Types of stressors. Stress and stressful conditions
Stress- a term that literally means pressure or stress. It is understood as the state of a person, which arises in response to the influence of adverse factors, which are usually called stressors... They can be physical (hard work, trauma) or mental (fear, frustration).
The prevalence of stress is very high. In developed countries, 70% of the population is under constant stress. Over 90% suffer from stress several times a month. This is a very alarming indicator considering how dangerous the effects of stress can be.
Experiencing stress requires a lot of energy from a person. Therefore, prolonged exposure to stress factors causes weakness, apathy, and a feeling of lack of strength. Also, the development of 80% of diseases known to science is associated with stress.
Types of stress
Pre-stress state - anxiety, nervous tension that occurs in a situation when stress factors act on a person. During this period, he can take steps to prevent stress.
Eustress- beneficial stress. It can be stressful, caused by strong positive emotions. Also, eustress is a moderate stress that mobilizes reserves, forcing you to more effectively deal with the problem. This type of stress includes all the reactions of the body that provide an urgent adaptation of a person to new conditions. It makes it possible to avoid an unpleasant situation, fight or adapt. Thus, eustress is a mechanism that ensures human survival.
Distress- harmful destructive stress, which the body is unable to cope with. This type of stress is caused by strong negative emotions or physical factors (trauma, illness, overwork) that last for a long time. Distress undermines strength, making it difficult for a person to not only effectively solve the problem that caused the stress, but also to live fully.
Emotional stress- emotions accompanying stress: anxiety, fear, anger, sadness. Most often, it is they, and not the situation itself, that cause negative changes in the body.
According to the duration of exposure, stress is usually divided into two types:
Acute stress- the stressful situation lasted for a short period of time. Most people bounce back quickly after a short emotional shock. However, if the shock was strong, then disturbances in the functioning of the NA, such as enuresis, stuttering, tics, are possible.
Chronic stress- stress factors affect a person for a long time. This situation is less favorable and dangerous for the development of diseases of the cardiovascular system and exacerbation of existing chronic diseases.
What are the phases of stress?
Anxiety phase- a state of uncertainty and fear in connection with an approaching unpleasant situation. Its biological meaning is to "prepare weapons" to deal with possible troubles.
Resistance phase- the period of mobilization of forces. The phase in which there is an increase in brain activity and muscle strength. This phase can have two resolution options. In the best case, the organism adapts to new living conditions. At worst, the person continues to experience stress and moves on to the next phase.
Exhaustion phase- the period when a person feels that his strength is running out. At this stage, the body's resources are depleted. If a way out of a difficult situation is not found, then somatic diseases and psychological changes develop.
What causes stress?
The reasons for the development of stress can be very diverse.
| Physical causes of stress | Mental causes of stress |
|
| Internal | External |
|
| Strong pain Surgery Infections Overwork Unbearable physical work Environmental pollution | Inconsistency of expectations with reality Unfulfilled hopes Disappointment Internal conflict - a contradiction, between "want" and "need" Perfectionism Pessimism Low or high self-esteem Difficulty making decisions Lack of diligence Impossibility of self-expression Lack of respect, recognition Time trouble, feeling of lack of time | Threat to life and health Human or animal attack Family or community conflicts Material problems Natural or man-made disasters Illness or death of a loved one Getting married or divorcing Cheating on a loved one Getting a job, dismissal, retirement Loss of money or property |
It should be noted that the body's response does not depend on the cause of the stress. The body reacts to a broken arm and divorce in the same way - by releasing stress hormones. Its consequences will depend on how significant the situation is for a person and how long he has been under its influence.
What determines your susceptibility to stress?
The same impact can be evaluated in different ways by people. The same situation (for example, the loss of a certain amount) will cause severe stress for one person, and only annoyance for the other. It all depends on what value a person gives to a given situation. An important role is played by the strength of the nervous system, life experience, upbringing, principles, life position, moral assessments, etc.
Individuals who are characterized by anxiety, increased excitability, imbalance, a tendency to hypochondria and depression are more susceptible to stress.
One of the most important factors is the state of the nervous system at the moment. During periods of overwork and illness, a person's ability to adequately assess the situation decreases, and relatively small impacts can cause serious stress.
