Stress is your body's way of responding to any kind of demand.
It can be caused by both good and bad experiences.
When people feel stressed by something going on around them, their bodies react by releasing chemicals into the blood.
These chemicals give people more energy and strength, which can be a good thing if their stress is caused by physical danger.
But this can also be a bad thing, if their stress is in response to something emotional and there is no outlet for this extra energy and strength
Many different things can cause stress.
From physical (such as fear of something dangerous) to emotional (such as worry over your family or job) – these often referred as “stressors.”
Survival Stress - You may have heard the phrase "fight or flight" before. This is a common response to danger in all people and animals. When you are afraid that someone or something may physically hurt you, your body naturally responds with a burst of energy so that you will be better able to survive the dangerous situation (fight) or escape it all together (flight). This is survival stress.
Internal Stress - Have you ever caught yourself worrying about things you can do nothing about or worrying for no reason at all? This is internal stress and it is one of the most important kinds of stress to understand and manage. Internal stress is when people make themselves stressed. This often happens when we worry about things we can't control or put ourselves in situations we know will cause us stress. Some people become addicted to the kind of hurried, tense, lifestyle that results from being under stress. They even look for stressful situations and feel stress about things that aren't stressful.
Environmental Stress - This is a response to things around you that cause stress, such as noise, crowding, and pressure from work or family. Identifying these environmental stresses and learning to avoid them or deal with them will help lower your stress level.
Fatigue and Overwork - This kind of stress builds up over a long time and can take a hard toll on your body. It can be caused by working too much or too hard at your job(s), school, or home. It can also be caused by not knowing how to manage your time well or how to take time out for rest and relaxation.
So if stress can be so bad for you, how can there be "good" or "positive" stress?
If you are suffering from extreme stress or long-term stress, your body will eventually wear itself down. But sometimes, small amounts of stress can actually be good.
Understanding your stress level is important. If nothing in your life causes you any stress or excitement, you may become bored or may not be living up to your potential. If everything in your life, or large portions of your life, cause you stress, you may experience health or mental problems that will make your behavior worse.
The body pays a price if must constantly adapt to stress.
This ‘price’ can be expressed in terms of what is referred to as allostatic load - (allostatic (or allotasis) - is the process of achieving stability, or homeostasis, through physiological or behavioral change).
If the body is exposed to high levels of stress hormones such as cortisol and becomes susceptible to disease because of altered immune system functioning – a high allostatic load.
Psychodynamic perspectives:
Franz Alexander (1950) – repressed emotional impulses created a chronic negative emotional state that impacted health, thus setting the stage for problems like ulcers, asthma, or essential hypertension.
Cognitive and personality perspectives:
Physical threats obviously create stress – so do negative emotions such as resentment, regret, and worry.
Negative emotions stimulate sympathetic nervous system activity and may keep the body’s stress systems aroused and the body in a continual state of emergency, sometimes for far longer than it can bear, as suggested by the notion of allostatic load.
Personality traits have been linked to immune system functioning – e.g. negative emotions linked to slow antibody production.
Often occurring in quick 'bursts' in reaction to something in your environment, short-term stress can affect your body in many ways. Some examples:
While this burst of energy may help you in physical situations where your body needs to react quickly, it can have bad effects on your mind and performance if there is no outlet or reason for your stress. These effects may include:
Long-term stress or stress that is occurring over long periods of time can have an even greater effect on your body and mind. Long-term stress can affect your body by:
Long-term stress can also have serious effects on your mental health and behavior:
Relaxation training – the most common form of relaxation training is progressive muscle relaxation, which involves systematically tensing and then relaxing each major muscle group in the body.
Cognitive restructuring – includes approaches to alter people’s belief systems and reduce the negativity of their interpretations of experience.
Behavioral skills training – practice in skills such as time management
and effective prioritizing.
- Place one hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen. When you take a deep breath in, the hand on the abdomen should rise higher than the one on the chest. This insures that the diaphragm is pulling air into the bases of the lungs.
- After exhaling through the mouth, take a slow deep breath in through your nose imagining that you are sucking in all the air in the room and hold it for a count of 7 (or as long as you are able, not exceeding 7).
- Slowly exhale through your mouth for a count of 8. As all the air is released with relaxation, gently contract your abdominal muscles to completely evacuate the remaining air from the lungs. It is important to remember that we deepen respiration not by inhaling more air but through completely exhaling it.
- Repeat the cycle four more times for a total of 5 deep breaths and try to breathe at a rate of one breath every 10 seconds (or 6 breaths per minute). At this rate our heart rate variability increases which has a positive effect on cardiac health.
Classical
conditioning it
is how one learns to associate stimuli or connect with the thinking brain.
