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Study Guide in GE1: Understanding the Self Module No. 14

STUDY GUIDE FOR MODULE NO. _14_

CHAPTER III: MANAGING AND CARING FOR THE SELF

C. TAKING CHARGE OF ONE’S HEALTH
MODULE OVERVIEW

In today’s fast paced life, people tend to be so busy with a lot of things that at the end of the day, they
usually find themselves feeling more exhausted than accomplished. With so many things that needs
to be done, people are always faced with so much stress that takes a toll on the body over time. This
chapter introduces the different kinds of stress and how the body responds to these stresses. It also
presents the different coping mechanism which can be used to combat the stress and the various
ways of taking care of one’s health

MODULE LEARNING OBJECTIVES

1. Recognize the sources of stress and how they impact one’s life.
2. Identify healthy ways of coping with stress.
3. Create a self-care plan to better manage stress and maintain healthy well being.

LEARNING CONTENTS (title of the subsection)

STRESS AND STRESSORS

Stress is the physical, mental and emotional response of the body to demands made upon it.
Stress is the “wear and tear” our minds and bodies experience as we attempt to cope with our
continually changing environment

The Two Faces of Stress

Stress can be negative or positive, depending on the level of our response to the stressors we
encounter.

Apparently, most of us only think about the bad sides of stress. Distress or Negative stress are
actually about stress that are beyond one’s control. This bad impact of severe stress is often
manifested in physical and mental signs and symptoms

Characteristics of Negative Stress:

• Causes anxiety or concern.

• Can be short- or long-term.
• Is perceived as outside of our coping
abilities.
• Feels unpleasant.
• Decreases performance.
• Can lead to mental and physical problems.

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However, when we are only exposed to mild or moderate stress, we are actually able to experience
the good side of stress which include improved creativity, learning, efficiency at work and,
eventually, a higher level of self-esteem that could lead us to be able to withstand a higher stress
levels in the future. This is known as Eustress of Positive Stress.

Characteristics of Positive Stress:

• Motivates, focuses energy.

• Is short-term.
• Is perceived as within our coping abilities.
• Feels exciting.
• Improves performance.

A stressor is a chemical or biological agent, environmental condition, external stimulus or an event

seen as causing stress. Psychologically speaking, a stressor can be events or environments that
individuals might consider demanding, challenging, and/or threatening individual safety

Examples of negative personal Examples of positive personal

stressors include: stressors include:
• Losing contact with loved ones. • Receiving a promotion or raise at
• The death of a family member. work.
• Hospitalization (oneself or a family • Starting a new job.
member). • Marriage.
• Injury or illness (oneself or a family • Buying a home.
member). • Having a child.
• Being abused or neglected. • Moving.
• Separation from a spouse or • Taking a vacation.
committed relationship partner. • Holiday seasons.
• Conflict in interpersonal relationships. • Retiring.
• Bankruptcy/Money Problems. • Taking educational classes or
• Unemployment. learning a new hobby.
• Sleep problems.
• Children's problems at school.
• Legal problems.

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Fight-or-flight response: what happens in the body

When you feel threatened, your nervous system responds by releasing a
flood of stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol, which rouse
the body for emergency action. Your heart pounds faster, muscles
tighten, blood pressure rises, breath quickens, and your senses become
sharper. These physical changes increase your strength and stamina,
speed up your reaction time, and enhance your focus—preparing you to
either fight or flee from the danger at hand.

Signs and symptoms of stress overload

The most dangerous thing about stress is how easily it can creep up on you. You get used to it. It
starts to feel familiar, even normal. You don’t notice how much it’s affecting you, even as it takes a
heavy toll. That’s why it’s important to be aware of the common warning signs and symptoms of
stress overload.