Recent research by psychologists has shown that people with the lowest cortisol levels are less susceptible to stress. As a rule, they are harder to piss off. And in stressful situations, they do not lose their composure, which allows them to achieve significant success.
Signs of low stress tolerance and high susceptibility to stress:
- You cannot relax after a hard day;
- You experience excitement after a minor conflict;
- You replay an unpleasant situation in your head many times;
- You can leave the started business because of fears that you will not cope with it;
- Your sleep is disturbed due to the anxiety experienced;
- Excitement causes a noticeable deterioration in well-being (headache, tremors in the hands, heart palpitations, feeling of heat)
If you answered yes to most of the questions, it means that you need to increase your resistance to stress.
What are the behavioral signs of stress?
How to recognize stress by behavior? Stress changes a person's behavior in a certain way. Although its manifestations largely depend on the character and life experience of a person, there are also a number of common signs.
- Binge eating. Although sometimes there is a loss of appetite.
- Insomnia. Superficial sleep with frequent awakenings.
- Slowness of movement or fussiness.
- Irritability. It can be manifested by tearfulness, grumbling, unreasonable nit-picking.
- Closure, withdrawal from communication.
- Reluctance to work. The reason lies not in laziness, but in a decrease in motivation, willpower and a lack of strength.
Outward signs of stress associated with excessive tension of certain muscle groups. These include:
- Pursed lips
- Chewing muscle tension;
- Raised "pinched" shoulders;
What happens in the human body during stress?
Pathogenetic mechanisms of stress- a stressful situation (stressor) is perceived by the cerebral cortex as threatening. Further, excitation passes through a chain of neurons to the hypothalamus and pituitary gland. Pituitary cells produce adrenocorticotropic hormone, which activates the adrenal cortex. The adrenal glands in large quantities release stress hormones into the bloodstream - adrenaline and cortisol, which are designed to ensure adaptation in a stressful situation. However, if the body is under their influence for too long, is very sensitive to them, or hormones are produced in excess, then this can lead to the development of diseases.
Emotions activate the autonomic nervous system, or rather its sympathetic division. This biological mechanism is designed to make the body stronger and more resilient to short term, set it up for vigorous activity. However, prolonged stimulation of the autonomic nervous system causes vasospasm and disruption of organs that lack blood circulation. Hence the dysfunction of organs, pain, spasms.
The positive effects of stress
The positive effects of stress are associated with the effects on the body of the same stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol. Their biological meaning is to ensure human survival in a critical situation.
| The positive effects of adrenaline | The positive effects of cortisol |
| The appearance of fear, anxiety, anxiety. These emotions warn a person about possible danger... They provide an opportunity to prepare for battle, run away or hide. Increased respiration - this ensures oxygen saturation of the blood. A faster heartbeat and a rise in blood pressure - the heart supplies blood to the body better to function efficiently. Stimulation mental abilities by improving the delivery of arterial blood to the brain. Strengthening muscle strength by improving muscle blood circulation and increasing muscle tone. It helps to realize the fight-or-flight instinct. A surge of energy due to the activation of metabolic processes. This allows a person to feel a surge of energy, if before that he experienced fatigue. The person shows courage, determination, or aggression. Increase in blood glucose levels, which provides cells with additional nutrition and energy. Decreased blood flow in internal organs and skin. This effect helps to reduce bleeding during possible injury. | A surge of vivacity and strength due to the acceleration of metabolism: an increase in blood glucose levels and the breakdown of proteins into amino acids. Suppression of the inflammatory response. Acceleration of blood clotting by increasing the number of platelets, helps to stop bleeding. Decreased activity of secondary functions. The body conserves energy to help combat stress. For example, the formation of immune cells decreases, the activity of the endocrine glands is suppressed, and intestinal motility decreases. Reducing the risk of developing allergic reactions. This is facilitated by the depressing effect of cortisol on the immune system. Blocking the production of dopamine and serotonin - "happiness hormones" that promote relaxation, which can have critical consequences in dangerous situation. Increased sensitivity to adrenaline. This enhances its effects: increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, increased blood flow to skeletal muscles and heart. |
It should be noted that the positive effect of hormones is noted with their short-term effect on the body. Therefore, short-term moderate stress can be beneficial for the body. He mobilizes, forces one to gather strength in order to find the optimal solution. Stress enriches life experience and in the future a person feels confident in such situations. Stress increases the ability to adapt and in a certain way contributes to the development of personality. However, it is important that the stressful situation is resolved before the body's resources are exhausted and negative changes begin.
