GE 1: Understanding the Self

UNIT III: Managing The Self

Written Report

Submitted by:

Group 6

Canete, Janicah A.
Canonigo, Edjay C.
Lazarte, Khendall Blyte C.
Librado, Trisha
Vasquez, Jericho
Villacorte, Jhon Lloyd L.

Of
2 Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering–C

Presented to:
Khristine Joy B. Garcia, MSPsych, RPsy

October 2022
 TOPIC C: MANAGING STRESS

STRESS, is a feeling of emotional or physical tension. It can come from any event or
thought that makes you feel frustrated, angry, or nervous.

STRESS is your body’s reaction to a challenge or demand. In short bursts, stress can be
positive, such as when it helps you avoid danger or meet a dealine. But when stress
lasts for a long time, it may harm your health.

Health Pyschology and Behavioral Medecine

• Because of the inevitable nature of stress, understanding the factors involved in
managing the factors involved in managing stress is critical to maintaining
healthy bodies and healthy minds.
• Health psychology emphasizes psychology’s role in promoting and maintaining
health and preventing and treating illness.
• Behavioral medicine is an interdisciplinary field that focuses on developing and
integrating behavioral and beiomedical knowledge to promote health and reduce
illness.
• Because 7 of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States are due to the
absence of healthy behaviors, health psychology is emerging as a viable and
vital field within psychology.

Stress and its Sources:

➢ Type A Behavior, thought by scientists to be related to heart disease, is a cluster
of behavioral characteristics including competitiveness, impatience, and hostility.
Recent studies indicate that the component of hostility is the most critical to health.
➢ Hardiness refers to a personality style characterized by a sense of commitment,
control, and a perception of problems as challenges. When coupled with social
support, hardy individuals’ incidences of illness drop off dramatically.

The perception of problems as challenges is related to cognitive appraisal:

 • Persons who view events as harmful or threatening experience more difficulty
managing stress, while those viewing problems as challenges manage their stress
more effectively.
• A sense of personal control can help buffer the effects of stress and lead to more
adaptive problem solving, whether the stress comes from major events of from
daily hassles.
• Feeling overwhelmed with stressors can lead to burnout: hopeless, helpless
feeling that leaves one in a state of mental and physical exhaustion. Having to
make difficult choices can result in conflict, which creates stress.
• Stress is also produced by acculturation: the continuous and firsthand contact
between two distinct cultural groups.
• Acculturation can result in assimilation, integration, segregation, and
marginalization.
• Poverty is generally associated with threatening and incontrolled life events. In
addition, poverty undermines sources of social support, which reinforces a sense
of powerlessness.

STRESS RESPONSE

A. General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS)

• Stress is wear and tear on the body as a result of demands.
• All stimuli produce the same stress response in the body.
• The GAS consists of three stages:
➢ Alarm
⎯ the body experiences a temporary shock that causes the
release of hormones.
⎯ fight or flight, is the immediate response of the body to
perceived stress.
⎯ Many scientist today agree that there are two biological
pathways connecting the brain and endocrine system in
response to stress.
 ⎯ The neuroendocrine-immune pathway extends through the
hypothalamus and pituitary glands to the adrenal glands, where
cortisol is released.
⎯ The sympathetic nervous system pathway extends through
the hypothalamus to the sympathetic nervous system and the
adrenal glands, where epinephrine is released.
⎯ The sympathetic nervous system pathway extends through the
hypothalamus to the sympathetic nervous system and the
adrenal glands, where epinephrine is released that protect
individuals by stimulating the immune system and reducing
inflammation.

➢ Resistance (adaptation)
⎯ The second stage of the stress response, is to achieved optimal
adaptation in resisting the stressor.
⎯ Everyday stressors (eustressors) are beneficial in maintaining
the psychophysiological balance that results when the stressor
is successfully removed, adapted, or coped with by the person.
⎯ Stress is actually a necessary component in life because it
contributes to survival and, ultimately, growth.
⎯ Optimal stress fuels maximum performance, but excess stress
results when the demands on a person exceed or fall far below
their capabilities.

➢ Exhaustion, the last stage of the stress response, a continued, chronic

response to stress, can be risk factor for many multifactorial disorders.
These may lead to a downward spiral of more stress, exhaustion, and
possibly extinction. The body has exhausted its protective resources
and the wear and tear on the body leads to exhaustion and vulnerability
to disease, or even death.
B. Fight or Flight, Tend and Befriend
• Selye’s concept of the alarm stage of the GAS is essentially the same as “fight
or flight”.
• Shelley Taylor proposed that females are more likely to protect their young
(tend and befriend) than to flee.
• APS Fellow and Charter Member Shelley Taylor argued that while the fight-or-
flight model may be applicable to male animals, it may not apply to females.
And thus, Taylor proposed a new model for female reactions to stress-the "tend
and befriend" model. The "tend and befriend" model theorizes that stressed
females devote more attention to caring for offspring and dependents, and also
seek support for others.
• Male responses of fight or flight may be mediated by androgens, including
testosterone.
C. Cognitive Appraisal
• According the Lazarus, cognitive appraisal involves interpreting events as
harmful and threatening, or a challenging.
• Primary appraisal: events are interpreted in terms of harm, threat, challenge.
• Secondary appraisal: individuals evaluate their resources and determine
coping strategies.
• Viewing stress as a challenge during primary appraisal paved the way for
finding effective coping resources during secondary appraisal

Stress, Disease, and Health

• Stress can affect the immune system, which serves to defend the body against
infection.
• (1) B cells, which mature in the bone barrow, and
 • (2) T cells, which mature in the thymus, an organ located in the chest. One type
of T cell is the natural killer (NK) cell, which detects and destroys damaged or
altered cells before they become tumors.

