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Coping with Stress in Middle and Late Adolescence
Coping with Stress in Middle and Late Adolescence
COMPETENCY: Discuss understanding of mental health and psychological well- being to identify ways to cope with stress during adolescence.
Stress is simply a reaction to a stimulus that disturbs our physical or mental equilibrium. In other words, it's an omnipresent part of life. A stressful event can trigger the “fight-or-flight” response, causing hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol to surge through the body.
According to Psychologists, they can be:
1. Beneficial stress - Stress can be beneficial and helpful to individuals when a small and sporadic amounts of stress occur. It becomes a motivation for you to work hard and conquer those conflicts that makes you stressed.
2. Destructive stress - Stress can be destructive to both physical and mental health when excessive amounts of stress sustained over lengthy period of time.
3 VIEWS ABOUT STRESS
1. Stress as Stimulus - caused by situations (which often called stressors) that may be life threatening or life changing.
Car accident
Breaking up with your boyfriend or girlfriend
Leaving your parent's house
When the time comes that you encounter and accept God as your Lord and Savior.
2. Stress as Response - the way the body reacts to challenging situations. It involves the interactions between the hormones, glands and nervous system where adrenal gland drives the production of cortisol (produces energy to do an action) and release norepinephrine (triggers the body's reaction; increased heart rate, higher blood pressure.) or better known as "stress hormone".
Prolonged or chronic situations that involve both cortisol and norepinephrine affects the body to wear down fast. And that's the reason why it often causes fatigue, aging, and illness caused by low immune system.
Adolescent's physical response to stress is faster than that of an adult. Simply because the part of the adolescent's brain, the prefrontal cortex, that assesses danger and directs action during stress is not fully developed.
Your mother is too stressed due to financial instability and it causes her to higher blood pressure.
Muscle aches
Weight Gain
Constipation
3. Stress as Relational - relationship between the person and the environment in which they find themselves in that is appraised by the person as exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her well-being. Assessment here means that a person allows his or herself the reasoning to prevail and weigh the relevance or irrelevance of situation.
Flight delay
2 SOURCES OF STRESS
According to a study from the United States, there are two sources of stress:
1. Internal Stressors - coming from within your thoughts that caused you to feel fearful about the future and personal beliefs, which include your own expectations.
2. External Stressors - comes from the outside of you like certain situations and people.
POSSIBLE STRESSORS OF A HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT
1. Expectations
2. Selecting a School, College Course, or Career
3. Separation Anxiety
4. College Life
5. Romantic Relationships or the Lack of It
6. Family Demands and Expectations
7. Health Concerns
8. Demands of Social Life
9. Bullying
10. Dealing with the physical and cognitive changes of puberty.
TEN WAYS TO COPE UP WITH STRESS
Coping can be problem-focused, when remedies or solutions are thought of to change the situation to lessen the stress or emotion-focused, when the objective is lessen the emotional impact caused by the stressful situation (Feist and Rosenberg, 2012).
It can help in avoiding the damages that may be brought about by severe or chronic stress to your health and well-being.
1. Talk about problems with others.
2. Take deep breaths, accompanied by thinking or saying aloud, “I can handle this.”
3. Exercise and eat regular meals.
4. Get proper sleep.
5. Focus on what you can control (your reactions, your actions) and let go of what you cannot (other people’s opinions and expectations).
6. Work through worst-case scenarios until they seem amusing or absurd.
7. Lower unrealistic expectations.
8. Schedule breaks and enjoyable activities.
9. Accept yourself as you are; identify your unique strengths and build on them.
10. Give up on the idea of perfection, both in yourself and in others. Give yourself permission and cultivate the ability to learn from mistakes.
Activities
Activities
I. The Fruit and the Worm
II. Stress Identifier
Assessment
Assessment
I. Persuasion Map
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