The negative effects of stress
The negative effects of stress onpsyche due to the prolonged action of stress hormones and overwork of the nervous system.
- Decreased concentration of attention, which entails memory impairment;
- Fussiness and incoherence appear, which increases the risk of making rash decisions;
- Low performance and increased fatigue can be the result of a violation of neural connections in the cerebral cortex;
- Prevail negative emotions- general dissatisfaction with the situation, work, partner, appearance, which increases the risk of developing depression;
- Irritability and aggression, which complicate interaction with others and delay the resolution of a conflict situation;
- The desire to alleviate the condition with the help of alcohol, antidepressants, narcotic drugs;
- Decreased self-esteem, self-doubt;
- Problems in sexual and family life;
- A nervous breakdown is a partial loss of control over your emotions and actions.
The negative effects of stress on the body
1. From the nervous system... Under the influence of adrenaline and cortisol, the destruction of neurons is accelerated, the well-functioning work of various parts of the nervous system is disrupted:
- Excessive stimulation of the nervous system. Prolonged stimulation of the central nervous system leads to overwork. Like other organs, the nervous system cannot work in an unusually intense mode for a long time. This inevitably leads to various failures. Signs of overwork are drowsiness, apathy, depressive thoughts, and sugar cravings.
- Headaches can be associated with dysfunction of the blood vessels in the brain and a deterioration in the outflow of blood.
- Stuttering, enuresis (urinary incontinence), tics (uncontrolled contractions of certain muscles). Perhaps they arise when the neural connections between nerve cells in the brain are disrupted.
- Excitation of parts of the nervous system. Excitation of the sympathetic part of the nervous system leads to dysfunction of the internal organs.
2. From the immune system. The changes are associated with an increase in the level of glucocorticoid hormones, which suppress the functioning of the immune system. Susceptibility to various infections increases.
- The production of antibodies and the activity of immune cells decreases. As a result, the susceptibility to viruses and bacteria increases. The likelihood of contracting viral or bacterial infections increases. The chance of self-infection also increases - the spread of bacteria from the foci of inflammation (inflamed maxillary sinuses, palatine tonsils) to other organs.
- The immune defense against the appearance of cancer cells decreases, and the risk of developing oncology increases.
3. From the endocrine system. Stress has a significant effect on the functioning of all hormonal glands. It can cause both an increase in synthesis and a sharp decrease in the production of hormones.
- Failure of the menstrual cycle. Severe stress can disrupt ovarian function, which is manifested by delay and soreness during menstruation. Cycle problems can continue until the situation is completely normalized.
- Decreased synthesis of testosterone, which is manifested by a decrease in potency.
- Slowdown in growth rates. Severe stress in a child can reduce the production of growth hormone and cause a delay in physical development.
- Decreased synthesis of triiodothyronine T3 with normal thyroxine T4 values. Accompanied by increased fatigue, muscle weakness, a decrease in temperature, swelling of the face and limbs.
- Decreased prolactin. In lactating women, prolonged stress can cause a decrease in the production of breast milk, up to a complete stop of lactation.
- Disruption of the pancreas, which is responsible for the synthesis of insulin, causes diabetes mellitus.
4. On the part of the cardiovascular system... Adrenaline and cortisol increase the heartbeat and constrict blood vessels, which has a number of negative consequences.
- Blood pressure rises, which increases the risk of hypertension.
- The load on the heart increases and the amount of blood pumped per minute triples. In combination with high blood pressure this increases the risk of heart attack and stroke.
- The heartbeat speeds up and the risk of heart rhythm disturbances (arrhythmia, tachycardia) increases.
- The risk of blood clots increases due to the increased number of platelets.
- The permeability of blood and lymph vessels increases, their tone decreases. Metabolic products and toxins accumulate in the intercellular space. The swelling of the tissues increases. Cells are deficient in oxygen and nutrients.
