, 2019). Remembering that statement was something I had to do
before I started this exercise and try to remember to stay in the moment while eating. I chose to eat
almonds, since I do not like raisins. As I took a few almonds out of the bag, one of the things that I
noticed was that they have varying shades of brown. Some are lighter and some are darker, most
likely due to the roasting process and some have been roasted longer than others. As I examined the
almond and started to feel each one individually I noticed that some are more wrinkled then others,
and one of the outer layers came off revealing a much lighter tan color underneath. At first I thought
that they just felt like a normal almond, but after looking at each one closely, I noticed that each one
of them are very different. I could also feel the salt that was on each one. Some had more salt on
them, which definitely changed the sensation. Almonds have a very distinct smell; I don’t know how
to explain it other than it smells like an almond. One thing that I noticed is that the ones that had
more salt on them smelt different. I noticed the salt first, and then the almond. When I put the
almond to my ear and tried to squeeze it or move it around between my fingers I could hear the grit of
the almond and the gentle wrinkling of the outer layer against my fingers. I really like almonds, and I
eat them fairly frequently so as soon as I picked up the package of almonds, I noticed that my mouth
began to water. As I placed the almond on my tongue, I felt the area that I placed the almond on get a
little dryer. This is more than likely because they are salted. I could also feel the wrinkles of the
almond on my tongue, just as I felt in my fingers. One of the things that I never thought to look for
until I read the prompt is which side of the mouth the food went to when you ate it. The first almond
went directly to the left side of my mouth. When I ate the second almond, I tried to make sure that it
went to the right side of my mouth to see if there was any difference. There could have been a
difference, but since I tried to select an almond that was similar to the first, I did not notice. If you eat
one almond at a time, I was also able to taste the different amounts of salt on each one and the darker
ones tasted different than the lighter ones. As I chewed the almond turned into a kind of paste when it
was mixed with saliva, which is a little weird to explain. The only surprising thing that I noticed was
the varying colors of each one. In hindsight, this shouldn’t be surprising since I know that things
change colors when you roast them, but being as they are mass produced, I thought they would all be
the same. One of the biggest memories that popped up for me while doing this was eating each
almond individually. When I used to compete in Olympic weightlifting, I was on a very strict diet in
order to ensure that I would make weight for the competitions. I used to have to weigh out almonds
that I would eat as a snack to make sure I did not eat too many, and then eat them individually so that
they would last me a little bit longer. This was a very difficult exercise for me to complete. Having a
mind that goes to a million different places very quickly made exploring each of the senses and how
they interacted with a simple almond was hard to concentrate on. I actually had to do this exercise
twice. The first time I did it, I just picked up an almond and ate it. Short, sweet, and to the point. I
tried to write down what I felt and what I tasted but it did not get me very far. I reread the prompt an
waited a few hours before I tried again, this time in a much more quite place where I could try to
concentrate. It was amazing to feel what happens when I stay in the moment and try to eat something
as simple as an almond in stages and try to record what each one was like. It was nice to find
something that I am not very good at, but something that I know is important, that I can improve on to
see what the difference is week to week.

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 Unit

2
Unit 2: The Physiology of Stress
Information to Remember:
Key Learning Point: Stress, specifically prolonged stress, can have negative effects on a person’s
memory. This is due to the fact that prolonged stress messes with the hippocampus, the part of the
brain that converts short-term memories into long-term memories (Seaward, 2018).
Key Learning Point: Mindfulness can be a key factor in helping to decrease stress so that it does not
continue and turn into prolonged stress. Mindfulness is learning to be present and aware of one’s
surroundings in both mind and body (Stahl & Goldstein, 2019). This can be done by closing your
eyes and concentrating on your breathing. By concentrating on your breathing, it will decrease your
heart rate and start to “melt” the stress away, finally allowing your body to relax.
Key Learning Point: Stress and illness are inevitably linked due to the physiology of the body and how
the secretion of stress hormones affects the immune system. One of the models that that explains this
is the Borysenko model. This model describes that illness caused from stress is split into two
categories, autonomic dysregulation and immune dysregulation (Seaward, 2018).

Assignment:
The unit two assignment talked about the physical symptoms of stress. In other words, how the body
physically responds to stress and the diseases that stress can either cause or worsen. Scientists that study
the nervous system and how it is structured, how it develops, and what it does (Nordqvist, n.d.). This is
important because it can also relate to how the nervous system affects the rest of the body when under
stress. Diseases that are caused or worsened by stress include asthma, tension headaches, migraine
headaches, tempomandibular joint dysfunction, and irritable bowel syndrome (Seaward, 2018).

