Discuss some major sources of stress.
...fe. Life changes can be partly responsible for this, as a change will disrupt the individual’s pattern of daily living, creating hassles and therefore stress. (E.g. a widow might get stressed arranging the car to be repaired, because usually her late husband would look after this). Daily hassles can be described as the minor frustrations and annoyances happening in our everyday life. Frustration can be caused by our own inadequacies preventing us from reaching our goals (e.g. the wish to become a doctor, but can’t stand the sight of blood) or caused by external factors we have no influence over (e.g. train is late, weather). Conflict is another source of stress and part of our daily lives. They develop when a person has to choose between 2 or more competing or contradictory goals. Trying to find a workable compromise can cause considerable stress. Traumatic events, life changes and daily hassles can be possible sources of stress, but the severity of stress experienced by the individual depends on various situational factors. Certain characteristics of the stressor such as predictability and controllability play an important role. It seems that being able to predict the occurrence of a stressful event and having some control over it reduces the severity of stress. Knowing enough, so that your imagination doesn’t run wild but not knowing too much so that stress is increased is called information control. Thinking about the potential stressful situation in a constructive way is called cognitive control. A combination of information and cognitive control would seem an ideal way of coping with a stressful situation. Coping mechanisms are conscious ways of trying to adapt to stress in a positive and constructive way. That can be achieved by using thoughts and behaviours towards searching for information, problem solving, seeking help from others, recognising our true feelings and establishing goals and objectives. Lazarus and Folkmann (84) distinguished between two major coping strategies. One takes a problem-focused approach, where a specific plan for dealing with a stressful situation is made and implemented. At the same time the person doesn’t engage in any other activity until the stressor has been reduced or erased. The other coping strategy takes an emotion focused approach, which involves implementing strategies that are only effective in the short term, but have little or no effect on reducing or terminating the stressor in the long run. A combination of these approaches would seem the most beneficial, but most people rely on the emotion focused approach. This would suggest teaching people more effective strategies for dealing with stressors; for example stress management programmes that help identifying techniques for dealing with stress by changing behaviour. These programmes are, for example, time management training, where people learn to pace themselves to prevent last minute panics, assertiveness training that helps the individual to confront stress provoking situations and social support, so that the individual doesn’t have to face the stressful situation alone. These coping strategies where you reduce stress or cope with it by changing your behaviour are good for everyday life stresses and are especially helpful for personalities with a certain type of behaviour that is called ‘Type A’. Changing the Type A behaviour pattern of time urgency, hostility and self-destruction which makes the pers...