According to Ivan Pavlov (1927) gave a theory to two
types of stimuli and two types of responses namely unconditioned stimulus
(UCS), unconditioned response (UCR), conditioned stimulus (CS), and conditioned
response (CR). And furthermore, when a neutral stimulus gets linked with a
significant stimulus, it gains the ability to trigger a comparable reaction.
This is an example of associative learning.
Pavlov
gave the example of a dog as a response for example unconditional stimulus
(UCS) which shows the dog only listens to the door without responding while
conditioned response (CR) is a learned response to a conditioned stimulus that
occurs after the UCS-CS pair example gives sound as well as followed by feeding.
According to him again, Involved
in both good and bad experiences of youngsters in the school. Like favorite
songs and the perception that the classroom is a secure and enjoyable
environment are two examples of items in children's learning that have become
classics and so provide hours of entertainment. To be clear in classical
conditioning is included:
UCS is anything
that elicits an instant or somewhat instinctive reaction might be defined as
automatic reaction.
UCR is a
response which is elicited by an unconditioned stimulus.
CS is
when a conditioned stimulus is offered repeatedly for a period of time prior to
an unconditioned stimulus, it is said to have been conditionally presented. At
the conclusion of the experiment, it will produce the same reaction as the
conditioned stimulus.
CR is
described as a reaction that occurs as a consequence of exposure to a
conditioned stimulus
So operant conditioning is a learning process in which purposeful activities are rewarded by the consequences of those behaviours. If the dog then improves his or her ability to sit and remain in order to earn the reward, this is an example of operant conditioning. Other than that, positive reinforcement, such as giving a dog a treat or providing food to a rat, may be used in operant conditioning experiments. Furthermore, negative reinforcement is used to reward a dog for staying close to its human by relieving the uncomfortable strain on the leash. Opportunistic training might include punishment in certain cases. Each and every example of operant conditioning shows how a desired behaviour is reinforced via the use of consequences.
In
operant conditioning, the concepts of reinforcement and punishment are used to
achieve the desired results. You are enhancing a behaviour when you reinforce
it. A consequence or result that raises the probability of a certain
behavioural response is defined as reinforcement. The behavior-strengthening
impact may present itself in a variety of ways, including increased frequency,
longer duration, larger amplitude, and shorter latency in response. It is any
consequence or event that reduces the chance of a behavioural reaction that is
defined as a kind of punitive action.
Furthermore,
both reinforcement and punishment might be positive and negative and have the
potential to be effective. Positive and negative may not always imply good or
bad behaviour in operant conditioning. Instead, positive implies that you are
adding something, while negative implies that you are subtracting something.
All of these techniques may be used to affect the behaviour of a subject, but
each one operates in a different way.
For
example, when in class, students like to run around in class. This thing cannot
be saved because it is the nature of boys to do such a thing. But when they
hear the rattan they will automatically stop. This is an example where the UCS
response occurs. However, if this matter continues to be practiced then
indirectly the students will recognize the sound and continue to respond then
this matter is CR. At the same time, it can happen if the teacher makes an
angry face at the students then automatically UCR happens. It is customary if
done then they will understand if the teacher looks with a sharp gaze it
signals to reprimand and the students will be silent. If this happens
repeatedly then it has been embedded in the brains of the pupils. For example,
the conditional stimulus arises when it is presented repeatedly for some time
before the unconditional stimulus. Eventually, it will give the same response
as the conditioned stimulus. So, the students have become accustomed to the
conditions and react naturally when it happens. So, this is included in CS
conditional stimuli.
Other than that, it can also have a positive
impact on behavior when operant conditioning applied. For example,
Positive
reinforcers add desired or pleasant stimuli to increase or maintain the
frequency of a behavior. For example, students not running around in class will
get candy.
Negative
reinforcers emit unpleasant or unpleasant stimuli to increase or maintain the
frequency of the behavior. For example, a student if he does not run in class,
can return early.
Positive
punishment adds an unpleasant stimulus to reduce a behavior or reaction. For
example, a student running around in class will be fined for having to memorize
the numbers 1 through 12 in front of an assembly for four consecutive days.
Negative
punishment eliminates pleasant stimuli to reduce behavior or reactions. For
example, a student running in class will get a fine of all not being able to go
home early at the end of the school day.
These two things are very related to connect a
situation. Stimuli that are used to promote a certain behaviour may be
classified as either primary or secondary. The main reinforcer, also known as
an unconditional reinforcer, is a stimulus that has a naturally reinforcing
effect on the subject's behaviour. There has been no research on such
reinforcers. At the sometime, it may include with generalization which is can
generalize similar things and respond the same. For all students know, a bell
rings to signal a break time. And finally is discrimination is an opportunistic
conditioning occurs when an organism reacts differentially to two comparable
but not identical stimuli in the context of different way. Like at an assembly
when the teacher has finished speech, half the students some applaud and some are
silent. This shows different ways of responding from the same context.