Journal
How is stress or anxiety about people affecting your life?
Stress and anxiety about people affect me in a few different ways. I tend to hang on to things
and over analyze them to the point where it becomes detrimental to my health. If I get into an
argument with someone, I will break down every possible detail I can to figure out how it was my
fault and how I can fix it. If I don’t figure out how to fix it then I catastrophize it to the point that I
will find out what the second and third order effects will be and then stress about those. People play a

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huge part in my life so the stress that accompanies having people in your life can definitely take its
toll.
How is stress or anxiety about work affecting your life?
I am in the military which is an inherently stressful job. There are many different jobs that
you can do in the military and each come with their own unique stressors without considering the
stress of being on a deployment. I am currently a medic that trains other medics that are getting ready
to deploy. I need to make sure that I provide the best instruction possible so that the students in my
classes learn as much as possible. These students are going to be the medics on the ground in a
deployed environment, providing life-saving medical interventions to our service members. But that
is only one part of my job. We still have to report to our chain of command, have complex tasks that
need to be planned for and executed, plus any other events that will take me away from my family. I
spend more time at work than I do with my family, which causes stress at home when I miss events in
my young son’s life, or just being there to support my wife when she needs it.
How is stress or anxiety about the world affecting your life?
Stress and anxiety about the world relates back to my job of being in the military and working
within military medicine. There are a lot of world issues and a lot of tensions between countries that
the United States have relations with. This is a critical source of anxiety for me and my family
because at any moment something could happen that would require the military, to include myself, to
react to. This means that I could deploy again to a place that I do not know how long I will have to be
there or, depending on the conflict, if I will even make it home. This is a constant stress for me which
adds to the prolonged stress factors talked about throughout this unit.
How is stress or anxiety about food and eating habits affecting your life?
My economic situation allows me to not have to worry about getting my next meal. There are
a lot of people in the world that do not have that luxury. The stress and anxiety about food links to
my health and making sure that I am eating the right foods to fuel my body and foods that are not
overly processed which can lead to health issues. This is another form of prolonged stress for me
because my job also requires me to maintain a certain weight and body fat percentage in order to stay
in the military.
How is stress or anxiety about sleep and sleeplessness affecting your life?
Due to some of the things that I have experienced in my career, I go through seasons that I do
not sleep well. This lack of sleep affects everything else in my life, my relationships with others, my
work performance, as well as my physical performance. Normally I can take some time off or
dedicate my days off to be able to sleep in and take naps during the day and that tends to make it
better.
How is stress or anxiety about exercise or lack of physical activity affecting your life?
Stress about exercise has the least amount of effect on my life. I am a very active person and
use exercise as a stress relief. If I do not exercise during the day, I tend to be on edge and very short
with people. As soon as I finish my workout, I feel much better and I am able to concentrate better
and performance in all other aspects of my life get better.
Stress effects people in different ways. Due to my work life and training, stress affects me
differently than some of my colleagues but it affects me all the same. The factors of people, work, the
world, food, sleep, and exercise are just a few of the different factors that play into the overall stress
of a person. These factors can also compound on each other making the stress that we go through
even worse. If any of these stress factors last for too long and it becomes prolonged stress, it will
have negative health effects throughout each of the body systems.

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 Unit

3
Unit 3: Psychology of Stress
Information to Remember:
Key Learning Point: In unit 3 we learned about acute and chronic stress. Acute stress is a stressor that
only lasts for a short time. For example, an acute stressor would be having a deadline coming up at
work and there is still a lot of work to do in order to meet that deadline. A chronic stress is lower in
intensity but it continues for a long period of time.
Key Learning Point: We also learned about the general adaptation syndrome. General Adaptation
Syndrome, or GAS, occurs in three different phases. These three phases are alarm which is the fight
or flight, resistence is the body’s attempt to get back to normal, and exhaustion which is the body
reaching a point that long term physical and psychological effects can start to set in (Bailey, 2019).
Key Learning Point: In this unit we also learned how mindfulness is be applied to the wellness paradigm.
The wellness paradigm is the integration, balance, and harmony of mental, physical, emotional, and
spiritual well-being through taking responsibility of one’s own health (Stahl & Goldstein, 2019).

Assignment:
The unit three assignment was to answer four questions. The first question asked about the Tibetan
culture and what could be learned from them in regards to the mind and stress. The Tibetan culture
references the two desires of the mind, the desire for happiness and peacefulness, or the desire for setting
expectations and fear. The understanding of these two types of desires is what brings mindfulness to our
culture. The second question talked about the different theorists and what they had in common. The
views that the theorists in the text had in common were that the mind develops strategies in order to deal
with stressful stimuli (Seaward, 2018). The third question was about ways to cope with, manage, and/or
resolve fear. One of the ways that I find to be successful is to face the fear head on. Sometimes the
things that we fear are not always as bad as our mind makes them out to be. The last question was ways
to improve our communication style. The biggest and most important way to improve our
communication style is to be an active and engaged listener. This makes it to where both sides
understand what each is saying and are able to provide feedback or answer any questions completely.