Cognitive symptoms:
• Memory problems

• Inability to concentrate
• Poor judgment
• Seeing only the negative
• Anxious or racing thoughts
• Constant worrying
Emotional symptoms:
• Depression or general unhappiness

• Anxiety and agitation

• Moodiness, irritability, or anger
• Feeling overwhelmed
• Loneliness and isolation
• Other mental or emotional health problems
Physical symptoms:
• Aches and pains

• Diarrhea or constipation
• Nausea, dizziness
• Chest pain, rapid heart rate

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• Loss of sex drive

• Frequent colds or flu
Behavioral symptoms:
• Eating more or less

• Sleeping too much or too little

• Withdrawing from others
• Procrastinating or neglecting responsibilities
• Using alcohol, cigarettes, or drugs to relax
• Nervous habits (e.g. nail biting, pacing)

Factors that influence your stress tolerance level

Your support network. A strong network of supportive friends and family members is an enormous
buffer against stress. When you have people you can count on, life’s pressures don’t seem as
overwhelming. On the flip side, the lonelier and more isolated you are, the greater your risk of
succumbing to stress.

Your sense of control. If you have confidence in yourself and your ability to influence events and
persevere through challenges, it’s easier to take stress in stride. On the other hand, if you believe
that you have little control over your life—that you’re at the mercy of your environment and
circumstances—stress is more likely to knock you off course.

Your attitude and outlook. The way you look at life and its inevitable challenges makes a huge
difference in your ability to handle stress. If you’re generally hopeful and optimistic, you’ll be less
vulnerable. Stress-hardy people tend to embrace challenges, have a stronger sense of humor,
believe in a higher purpose, and accept change as an inevitable part of life.

Your ability to deal with your emotions. If you don’t know how to calm and soothe yourself when
you’re feeling sad, angry, or troubled, you’re more likely to become stressed and agitated. Having
the ability to identify and deal appropriately with your emotions can increase your tolerance to stress
and help you bounce back from adversity.

Your knowledge and preparation. The more you know about a stressful situation, including how
long it will last and what to expect, the easier it is to cope. For example, if you go into surgery with a
realistic picture of what to expect post-op, a painful recovery will be less stressful than if you were
expecting to bounce back immediately.

COPING MECHANISMS

Coping mechanisms are the strategies people often use in the face of stress and/or trauma to
help manage painful or difficult emotions. Coping mechanisms can help people adjust to stressful
events while helping them maintain their emotional well-being.

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Appraisal-focused coping strategies

Appraisal-focused (adaptive cognitive) strategies occur when the person modifies the way they think,
for example: employing denial, or distancing oneself from the problem. People may alter the way they
think about a problem by altering their goals and values, such as by seeing the humor in a situation:
"some have suggested that humor may play a greater role as a stress moderator among women than
men"

Adaptive behavioral coping strategies

People using problem-focused strategies try to deal with the cause of their problem. They do this by
finding out information on the problem and learning new skills to manage the problem. Problem-
focused coping is aimed at changing or eliminating the source of the stress. The three problem-
focused coping strategies identified by Folkman and Lazarus are: taking control, information seeking,
and evaluating the pros and cons. However, problem-focused coping may not be necessarily
adaptive, especially in the uncontrollable case that one cannot make the problem go away.

Emotion-focused coping strategies

Emotion-focused coping "is oriented toward managing the emotions that accompany the perception
of stress. The focus of this coping mechanism is to change the meaning of the stressor or transfer
attention away from it. Emotion-focused strategies involve:

• releasing pent-up emotions

• distracting oneself
• managing hostile feelings
• meditating
• mindfulness practices
• using systematic relaxation procedures.

Adaptive vs. Maladaptive Strategies

Coping strategies can also be positive (adaptive) or negative (maladaptive). Positive coping strategies
successfully diminish the amount of stress being experienced and provide constructive feedback for
the user. Examples of adaptive coping include seeking social support from others (social coping) and
attempting to learn from the stressful experience (meaning-focused coping). Maintaining good
physical and mental health, practicing relaxation techniques, and employing humor in difficult
situations are other types of positive coping strategies. Proactive coping is a specific type of adaptive
strategy that attempts to anticipate a problem before it begins and prepare a person to cope with the
coming challenge.

Negative coping strategies might be successful at managing or abating stress, but the result is
dysfunctional and non-productive. They provide a quick fix that interferes with the person’s ability to
break apart the association between the stressor and the symptoms of anxiety. Therefore, while these
strategies provide short-term relief, they actually serve to maintain disorder. Maladaptive strategies
include dissociation, sensitization, numbing out, anxious avoidance of a problem, and escape.