5. From the digestive system disruption of the autonomic nervous system causes spasms and impaired circulation in various parts of the gastrointestinal tract. This can have various manifestations:
- Feeling of a lump in the throat;
- Difficulty swallowing due to esophageal spasm
- Pain in the stomach and various parts of the intestines caused by spasm;
- Constipation or diarrhea associated with impaired peristalsis and the secretion of digestive enzymes;
- Development of peptic ulcer disease;
- Disruption of the digestive glands, which causes gastritis, biliary dyskinesia and other functional disorders of the digestive system.
6. From the musculoskeletal systems prolonged stress causes muscle spasm and poor blood circulation in bone and muscle tissue.
- Muscle spasm, mainly in the cervicothoracic spine. In combination with osteochondrosis, this can lead to compression of the roots of the spinal nerves - radiculopathy occurs. This condition is manifested by pain in the neck, limbs, chest. It can also cause pain in the area of internal organs - heart, liver.
- Bone fragility - caused by a decrease in calcium in the bone tissue.
- Decrease muscle mass- stress hormones increase the breakdown of muscle cells. During prolonged stress, the body uses them as a reserve source of amino acids.
7. From the side of the skin
- Acne. Stress increases sebum production. Blocked hair follicles become inflamed due to reduced immunity.
- Disturbances in the work of the nervous and immune systems provoke neurodermatitis and psoriasis.
Let us emphasize that short-term episodic stresses do not cause serious harm to health, since the changes caused by them are reversible. Diseases develop over time if a person continues to acutely experience a stressful situation.
What are the different ways to respond to stress?
Allocate three strategies for responding to stress:
Rabbit- passive reaction to a stressful situation. Stress makes it impossible to think rationally and take active action. A person hides from problems because he does not have the strength to cope with a traumatic situation.
a lion- stress forces you to use all the body's reserves for a short period of time. A person violently and emotionally reacts to a situation, making a "leap" to resolve it. This strategy has its drawbacks. Actions are often thoughtless and overly emotional. If the situation was not resolved quickly, then the forces are depleted.
Ox- a person rationally uses his mental and mental resources, so he can live and work for a long time, experiencing stress. This strategy is the most justified from the point of view of neurophysiology and the most productive.
Methods for dealing with stress
There are 4 main strategies for dealing with stress.
Raising awareness. In a difficult situation, it is important to reduce the level of uncertainty, for this it is important to have reliable information. Preliminary "living" the situation will eliminate the effect of surprise and allow you to act more efficiently. For example, before traveling to an unfamiliar city, think about what you will do, what you want to visit. Find out the addresses of hotels, attractions, restaurants, read reviews about them. This will help you worry less before traveling.
Comprehensive analysis of the situation, rationalization... Assess your strengths and resources. Consider the difficulties you will have to face. Prepare for them if possible. Shift your focus from outcome to action. For example, analyzing the collection of information about the company, preparing for the questions that are asked most often will help reduce the fear of an interview.
Reducing the significance of the stressful situation. Emotions make it difficult to consider the essence and find an obvious solution. Imagine how this situation is seen by outsiders, for whom this event is familiar and does not matter. Try to think about this event without emotion, deliberately reducing its significance. Imagine remembering a stressful situation in a month or a year.
Strengthening possible negative consequences. Imagine the worst case scenario. As a rule, people drive away this thought from themselves, which makes it intrusive, and it comes back again and again. Realize that the likelihood of disaster is extremely small, but even if it does happen, there is a way out.
Installation for the best... Remind yourself constantly that everything will be okay. Problems and worries cannot last forever. It is necessary to gather strength and do everything possible to bring a successful denouement closer.
It must be warned that during prolonged stress, the temptation to solve problems in an irrational way with the help of occult practices, religious sects, healers, etc. increases. This approach can lead to new, more complex problems. Therefore, if you cannot find a way out and a situation on your own, then it is advisable to contact a qualified specialist, psychologist, lawyer.
How can you help yourself during times of stress?
Various ways of self-regulation under stress help to calm down and minimize the influence of negative emotions.