Journal:
This activity is something that I have done before and each time it is a little different. The first
time that I did it I couldn’t make it a single minute without being distracted away from my breathing.

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 Unit

4
As I continued to practice, I could go a little bit longer without being pulled away to other thoughts. I
have not done it in a very long time so this time was very interesting. I started just like the activity
says, and just concentrate on my breathing. I found myself counting my breaths. Counting how long
it took me to inhale and how long it took me to exhale, and trying to make them the exact same. Also
counting the amount of breaths I was taking. It seems as thought that this would be a great way to
clear my mind but it definitely was not. The counting had actually become a distraction and began to
stress me out when I could not hold the same pace of breathing. I am naturally competitive so not
being able to hold the same pace was frustrating. Once I noticed this I stopped counting my breath
and just tried to take full inhales and full exhales. This seemed to help as my body began to relax
quickly after. It made it easier since I was lying down while doing the activity so that I could fully
relax. My mind began to drift to things about work and everything going on with the current global
situation. As soon as I realized this, I reminded myself about the activity and concentrated back on
the breathing. There weren’t very many emotions that I experienced while doing this activity. While
concentrating on my breathing I felt very calm, which is not a normal thing for me. This was a really
great feeling.
This activity helped me realize a few things about myself. The first is that I need to do this
type of activity more often. It will definitely help my body down regulate and will have great
improvements on my ability to relax and potentially get better sleep if I do it closer to bed time. The
second is that my head is so full of everything going on and that I take on a lot of my external stimuli
and internalize it. This type of mindfulness exercise could potentially help me organize those
thoughts and allow me to tackle the things directly in front of me and free up some of that mind space.

Unit 4: Personality Traits and the Human

Spirituality
Information to Remember:
Key Learning Point: In this unit we learned about the different personality traits. One of the key points
that we learned about personality traits is that there are certain personalities that are considered to be
stress resistant. The hardy personality, or the resilient personality is a type of person who does not
fold under stress but manages the stress to succeed in the task at hand.
Key Learning Point: Self-esteem is the sense of underpinning self-values, self-acceptance, and self-love
and is thought to be a powerful buffer against perceived threats (Seaward, 2018). The key learning

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 point is that self-esteem isn’t just about having confidence in one’s self, it’s about accepting who you
are and loving yourself.
Key Learning Point: A key learning point that I got from this unit’s discussion is using mindfulness for
chronic pain. One of the biggest things that I got from this is using body scan meditation. Body scan
meditation is a deep investigation into the moment-to-moment experiences of the body and mind
(Stahl & Goldstein, 2019). This type of meditation helps to examine each individual thing that could
be going on and allows someone to feel it and develop a plan of what to do next.

Assignment:
The unit 4 assignment had 4 tasks within it. These tasks were describe self-esteem and its role in
promoting and resolving stress, explain how relationships and values are affected by stress, explain the
perspective on the differences between values, attitudes, and beliefs, and to take a lifestyle choice through
the Prochaska’s Stages of Change Model. Self-esteem has a huge role in stress. It has shown that people
with a high self-esteem tend to manage and resolve stress much more effectively than those with low self-
esteem. Everything is affected by stress in one way or another. Relationships are now different.
Relationships can be something that helps someone get through stressful situations but depending on the
severity of the stress, it can start to have negative impacts on the relationships. Values, attitudes, and
beliefs are all personal things. Values are things that you deem important, attitude is the outward
projection of values and beliefs, and beliefs are anything that you believe in. The Prochaska’s Stages of
Change model has six steps. Those six steps are precontemplation, contemplation, determination, action,
maintenance, and relapse (Lamorte, 2019). People usually use this process as a way to quit something.
Alcohol is a great example. This process takes someone who has a drinking problem and moves them
through the process until the quit. An interesting point about this model is that a person can enter and exit
at any point in the process.