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STRESS AND THE FILIPINOS: The Social and Cultural Dimensions of Stress

Excerpt from Stress and the Filipino by Michael Tan

How do we say we’re stressed in Filipino?

We don’t. Well, at least not in a way that we would in English: I am stressed. It just doesn’t work out;
we don’t, as far as I know, have a word in any of our Philippine languages for stress and being
stressed.

But that doesn’t mean we Filipinos don’t ever experience stress. We feel it all the time and we see it
producing illnesses, both physical and mental, both fleeting (as in having to run to the toilet) and
serious, life-threatening ones. Because stress affects the body’s immune system, we can say all
ailments are in one way or another stress-related, from asthma to singaw (canker sores), to
cardiovascular ailments and even infectious diseases.

There’s also a tendency to dismiss stress-related illnesses as “psychological,” and that these are
self-limiting, easily resolved. The fact is that stress can so overwhelm people that they lapse into
depression, resorting to destructive behavior, directed toward the self, or toward others.

Filipinos do face many sources of stress, around work and livelihood mainly. Farmers worry about
drought and typhoons; urbanites go berserk with tyrannical bosses and vicious gossipy office-
mates.

Rural or urban, we all face the stresses of family, perhaps more so than in Western countries. We
like to say we are family-oriented, with relatives always on hand to help out. But the extended
Filipino family can be stressful too, with all its obligations. Overseas workers have a particularly
difficult time with all the expectations family members have back home. I’ve met Filipinos overseas,
from Hong Kong domestic workers to physicians in the United States, who postpone returning home
for years because they dread the jeepneyloads of relatives waiting for pasalubong (gifts).

OH, BUT the Filipino is resilient, we keep hearing. I’ve been in urban shanties where 15 people
share 15 square meters of living space and yes, on the surface, everyone seems happy.
Chinese Asiaweek once had a cover story featuring Filipinos as the happiest people in the world,
unfazed by the most difficult of circumstances. One photo had a group of men drinking away in the
middle of knee-high floodwaters.

But the scenes of smiling and laughing Filipinos, singing and dancing (and drinking) away can be
deceptive. Quite often, we deal with stress by trying to be “happy.” I put that in quotes because the
Filipino term is masaya, which is really more of an externalized merriment. Masaya is social
camaraderie, it’s making cheer and quite often we do it precisely because there have been unhappy
events, stressful events. The best example is that of a death — our wakes are notorious for its
merry-making, but that, precisely, is part of our stress-coping mechanism.

ALL SAID, there’s a political economy of stress involved, meaning power relations shape the way
one experiences and expresses stress. Common sense tells us the poor suffer much more daily
stress, from battling the traffic while commuting, breathing in more of the toxic fumes, dealing with
tyrannical bosses and snakepit offices. Poor women are doubly burdened, having to deal with the
tribulations of work, as well as of the home, running after the needs of husband and children.

Men may be more prone to the problem of this “political economy of stress,” since they have to live
up to higher expectations of gender. A jobless man, for example, may be more adversely

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by stress because of a loss of pride. Machismo also blocks him from taking up jobs that he thinks
are beneath his station. So he ends up drinking with the barkada, which is then interpreted as
“resilience” and an ability to be happy. His wife, meanwhile, will pick up odd jobs here and there,
doing laundry, mending clothes; ironically, that again generates stress for him, as he feels his
masculinity threatened.

… given the deteriorating economic and political situation in the Philippines, are we about to see an
epidemic of stress-related ailments?

I think we’re already in that epidemic, and too little is being done to help Filipinos tackle stress.

TAKING CARE OF THE SELF

Self-Care

When asked the question: “Do you take care of yourself?” most of us will answer “yes” — we’d even
think, “What kind of question is this? Of course, I care about myself.” When asked, “In what ways do
you take care of yourself?” — well, that’s where the tricky part begins.

Self-care is a broad term that encompasses just about anything you to do be good to yourself. In a
nutshell, it’s about being as kind to yourself as you would be to others. It’s partly about knowing
when your resources are running low, and stepping back to replenish them rather than letting them
all drain away.