Auto-training- a psychotherapeutic technique aimed at restoring balance lost as a result of stress. Autogenic training is based on muscle relaxation and self-hypnosis. These actions reduce the activity of the cerebral cortex and activate the parasympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system. This allows you to neutralize the effect of prolonged excitation of the sympathetic section. To perform the exercise, you need to sit in a comfortable position and consciously relax the muscles, especially the face and shoulder girdle. Then they begin to repeat the autogenous training formulas. For example: “I am calm. My nervous system calms down and gains strength. Problems don't bother me. They are perceived as touching the wind. I'm getting stronger every day. "
Muscle relaxation- Skeletal muscle relaxation technique. The technique is based on the statement that muscle tone and the nervous system are interrelated. Therefore, if you can relax the muscles, then the tension in the nervous system will decrease. With muscle relaxation, it is necessary to strongly strain the muscle, and then relax it as much as possible. Muscles work in a specific order:
- dominant hand from fingers to shoulder (right for right-handers, left for left-handers)
- non-dominant hand from fingers to shoulder
- back
- stomach
- dominant leg from hip to foot
- non-dominant leg from hip to foot
Breathing exercises... Breathing exercises to relieve stress can help you regain control of your emotions and your body, and reduce muscle tension and heart rate.
- Breathing in the stomach. While inhaling, slowly inflate the abdomen, then draw air into the middle and upper sections of the lungs. On exhalation - release air from chest, then pull in the stomach a little.
- Breath counting 12. Taking a breath, you need to slowly count from 1 to 4. Pause - to the account 5-8. Exhale to the count of 9-12. Thus, the breathing movements and the pause between them have the same duration.
Autorational therapy... It is based on postulates (principles) that help to change the attitude towards a stressful situation and reduce the severity of autonomic reactions. To reduce stress levels, a person is advised to work with their beliefs and thoughts using well-known cognitive formulas. For example:
- What does this situation teach me? What lesson can I learn?
- "Lord, give me strength, to change what is in my power, give peace of mind to come to terms with what I am unable to influence and wisdom to distinguish one from the other."
- It is necessary to live "here and now" or "Wash the cup, think about the cup."
- "Everything passes and it will pass" or "Life is like a zebra."
An effective addition to exercise will be the intake of drugs and supplements that stimulate cell nutrition - for example, the drug Mildronate: it optimizes intracellular metabolic processes, allowing you to maintain the nutrition of neurons at the required level even at times when oxygen is insufficient, for example, under stress. Protected from starvation, brain cells work much more efficiently, building neural connections is accelerated, which helps the body to cope with stress.
Psychotherapy for stress
Psychotherapy for stress has more than 800 methods. The most common are:
Rational psychotherapy. The psychotherapist teaches the patient to change the attitude towards exciting events, to change the wrong attitudes. The main impact is aimed at the logic and personal values of a person. The specialist helps to master the methods of autogenous training, self-hypnosis and other methods of self-help in case of stress.
Suggestive psychotherapy... The patient is instilled in the correct attitudes, the main impact is directed to the subconscious of a person. Suggestion can be carried out in a relaxed or hypnotic state, when the person is between wakefulness and sleep.
Psychoanalysis in stress... Aimed at extracting mental trauma from the subconscious that caused stress. Speaking of these situations helps to reduce their impact on the person.
Indications for psychotherapy in stress:
- a stressful condition disrupts the usual way of life, making it impossible to work, maintain contact with people;
- partial loss of control over one's own emotions and actions against the background of emotional experiences;
- the formation of personal characteristics - suspiciousness, anxiety, quarrelsomeness, self-centeredness;
- the inability of a person to independently find a way out of a stressful situation, to cope with emotions;
- deterioration of the somatic state against a background of stress, the development of psychosomatic diseases;
- signs of neurosis and depression;
- post-traumatic disorder.
Psychotherapy against stress is an effective method that helps you return to a fulfilling life, regardless of whether you managed to resolve the situation or have to live under its influence.
How to recover from stress?
After the stressful situation has been resolved, you need to restore physical and mental strength. The principles can help with this. healthy way life.
A change of scenery. A trip out of town, to a dacha in another city. New experiences and walks in the fresh air create new foci of excitement in the cerebral cortex, blocking the memory of the stress experienced.
Switching attention... The object can be books, films, performances. Positive emotions activate brain activity, encouraging activity. Thus, they prevent the development of depression.
Adequate sleep. Dedicate as much time as your body requires to sleep. To do this, you need to go to bed at 22 for several days, and do not get up on an alarm clock.
Balanced diet. The diet should contain meat, fish and seafood, cottage cheese and eggs - these products contain protein to strengthen the immune system. Fresh vegetables and fruits are important sources of vitamins and fiber. A reasonable amount of sweets (up to 50 grams per day) will help the brain restore energy resources. Nutrition should be complete, but not overly plentiful.