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Journal:
FEAR: apprehension, anxiety, distress, edginess, jumpiness, nervousness, panic, tenseness,
uneasiness, worry, fright, feeling overwhelmed.
When I think about the words associated with fear and concentrate on how I feel it brings up a
great sense of uneasiness. The uneasiness of the future and what it holds. There are many things to
be afraid of in this world, especially in the times that we are living in. I fear for my family, that
something will happen to them. It also brings to light one of my biggest fears, which is the fear of not
being able to support my family, or the fear of not being good enough. This fear can be somewhat
overwhelming when I think about trying to be successful in my career as well as be the best father and
husband that I can be. I try the best that I can to face fear, but in times of uncertainty, facing fear is
difficult to do. This can be especially difficult when what I fear is not a particular thing, but a
particular circumstance.
CONFUSION: bewildered, uncertain, puzzled, mystified, perplexed, chaotic, foggy, or unaware.
When I see the word confusion, I think about the media and how it spreads a certain type of
confusion with what is going on in the world. There was a time where the public was informed, not
confused. Being unaware of what is going on around you can lead back to the previous emotion, fear.
I try every day to limit as much confusion as possible. I make sure that with my family, my peers, my
subordinates, and my superiors have a clear understanding of what I am doing and what is going on.
This allows us to make informed decisions about what to do next. I also like how the word chaotic is
linked to confusion. We have seen this play out many times throughout our history. When the people
are uninformed and confused, it tends to lead to mass chaos.
ANGER: aggravation, agitation, annoyance, destructiveness, disgust, envy, frustration, irritation,
grouchiness, grumpiness, rage.
Anger is an emotion that I am very familiar with. I am normally known as the angry person in
the group. Sometimes when I exercise discipline in what I am doing, and what it done a certain way,
it is often mistaken for anger. I have also had time periods in my life where I was filled with rage as
well. I am a medic in the military and have seen some of the worst kinds of people that humanity has
to offer. These types of experiences tend to fill people with frustration and anger. I have found that
the problem with being filled with such a powerful emotion is that it tends to lead to more destruction
and more anger. Frustration is not always a bad thing though. I have also found had things that were
very difficult for me to do, and that was frustrating. But I used that frustration as fuel to get better.
Anger, when under control, can lead to some of the best things in life as long as we place that energy
toward something good.
SADNESS: alienation, anguish, despair, disappointment, gloom, grief, hopelessness, insecurity,
loneliness, misery, unhappiness, rejection.

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 Sadness is a hard emotion for everyone. It is a hard emotion for me in particular because that
involves me recognizing it, which is difficult for me to do. I often feel like sadness is a wasted
emotion because being sad solves nothing. When looked at in a different light though, or exchanging
the word sadness with unhappiness, it changes my perspective a little bit. I have been very unhappy
with certain things in my life and that tends to motivate me to change them and make them better.
When I look at the other words on the list for sadness, I feel differently about them all. Grief is a
different kind of sadness that I have felt and has taken a long time to get over sometimes. I also link
hopelessness and loneliness with grief because when I have had to grieve the loss of a friend or loved
one, those are two very strong emotions that go along with it.
SHAME: guilt, embarrassment, humiliation, invalidation, regret, remorse, mortification.
Shame is powerful. Shame, embarrassment, humiliation are words that bring back a lot of
memories of my training to do my job in the military. There was a time in the military where the
instructors used shame, embarrassment, and humiliation in order to accomplish the goal of making
civilians into soldiers. If a soldier ever did something wrong, they were often embarrassed in front of
the entire group. Looking back on it, many people will say that these methods are unnecessary, but I
think it made us better. When you feel embarrassed or humiliated in front of your peers, you tend not
to make the same mistake again. When these same methods are employed in a different situation,
such as the business world, it is often inappropriate. There is a time and place for everything, and I
know that when I am embarrassed, I tend to want to try to disappear as soon as possible.
LOVE: affection, arousal, attraction, caring, compassion, desire, fondness, infatuation, kindness,
liking, longing, warmth, sympathy, sentimentality.
When someone honestly feels loved, they are able to accomplish things and do things for
others that they would have not done before. The love that you feel for your child motivates you to
give them the best life you possibly can. When we teach what it is like to be loved to our children, or
possibly to someone else who has never felt love, we can make the world a much better place. I feel
loved most when I come home from work. Ever since my son was able to walk and talk, as soon as I
come home from work my son runs from wherever he is in the house screaming for me and runs to
the front door. Every time this happens it feels like my heart is going to explode and I get to wrap
him up in a hug. I hadn’t ever felt a love like this until he was born.
JOY: amusement, bliss, contentment, eagerness, elation, enjoyment, enthusiasm, excitement,
exhilaration, hope, optimism, pleasure, satisfaction.
I equate joy to doing something that you like doing, something that excites you. Many people
enjoy walks in the park, while other find excitement from jumping out of an airplane. I think that it is
extremely important that we find joy, whatever that may be in this world. If we can find joy in
everything that we do, we can spread that joy to others.
This journal made me analyze different emotions that I do not often spend a lot of time
thinking about. There is no doubt that I have experience each one of them, it is the fact that I haven’t
ever taken the time to analyze each one of them. Taking the time to talk about each one of the
emotions has allowed me to understand them more, how each of them are experienced in my life, and
the affects each of them have on my life.