Self care is…

➢ knowing who you are and your limits

➢ getting the sleep you need and knowing how to rest.
➢ making sure that you're well fed
➢ finding a way to decompress throughout your day
➢ giving some thought to changing a difficult work situation.
➢ taking time to get to know you better
➢ identifying what you enjoy doing and what's fun for you and make a serious effort to
integrate it into your day
➢ knowing how to decompress after a day's work.
➢ feeding your spiritual self
➢ taking time to love yourself

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Why is Self-care important?

You learn to value yourself.

By having a self-care routine, you stop letting yourself stick to your

old patterns. Because you learn about what you need to keep
yourself happy so you can continue to give to others.

2. You learn to improve your time and stress management

When you care for yourself first, you have more energy and time
for important things and less time for unproductive or time wasting
activities. This will then improve time and stress management.

3. You learn to have a balance in your life

Balance is important. Too much work can cause burn out, too
much play or lack of direction can make you unproductive or
“lazy“. When you care for yourself, you find ways to balance out your work and personal life. This
will create the balance of health, work, relationship, business, family, or friends.

4. You learn to lead a healthier lifestyle

It helps you not only physically, but mentally and spiritually too! Think about it. When you make an
effort to care for yourself, what do you think of?

Exercise? Being happy? Doing things that makes you happy? Reading a book? Being able to stay
in touch with friends? Having time to go for yoga classes?

Self-Compassion

Self-compassion is the ability to turn understanding, acceptance, and love inward. Many people are
able to extend compassion toward others but find it difficult to extend the same compassion toward
themselves. They may see self-compassion as an act of self-indulgence, but extending compassion
toward oneself is not an act of self-indulgence, selfishness, or self-pity.

Compassion is the ability to show empathy, love, and concern to people who are in difficulty, and self-
compassion is simply the ability to direct these same emotions within, and accept oneself, particularly
in the face of failure. Many otherwise compassionate people have a harder time showing compassion
for themselves, sometimes out of a fear of engaging in self-indulgence or self-pity, but an inability to
accept areas of weakness may lead to difficulty achieving emotional well-being.

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Kristin Neff, a self-compassion researcher and the first to define the term academically, describes
self-compassion as having three elements.

1. Self-kindness, or refraining from harsh criticism of the self.

2. Recognizing one's own humanity, or the fact that all people are imperfect and all people
experience pain.
3. Mindfulness, or maintaining a non-biased awareness of experiences, even those that are
painful, rather than either ignoring or exaggerating their effect.

SELF LOVE

accept yourself as a work in progress the continue

to build yourself into the person you’re dreaming to be;
the person you have all the potential to be.
accept your flaws, accept your truths. accept your past.
and make light of them. no one can tear you down if
you make peace with who you are and where you’ve
been. if you are going to focus on the negative at all,
focus on turning them into positives. focus on growing.
sometimes, often times, our minds are the scariest
place to sit. it’ll trick you into comparing yourself
to others and it’ll trick you into believing you aren’t
good enough. but you are. you have always been
and you always will be. you’re much more powerful
when you believe in yourself. if you don’t love
all of you, who will?
give yourself time to blossom.

—Reyna Biddy

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LEARNING ACTIVITY 1

IDENTIFYING SOURCES OF STRESS. Indicate in the boxes the stressors that you often encounter

SOURCES
OF
STRESS

LEARNING ACTIVITY 2

I Love My Self

Enumerate ways on how you do self-care and attach pictures of you doing these activities

1. _______________________________________________

2. _______________________________________________

3. _______________________________________________

4. _______________________________________________

5. _______________________________________________

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SUMMARY

Problems are inevitable part of our daily lives and that is something that we could not change. What
we could change, though, is the way by which we respond to life’s challenges. Self-compassion and
Self-care remind us that in going through trials and problems, we have to be kind and less critical of
ourselves. We should also learn to listen to our body when it needs to take a break from the stresses
of life so that we can be more ready to face difficulties.

REFERENCES

https://www.mentalhelp.net/stress/types-of-stressors-eustress-vs-distress/
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-psychology/chapter/coping-with-and-managing-
stress/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coping
https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/psychpedia/coping-mechanisms
https://old.pcij.org/stories/stress-and-the-filipino/

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