Coping with
Stress In modern times, we human beings have to use thoughts
and actions to deal with stressful situations and lower our stress levels. Many
people have a characteristic way of coping with stress based on their
personality. People who cope well with stress tend to believe they can
personally influence what happens to them. They usually make more positive
statements about themselves, resist frustration, remain optimistic, and
persevere even under extremely adverse circumstances. Most importantly,
they choose the appropriate strategies to cope with the stressors (紧张性刺激) they
confront. Conversely, people who cope poorly with stress tend to have somewhat
opposite personality characteristics, such as lower self-esteem and a
pessimistic outlook on life. Coping strategies
Psychologists distinguish two broad types of coping strategies:
problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping. The goal of both strategies
is to control one’s stress level. In problem-focused coping, people try to
alleviate (减轻 , 缓和) negative emotions by taking some action to modify, avoid, or
minimize the threatening situation. They change their behavior to deal with the
stressful situation. In emotion-focused coping, people try to directly moderate
or eliminate unpleasant emotions. Examples of emotion-focused coping include
rethinking the situation in a positive. way, relaxation, denial, and wishful
thinking. To understand these strategies, consider the example
of a premed (医学院预科) student in college who faces three difficult final
examinations in a single week. She knows she must get top grades in order to
have a chance at acceptance to medical school. This situation is a potential
source of stress, To cope, she could organize a study group and master the
course materials systematically (problem-focused coping). Or she could decide
that she needs to relax and collect herself for an hour or so (emotion-focused
coping) before proceeding with an action plan (problem-focused coping). She
might also decide to watch television for hours on end to prevent having to
think about or study for her exams (emotion-focused coping). In
general, problem-focused coping is the most effective coping strategy when
people have realistic opportunities to change aspects of their situation and
reduce stress. Emotion-focused coping is most useful as a short-term strategy.
It can help reduce one’s excitement level before engaging in problem- solving
and taking action, and it can help people deal with stressful situations in
which there are few problem-focused coping options. Social
support Support from friends, family members, and others who
care for us goes a long way in helping us to get by in times of trouble. Social
support systems provide us with emotional sustenance (支持), handy resources and
aid, and information when we are in need. People with social support feel cared
about and valued by others and feel a sense of belonging to a larger social
network. A large body of research has linked social support to
good health and a superior ability to cope with stress. For example, one
long-term study of several thousand California residents found that people with
extensive social ties lived longer than those with few close social contacts.
Another study found that heart-attack victims who lived alone were nearly twice
as likely to have another heart attack as those who lived with someone. Even the
perception of social support can help people cope with stress. Studies have
found that people’s appraisal (评价) of the availability of social support is more
closely related to how well they deal with stressors than the actual amount of
support they receive or the size of their social network.
Research also suggests that the companionship of animals can help lower
stress. For example, one study found that in times of stress, people with pet
dogs made fewer visits to the doctor than those without
pets. Biofeedback Biofeedback (生物反馈) is a technique in
which people learn voluntary control of stress-related physiological responses,
such as skin temperature, muscle tension, blood pressure, and heart rate.
Normally, people cannot control these responses voluntarily. In biofeedback
training, people are connected to an instrument or machine that measures a
particular physiological response, such as heart rate, and feeds that
measurement back to them in an understandable way. For example, the machine
might beep with each heartbeat or display the number of heartbeats per minute on
a digital screen. Next, individuals learn to be sensitive to subtle changes
inside their body that affect the response system being measured. Gradually,
they learn to produce changes in that response system -- for example, to
voluntarily lower their heart rate. Typically individuals use different
techniques ’and proceed by trial and error until they discover a way to produce
the desired changes. Biofeedback has become a widely used and
generally accepted technique for producing relaxation and lowering physiological
arousal (唤醒) in patients with stress-related disorders. One use of biofeedback
is in the. treatment of tension headaches. By learning to lower muscle tension
in the head and neck, many tension headache sufferers can find long-term
relief. Relaxation In addition to biofeedback, two
other major methods of relaxation are progressive muscular relaxation and
meditation(深思). Progressive muscular relaxation involves systematically tensing
and then relaxing different groups of voluntary muscles, while directing one’s
attention toward the contrasting sensations produced by the two procedures.
After practicing progressive muscular relaxation, individuals become
increasingly sensitive to rising tension levels and can produce the relaxation
response during everyday activities (often by repeating a cue word, such as
calm, to themselves). Meditation, in addition to teaching
relaxation, is designed to achieve subjective goals such as contemplation,
wisdom, and altered states of consciousness. One of the most common forms of
meditation, as is said, involves focusing attention on and repeating a word,
sound, or phrase thought to have particularly calming properties.
Both progressive muscle relaxation and meditation reliably reduce
stress-related excitement. They have been used successfully to treat a range of
stress-related disorders, such as tension headaches and chronic
pain. Aerobic exercise Aerobic(增氧健身的) exercise -- such
as running, walking, biking, and skiing- can help keep stress levels down.
Because aerobic exercise increases the endurance of the heart and lungs, an
aerobically fit individual will have a lower heart rate at rest and lower blood
pressure, less reactivity to stressors, and quicker recovery from stressors. In
addition, studies show that people who exercise regularly have higher
self-esteem and suffer less from anxiety and depression than comparable people
who are not aerobically fit. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends
exercising three to four times a week for at least 20 minutes to reduce the risk
of heart attack and other diseases. Scientists have applied biofeedback mechanisms to treat high blood pressure and heart attack.