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 Unit

5
Unit 5: Dealing with Stress: Coping Strategies
Information to Remember:
Key Learning Point: In this unit we dove into the world of yoga. A key learning point for me was using
the R.A.I.N. method. This method stands for recognize, allow, investigate, and not-identification
(O’Brien, n.d.). I used the yoga pose we were assigned to and went through the R.A.I.N. process and
discovered that yoga is more difficult then most people think and that not identifying with your
emotions allows you to understand that emotions are just a part of you and not your identity.
Key Learning Point: In unit 5 we also learned that the attitude of a person could make changes to their
physiology. An example of this can be if your attitude toward a person is negative, your brain can
also make you think negatively of any other person like the initial person that you had a negative
emotion attached. This is critical because it creates a bias towards others without actually getting to
know them.
Key Learning Point: Yoga has a lot of historical significance as well has the significant benefit to your
health. Yoga can be traced back to the sixth century b.c. to the teachings of the Hindu philosopher
Kapila (Seaward, 2018). Yoga is one of the oldest mindful techniques known. Not only does it have
a lot of psychological benefits, but it is also been discovered that it has a lot of benefit for those who
suffer with chronic pain as well.

Journal:
Walking is something that I do almost all day long, every single day. I walk anywhere
between 5-10 miles per day and that doesn’t include the time that I set aside to exercise. It has
become second nature, almost like breathing and eating; I can do it without actually thinking about it.
When approaching this exercise, I thought it was a little weird. All I am supposed to do is just walk
and pay attention to what is going on, seemed pretty easy. Come to find out, like most other
exercises, this one had its challenges. When I first started, I stood still for a few moments just trying
to breath and clear my mind in order to be present in the current moment. Once this happened, I
started to do a full body scan of how everything was feeling starting with my feet. I noticed how my
feet were facing and where my pressure points are. I discovered that when relaxed and standing still,
my feet do not point directly forward, they point slightly outward. I also noticed that I am starting to
develop flat feet so, the pressure points in my feet felt a little different. I still had to remember that
this exercise is not contest for how fast I could walk or how far I could go in ten minutes, it was time
of reflection and not speed. As I took my first steps, I started to over exaggerate my steps trying to

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make my walking posture as perfect as I could. When I realized how hard that was, I realized that I
walk with very poor posture sometimes and that is something that I need to work on. As I continued I
paid attention to my stride to see if it changed. Since I was paying close attention to how I walked,
there was little variation in my stride. Once I started to take a few more steps, I wanted to settle into a
rhythm so that I could pay closer attention to other things going on. With my rhythm set, my mind
started to wonder. I tried hard to concentrate on my breath and bring my thoughts back to my walking
cadence and breath but it was difficult. My mind always goes to work or family. Was there
something that I missed at work? Was there a task that I was asked to do that I did not get to? Was
there an e-mail that I didn’t respond to when I was supposed to? All of these questions rushed in all
at once. I decided to stay in that moment, breath, and start to answer the questions. All of these
questions were adding stress to my life, and I thought that if I could answer them, maybe some of that
stress would go away. This technique worked because as I began to answer all of these questions my
mind felt more at ease, my pace began to come back into rhythm, and my breath was back into its
normal cadence. I was started to feel the differences in the way the floor felt with each step. Each
difference in texture felt like it was something I was feeling for the first time. I looked down at the
floor to see different variations in the vinyl planks that make up my hallway floor. I closed my eyes
so that I could concentrate on my other senses. I concentrated on what I could hear. It was very quiet
in the house, so the only thing that broke that silence was the subtle ringing that I have in my ears. I
placed my hands on the walls while I walked and felt each one of the different textures that cover the
walls. Also when I closed my eyes and walked it was like I could feel each one of the bones in my
foot and ankle move. It was a weird sensation to say the least. For someone who walks a lot, I have
never concentrated so much on walking slowly and smoothly that I actually noticed the movement of
each one of the bones in my foot and ankle move. I continued to walk like this for several minutes
and tried to concentrate on any sensations that were changing as I walked.
This exercise was very relaxing. It was doing something that I do every single day without
paying much attention to it, but devoting all of my attention to it. It also allowed me to use the silence
around me to sort out the “noise” in my head. Once that was sorted out it was like I was doing an
entirely new exercise in the matter of only a few moments. I would have never thought that I would
be doing exercises like this, but after long days and sometimes long nights, taking a few minutes to
slow down and divert my attention to something else has become a very big help.

