Stress and Methods of Therapy
Lecture 6
What do you think is the difference between
psychology and psychiatry?
Psychology, Psychiatry, Psychotherapy
• Psychiatry: “a branch of medicine that specializes
in helping people to overcome mental disorders”.
• As a result, psychiatrists are doctors who
concentrate on what happens when things go
wrong: mental illness and mental distress.
• Can and do prescribe medicine/drugs
Psychology, Psychiatry, Psychotherapy
• Psychology: the academic and scientific study of
the mind and behaviour through experiments and
hypotheses, and theory and concept building
• Usually, a person with a graduate degree in
psychology, but who doesn’t want to become a
medical doctor, can specialize in either clinical or
counseling psychology.
Psychology, Psychiatry, Psychotherapy
• Psychotherapy: “a broad term referring to many types of
psychological therapy”.
Stress and Behaviour
Stress: “State of being
faced with a tense or
threatening situation that
requires us to change or
adapt our behavior.”
Is stress just another
word for fear?
Stress and Behaviour
• Sources of stress: Most people use it in its “negative” context, eg. “I
was cramming for tests, I was so stressed!!!”
“Healthful” Stress
Also called Eustress
• A presentation/ job interview for a dream job
• Your wedding
• A job promotion that you wanted challenge
• A huge project you landed and are about to finish
• A marathon you are
prepped for
Negative Stress
• You lost your job
• You had a fight with bf/gf
• You have 8 classes and must cram for all and
have put it off
• You have a medical diagnosis that is bad
• You just lost the company’s biggest client and
must tell your boss
Three Sources of Stress
• Psychologists have shown there are
three important sources of stress:
1) change
2) everyday hassles
3) self-imposed stress
2. Everyday Hassles
Traffic
Weather
Illness
Congestion
Overwhelm
Conflict
Finances
3. Self-imposed Stress: We Do It to Ourselves!
Self-imposed Stress - Ambition
Coping Strategies for Stress
1) Direct coping
2) Defensive coping
1) Direct Coping
Direct coping: we make intentional efforts to
change an uncomfortable situation.
We do so in one of 3 ways:
A) confrontation
B) compromise, or
C) withdrawal.
Direct Coping a): Confrontation
• Confrontation means attacking the situation head-on and
trying to create a solution.
Direct coping b): Compromise
Compromise: settling for a less-than-ideal solution to the
situation, but one in which both you and the others involved are
at least partially happy.
Direct coping c): Withdrawal
• Withdrawal: exiting the situation, which can
be positive if “our adversary is more powerful
than us, there is no way we can modify
ourselves or the situation, there is no possible
compromise.”
2) Defensive Coping
• Defensive coping or Defense mechanisms are techniques for
deceiving oneself about the causes of stressful situations as a
way of reducing pressure, frustration, conflict, etc.
Defensive Coping Mechanisms
• The two basic ones are:
• Denial: Blocking “out situations that we can’t
handle”.
• Repress: Blocking “out unacceptable impulses
or stressful thoughts”
Defensive coping cont’d
• Project, attributing our own repressed
motives, ideas or feelings onto others;
• Identify, taking on the characteristics of
another person so we can vicariously share in
that person’s triumphs and overcome feeling
inadequate
Defensive coping cont’d
• Regress, reverting to childhood behavior;
• Intellectualize, turning our feelings about
our problems into ideas to analyze, almost as
if they belonged to other people
Defensive coping cont’d
• Displace, redirecting our
repressed motives and
emotions from their
original object onto
substitute objects
• A dad frustrated at work
taking out his aggression
on a child at home);
Defensive coping cont’d
• Sublimate, transforming our repressed motives and feelings
into more socially acceptable activities.
Long Term Impacts
• In the long run defensive coping may
interfere with a person’s ability to deal
directly with a problem, or, create more
problems than it solves
Proactive Coping
• Anticipation
• Social support
• Nutrition, exercise and sleep
When Coping Doesn’t Cut it
Professional therapy from licensed
professionals, life coaches, therapists
Therapies and Treatments
• Insight therapies
• Behavioural
• Cognitive therapies
• Group therapies
• Biological and Institutionalization treatments
