1. Describe the psychological sources of stress? How can stress affect an individual’s immune system?
Stress is the state of having the pressure to accomplish something that seems out of reach. These can be emotional or physical. Stress can either be negative or positive. Positive stress is also known as eustress, which promotes one's motivation towards accomplishing a specific task. Distress is negative stress which causes mental and physical harm to the victim. Stressors can be externally related to the surroundings or internal such as becoming emotional, feeling pressure, and discomfort. Some of the sources of stress include; the death of a relative or a loved one, unpaid debts, workplace pressure, and many others. Stress can affect an individual's immune system ( Contrada & Baum, 2010). When an individual is stressed, there is an increase in the production of the stress hormone known as corticosteroid, which suppresses the ability of the white blood cells to fight disease. This makes individuals prone to depression, heart attack, blood pressure, and stroke.
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2. Discuss three different methods for coping with stress. In your life, which of these methods have you relied on, and what were the results? Describe the difference between problem- and emotion-focused coping strategies. Is there a time when one of these strategies would be more appropriate to use? Provide an example.
Appraisal-focused. This method involves changing the way people think and perceive stress.
Problem-focused. This method involves dealing with the exact cause of stress by trying to change or eliminate it.
Emotion-focused. This method deals with the feeling associated with stress. An individual can manipulate the feeling associated with stress by distracting or managing the feeling.
In my experience, I've always used a problem-focused stress coping strategy whereby I try eliminating or avoiding the stressors. This strategy helped since the impending stress was avoided.
The difference between the problem and emotion-focused stress coping strategies is that the problem-focused approach tries to deal with the stress before it happens or getting rid of the cause, thus doing away with the stress. Emotion-focused stress coping strategy aims at dealing with the situation itself by distracting the emotions or learning effective management skills ( Keller, et al. 2012)
There instances when one of these strategies is more appropriate. For instance, in a situation whereby a student is worried about passing an exam, they have an option of studying hard to avoid stressful poor performance (problem-focused strategy), rather than applying emotion-focused coping strategy when they have already failed the exam.
References
Contrada, R., & Baum, A. (Eds.). (2010). The handbook of stress science: Biology, psychology, and health. Springer Publishing Company.
Keller, A., Litzelman, K., Wisk, L. E., Maddox, T., Cheng, E. R., Creswell, P. D., & Witt, W. P. (2012). Does the perception that stress affects health matter? The association with health and mortality. Health psychology, 31(5), 677.