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 Unit

6
Unit 6: Relaxation Techniques 1: Breathing,
Meditation, and Mental Imagery
Information to Remember:
Key Learning Point: In this unit, we dove deeper into meditation. One of the key points that I learned is
that meditation is not a one size fits all type of activity. There are many different ways that you can
meditate. Yoga can be considered a type of meditation, as well as things like speaking a mantra, or
just sitting comfortably in a quiet room concentrating on breathing.
Key Learning Point: Mediation has many benefits, both psychological and physiological. Some of the
physiological benefits are decreased heart rate, decreased blood pressure, and decreased muscle
tension (Seaward, 2018). There are also psychological benefits such as improved mood, emotional
regulation, and overall mental calmness.
Key Learning Point: A key learning point that I discovered while reading the unit material and doing
independent research is the use of imagery and visualization. I knew that elite level athletes used
visualization, but I did not know that almost every sport uses some type of imagery and visualization.
Visualization can be done by the individual thinking through the “perfect” game or race or it can be
guided using a script that is read aloud to you.

Assignment:
The unit 6 assignment involved relaxation and the different relaxation techniques. People all over
the world use different things to relax, but one thing that most relaxation and meditation techniques have
in common is breathing. Diaphragmatic breathing is one of the techniques used to help the body relax.
Diaphragmatic breathing has also been referred to as “belly breathing” and involves breathing into the
abdomen and allowing it to rise versus breathing into the chest. Diaphragmatic breathing is initiated
using three steps. These steps are finding a comfortable position, concentrate, and visualize. Once in a
rhythm, you are then able to start to use imagery and visualization techniques to relax.

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Journal:
Mindful of how you interact with yourself?
Stress plays a big part in how I interact with myself. Each new stressor brings about a new
“conversation” that I have with myself. I tend to be ultra critical of myself and when I feel like I am
starting to slip up or starting to fail at something, there are times where I do not have very positive
self-talk. In the military, it very much a performance and results based environment. Most times, no
one cares how you got it done; they just want to know that it is done and that it is seeing positive
results. If I see that a project that I am working on is destined for failure, I tend to blame myself. At
home, when something isn’t going right between my wife and I or between my son and I, that same
negative self talk comes in. I tell myself that it is my fault and that I am a failure. This ends up
leading to a depression of sorts. Not the kind that where I cannot get out of bed, but the kind that I do
not want to interact with anyone.

Seeds of suffering?
The seeds of suffering lie in my head for sure. I perceive things that are happening when they
are not. I perceive that someone is upset with me or blames me for a particular event even if they do
not. Either way, it weighs heavily on me. This is where the suffering begins. When these types of
events occur, I normally do one of two things. First, I will do everything I can to fix it, even if it may
not even be there. Second, I will recede back and not talk or say anything, even if something bugs me,
I will be silent. It is important for me in my daily life to notice these seeds of suffering so that I “pull
out the plant” before it sets its roots and begins to control everything that I say, do, or think. I also
feel as though the seeds of suffering can be planted at a very young age. For example, when I was a
child, I was not necessarily taught how to adequately deal with emotion. My father was a very
unemotional person, and that was my example. If something made me sad, frustrated, or angry I was
always told that I couldn’t react. This led to having everything bottled up and when it burst, I did not
know what to do.

Day-to-day life feelings of resentment?

I do not normally have feelings of resentment in my day-to-day life. There are always going
to be things that I do not like, or people that I do not see eye to eye with, but that is how life goes. We
are not supposed to agree with everyone or like everyone that would be a pretty boring life. There are
times that I have resentment toward my actions. I resent myself for things that I say or actions that I
take. This can lead down the rabbit hole of other mental health issues. I try as best I can to eliminate
feelings of resentment by confronting them head on and dealing with them as they come up.

Reflection on writing?

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 Unit

7
These writing assignments make me think. They make me look inward, and make me identify
things that I tend to just leave alone. This particular assignment has brought up my past and how my
emotional maturity level may be a little behind the power curve, but it gives me something to work
on. I feel like writing everything down makes things more real. It provides a medium between saying
it to myself and saying it out loud. Writing these things down allows me to identify my weaknesses
when it comes to self-talk and stress management. It also shows me the things that I am good at and
things that I need to sustain moving forward. I have never been much of a “reflective” writer. I have
always been the type of person that does the writing assignments to get the grade, and pass the class.
Writing assignments like these journals, provide a different perspective for me to write about.

Unit 7: Nutrition and Stress

Information to Remember:
Key Learning Point: Nutrition is a huge part of any person’s day. Nutrition is anything that you consume
and use as fuel for the body. Digestion is what happens as the food that you eat enters the body.
Stress hormones can throw off digestion and can lead to gut issues. Irritable bowel syndrome is one
of the conditions that tend to flare up when the person in under a lot of stress.
Key Learning Point: Sugar is one of the biggest contributors to stress. A lot of people in the United
States stress eat. When they stress eat, they tend to go for things that have a high fat and
carbohydrate content and then over consume them. This only perpetuates the problem and robs the
body of essential nutrients that it needs.
Key Learning Point: Mindfulness can be implemented in just about anything that we do. In this unit we
were tasked to take something that we do every day and bring mindfulness into that task. I did this
activity and it is amazing all of the different things that you can experience while making and
drinking a simple cup of coffee.