Cancer

• Although stress can’t cause cancer, there is evidence that it can affect the growth
of some cancerous tumors.
A. If the immune system is suppressed, NK cells do not work as well to
prevent the spread of tumor cells
B. Stress can facilitate the growth of capillaries feeding into the tumor.
When stress has physical cause, the body produces more capillaries to
supply blood to that area.
1. When the stressor is an injury or infection, capillary growth is
beneficial because the vessel carry more white blood cells.
2. When a tumor is already present in the body, the stress
response will cause more blood to be supplied to the tumor.

Heart Disease

• The increased blood pressure created by stress, in combination with the

hormonally induced narrowing of the arteries, promotes plaque buildup, or
atherosclerosis.
a. As plaque, or fatty deposits on the insides of the artery walls,
accumulates, the arteries narrow – which makes the heart work harder
to meet the body’s need for blood and oxygen.
b. Working harder creates more damage to the arteries.
c. The chronic wear and tear on the cardiovascular system can lead to
heart damage, which can lead to sudden death from
1. Inadequate blood supply to the heart muscle
2. Inadequate blood supply to the heart muscle
 • The course of heart disease can be affected by a change in lifestyle. Intensive
changes in diet, exercise, stress management, and social support make a
differences in:
a. Halting the narrowing of the arteries.
b. Reversing the atherosclerosis.
c. Minimizing further damage to the heart.
• Depression appears to be a stressor that increase the likelihood of heart disease.
a. Depressed people have a faster heartbeat when at rest.
b. Depressed people tend to have high blood pressure.
c. Those who have an episode of depression have a higher risk of developing
heart problems.
d. Once having had a heart attack, depressed people are more likely to have
further health problems.
e. If depression is treated:
1. These stress-related response subside.
2. Heart rate and blood pressure decrease.
• Anxiety is also with heart disease, possibly because it can lead to high blood
pressure and changes in cardiac functioning

Coping Strategies

A. PROBLEM-FOCUSED AND EMOTION-FOCUSED COPING

- Problem-Focused involves the cognitive strategy of facing the problem and trying
to actively solve the problem
- Emotion-Focused coping involves responding to the stress in an emotional manner
especially by using defense mechanisms.
- Emotion-focused coping can be adaptive or maladaptive
- Many individuals successfully use both types of coping when adjusting to a
stressful circumstance.
- Over the long term, problem-focused coping is what usually works best.
B. OPTIMISM AND POSITIVE THINKING
- A positive mood allows us to process information more effectively, increase
altruism, and raises self-esteem.
 - An optimistic attitude is better overall because it gives us a sense that we are
controlling our environment.
- Cognitive Restructuring involves modifying
C. COGNITIVE RESTRUCTURING AND POSITIVE SELF-TALK
a. Cognitive restructuring involves modifying maladaptive thought, ideas, and beliefs
that maintain an individual’s problem.
b. Negative self-talk can become self-fulfilling and can destroy selfconfidence.
c. Positive Self-illusion is the ability to maintain some positive illusions about oneself
and the world.
d. Happy people have mildly inflated opinions of themselves and exaggerated beliefs
about their ability to control the world. e. Sometimes, imagining a negative outcome
(defensive pessimism) is important because it allows person to prepare for an
anticipated stressful event.
D. SELF-EFFICACY
a. Self-efficacy is the belief that one can master a situation and produce positive
outcomes.
b. Self-efficacy can improve an individual’s ability to cope and be mentally healthy.
c. Self-efficacy is one of the best predictors of positive therapy outcomes
E. SOCIAL SUPPORT
1. Social support is information and feedback from others that one is loved and
valued.
a. Tangible assistance is the giving of actual goods or services in stressful
circumstances.
b. Information is the giving of specific actions and plans to help individuals cope
effectively.
c. Emotional support is the giving of reassurance and love during a stressful
experience.
2. A lack of social support has been associated with higher rates of depression,
suicide, cancer, mental illness, and death following the death of a spouse.
F. ASSERTIVE BEHAVIOR
1. Strategies for increasing assertiveness include: setting up a time for discussion,
stating your problem, expressing your feelings, and making your request.
2. Acting aggressively results in hostility and poor relationships. Aggressive people
are often insensitive to the rights of others.
3. Acting manipulatively results in a lack of self-responsibility and poor relationships.
Manipulative people work indirectly to get their needs met.
4. Acting passively results in avoidance of feelings and an inability to get needs met.
Passive people don’t let others know what they want or need.
5. Acting assertively results in empowerment, control, and positive relationships.
Assertiveness builds equal relationships.

Psychology and Life Dealing with Conflict – This scale helps students differentiate
between assertive, aggressive, manipulative, and passive behavior
REFERENCES

• A.D.A.M Inc (2005-2022). Stress and Your Health. Medical

Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/003211.htm
• Balah, K., Garcia, K.J., Molina, J. (2018 ). GE1 Understanding the Self. Department of
Psychology, College of Arts and Social Sciences. University of Southern Mindanao.
• Brown, A.C, Waslien, C.I (2003). Stress and Nutrition. Encyclopedia of Food Sciences and
Nutrition (Second Edition). Retrieved from
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e%2C%20consisting %20of,body%2 0to%20'perceived'%20stress
• N.A (n.d), Studying Stress. Introduction to Psychology. Retrieved from
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/waymaker-psychology/chapter/studying-stress/
• Volpe, Kate (2004). Taylor Takes on Fight or Flight. Association for Psychological Science.
Retrieved from https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/taylor-takes-on-fight-
orflight