Journal:
Seated meditation is much more difficult for me to accomplish than it is for me to lie down
and do it. Seated meditation provides a much different stimulus for me which comes with its own
unique challenges. Lately, due to things with work and home life, it has been difficult to allow my
brain to only focus on one thing at a time. As I started doing this meditation sequence, I first tried to
sit down and get as comfortable as I can. As I learned in a previous unit, being comfortable in the

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position you are meditating in can help make the experience much better. I went into the den of my
house which is the place that I can limit the amount of sound. I started with counted breathing, or box
breathing. It allowed me to only concentrate on the breathing and not anything else. This technique
helps me relax quite a bit. Once I felt like I was getting into the rhythm of things, I began to follow
the guidance or feeling the air entering in my lungs. This, much like the lying down meditation, was a
weird sensation. I tried to imagine the surrounding air enter my lungs, and all of the air I was letting
out was a cloud leaving my body. I started to become distracted with how my body felt. The
tightness in my back and shoulders from the day’s events and how I started to feel every little ache
that I had. I used this opportunity to “breathe into” these spots to see if I could get them to relax.
This helped a little bit, but I had to remember to draw my attention away so that I could continue with
the activity. I noticed a few different sounds as I was doing this meditation. I could hear the air
coming from the air conditioning, it felt like a completely new sound when I sensed it in this type of
environment. I also began to hear the sounds of my body. I paid close attention to my heart beat in
these moments. It allowed me to come back into a normal rhythm and concentrate on other things. I
tried to move on with the meditation sequence but felt my mind start to wonder. I started to run
through my entire day. I tend to do this when I try to slow down. I went through every event of the
day and analyzed it to see if there were any mistakes that I could improve on. From the workout in
the morning, to going to work, to thinking about all of the chores around the house that I couldn’t get
done throughout the day or evening at home. I went down that path for quite some time which caused
a lot of undue anxiety. This all sounds negative and counterproductive to meditation but it allowed
me to sort out these thoughts and reminded me that the day was over and that tomorrow would be a
new day. The idea that tomorrow was going to be a new day brought a sense of ease. It also led me
to think about all of the great things that I could accomplish in that new day. I tend to be very critical
of myself so the sense of ease and excitement that I experienced allowed me to relax and become
more present in the moment. It is almost as if I need to unpack the day before I can concentrate on
anything else. As I finished up the session, I realized that sometimes all I need is to stop for even a
short fifteen minutes and meditate to help relax and get my thoughts in order. Once I do that, I can
attack whatever comes next with as much effort as I can in order to accomplish that task. Meditation
is something that I do not practice often. As a matter of fact, I barely practiced it at all before starting
this class. I have definitely seen a difference when I am at work and it is almost as though I can look
at things more objectively. I think it is the fact that these meditation practices have allowed me to
organize my thoughts and emotions better and be able to react more methodically when any situation
arises. This is definitely something that I see myself continuing even after this class has ended.

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 Unit

8
Unit 8: Physical Exercise and Activity
Information to Remember:
Key Learning Point: A key point from this unit is that not all stress is a bad thing. We tend to believe that
any type of stress is considered bad, but that cannot be further from the truth. When you engage in
any type of exercise routine, you are putting your body under stress. The body adapts to this kind of
stress and gets stronger, faster, and more physically fit.
Key Learning Point: Pilates is a form of muscular strength and flexibility exercises (Seaward, 2018).
Pilates is also one of the best exercise regimens to follow if you are suffering from chronic back pain.
This is due to the large muscle groups and core becoming stronger and more flexible in order to take
some of the strain off of the back.
Key Learning Point: There are certain features that should be in the daily nutrition of a person in order to
help manage the effects of stress on the body. Things like eating whole and unprocessed foods and
drinking plenty of clean water can be beneficial to the immune system.

Assignment:
This assignment allowed us to work with other students within the class. Our task was to pitch a
health and wellness program for a business that we would like to implement. We first pitched our idea to
a classmate on the discussion board and received feedback as to what we did well and things that we
could improve on in order to make our program better. I chose to implement an exercise and nutrition
program for a software company. I proposed that they eliminate snack food and soda vending machines
and offered group classes before work, during the lunch break, and after work. I incentivized these
programs by providing company logoed fitness apparel and gift cards when the group class attendance
reached a certain point.

Journal:
OPENNESS: The first thing that comes to mind when I think about openness is honesty. If I was to
imagine sitting in front of someone for the first time, or treating it like the first time, I would want to
be honest. Answer any questions openly and honestly and ensure that I am actively listening
whenever they are talking.
EMPATHY: This is an emotion that I have a hard time with. Empathy is identifying with another
person’s feelings. Being able to put myself in another’s shoes feels like I’m trying to tell someone

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 Unit

9
that I understand what they are going through, to which I have no clue. I can have sympathy for
people, but empathy is something that I still have to work on.
COMPASSION: As I read the description for this, I was drawn toward the fact that it mentions
understanding the other person’s position. This is something that is a little more relatable so I can
much more easily be able to apply this. It also talks about having a desire to ease suffering. This is
another thing that I tend to do, almost to the point that I want to take on the suffering for the other
person so that they don’t have to deal with it anymore. This would happen if someone told me
something that they are going through and I help them with a “game-plan” to solve the issue or make
sure that they get connected with the help that they need.
LOVING-KINDNESS: This is an easy thing to apply for me because I do not generally wish
difficulty or harm to others, even if I do not like them. The hardest part is developing the willingness
to help them when you can already see that they are headed down the wrong path. This becomes even
more difficult if it is a path that I have already been down and already know the outcome.
SYMPATHETIC JOY: This is much easier said then done. We all want to be successful, and
sometimes when others are successful I can get a little frustrated with myself. This doesn’t mean that
I plot to make sure that someone isn’t successful, as I can still celebrate the successes of others. It is
more often that I get frustrated when I see people are successful by stepping on those that helped them
along the way.
EQUANIMITY: This one is probably the hardest of them all. There are a lot of preconceived notions
that we have about people that are hard to break. It isn’t always how you treat someone; it also counts
when it comes to what you think of them. We should all strive to find this type of emotional balance.

Unit 9: Applying Stress: Critical Issues for

Management and Prevention to your
Professional Life
Information to Remember:
Key Learning Point: A key learning point in this unit is how having and pursuing hobbies can help
manage stress. Hobbies are pleasurable pursuits or interests outside one’s daily responsibilities
through which one begins to make order out of chaos (Seaward, 2018). This order allows people to
systematically work through the stressors in their life in order to better manage them.

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 Key Learning Point: Forgiveness also plays a huge part in the management of stress. When someone
wrongs a person it can be felt for a potentially long time, depending on the wrongdoing. The
wronged person cannot control the other’s actions but still dwells on them. Forgiveness allows for
that control to come back, thus making it much easier to move on.
Key Learning Point: Mindfulness is vital to one’s well being. As discussed throughout the text for this
class, mindfulness brings balance to the mental, physical, and emotional well-being. If a person is
higher in one category, that means that another is lacking. The body consistently tries to come back
to homeostasis, well-being is no different.

Additional Information
There is a lot of information in this class and it helps to look at it from a perspective of wellness and
well-being. Stress affects everything around us. It affects our environment, our family, and our
physiology. In Brian Seawards book, “Managing Stress: Principles and Strategies for Health and
Well-Being”, he talks about stress and how it affects us both psychologically and physiologically.
Stress affects the brain, heart, gastrointestinal system, and even the skin. It also goes into a plethora
of ways to manage and cope with it. For the last several weeks the world has been in a strange season
of life. The COVID-19 pandemic has place a lot of stress on people, families, and businesses. We
talked at length in many of the unit seminar presentations about the different ways that this new
stressor has affected each one of us, and how we are going about coping with the stress of our new
normal. Using the strategies discussed in this book has, at times, made me very uncomfortable. It
seems as though each journal gets me stepping out of my comfort zone in order to complete it in its
entirety. These are all good things. Being out of our comfort zones is the good type of stress, it
makes us adapt and overcome, much like the chapter on exercise and nutrition and how it helps to
cope with stress.

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 References

Bailey, R. (2019). Thought Co., What Is General Adaptation Syndrome? Retrieved from;

https://www.thoughtco.com/general-adaptation-syndrome-458856

Lamorte, W. W. (2019, September 9). The Transtheoretical Model (Stages of Change). Boston

University School of Public Health.

http://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH-Modules/SB/BehavioralChangeTheories/

BehavioralChangeTheories6.html

Nordqvist, C. (n.d). About Neuroscience. Georgetown University.

https://neuro.georgetown.edu/about-neuroscience/

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O’Brien, M. (n.d.) R.A.I.N.: A Four-Step Process for Using Mindfulness in Difficult

Times. https://mrsmindfulness.com/r-n-four-step-process-using-mindfulness-difficult-times/

Seaward, B. (2017). Managing stress: Principles and strategies for health and well-being (8th ed.).

Boston, MA: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

Stahl, B. & Goldstein, E. (2019). A mindfulness-based stress reduction workbook. Oakland, CA: New

Harbinger Publications, Inc.

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