Regular physical activity... Gymnastics, yoga, stretching, Pilates, and other muscle stretching exercises are especially helpful in relieving stress-induced muscle spasms. They will also improve blood circulation, which has a positive effect on the state of the nervous system.
Communication... Connect with positive people who energize you good mood... Face-to-face meetings are preferable, but a phone call or online chat is also fine. If there is no such opportunity or desire, then find a place where you can be among people in a calm atmosphere - a cafe or a library reading room. Communicating with pets can also help restore lost balance.
Visiting the spa, baths, saunas... Such procedures help to relax muscles and relieve nervous tension. They can help release sad thoughts and tune in to a positive mood.
Massages, baths, sunbathing, swimming in ponds... These procedures have a calming and restorative effect, helping to restore lost strength. If desired, some procedures can be carried out at home, such as baths with sea salt or pine extract, self-massage or aromatherapy.
Techniques for increasing stress resistance
Stress tolerance Is a set personality traits allowing you to endure stress with the least harm to health. Stress tolerance may be an innate feature of the nervous system, but it can be developed.
Improving self-esteem. Dependence has been proven - the higher the level of self-esteem, the higher the stress resistance. Psychologists advise: form confident behavior, communicate, move, act like a confident person. Over time, behavior will develop into an inner self-confidence.
Meditation. Regular meditation several times a week for 10 minutes reduces the level of anxiety and the degree of reaction to stressful situations. It also reduces aggression levels, which promotes constructive communication in stressful situations.
A responsibility... When a person moves away from the position of the victim and takes responsibility for what is happening, he becomes less vulnerable to external influences.
Interest in change... It is natural for a person to be afraid of change, therefore, unexpectedness and new circumstances often provoke stress. It is important to create a mindset that will help you perceive change as new opportunity. Ask yourself: "what good can a new situation or life change bring me."
Striving for achievement... People who strive to achieve a goal are less likely to experience stress than those who try to avoid failure. Therefore, to increase resilience to stress, it is important to plan your life with short-term and global goals. Result orientation helps not to pay attention to minor troubles that arise on the way to the goal.
Time management... The correct allocation of time eliminates time pressure - one of the main stress factors. To deal with the lack of time, it is convenient to use the Eisenhower matrix. It is based on the division of all daily affairs into 4 categories: important and urgent, important non-urgent, not important urgent, not important and non-urgent.
Stress is an integral part of human life. They cannot be completely ruled out, but it is possible to reduce their impact on health. To do this, it is necessary to deliberately increase stress resistance and prevent prolonged stress, starting the fight against negative emotions in a timely manner.
41.3. Stressors and stress. Concepts. Views
The body's natural reaction to the action of various natural and pathogenic stressors (stressors) is stress.
The author of the doctrine of stress G. Selye wrote: “Stress is life, and life is stress. Life is practically impossible without stress. " At the same time, an indispensable condition for a free and independent life, according to Claude Bernard, is the constancy of the internal environment, and according to V. Kennon, the ability of the body to maintain this constancy (homeostasis, homeostasis, homeokinesis, that is, dynamic constancy). Given this outlook on life, stress is a state of temporarily disturbed homeostasis, and stressors are various factors that can cause a violation of homeostasis of the body. Stressors - These are any new and sufficiently informative stimuli that are different in intensity, duration and nature (quality), capable of causing varying degrees of severity of disturbance in the homeostasis of the body.
Stressors can be external (exogenous) and internal (endogenous, i.e. formed in the body itself). By nature, stressful stimuli can be very different: physical, chemical and biological, informational, psychogenic and emotional.
An important place among physical, chemical and biological stressors ( 1st group) are occupied by mechanical, chemical and infectious influences, lack or excess of food, water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, cations, anions, salts, PAS, etc., causing damage to cellular tissue structures and disruption of homeostasis at various levels of the body's organization. Their main characteristic is the absoluteness (intensity) of the impact. Thus, the stressfulness of these factors is determined by the quantitative characteristics and the degree of disturbance in the homeostasis of the organism.
Social (informational, psychogenic and emotional) stressors ( 2nd group) is characterized by both the absoluteness (quantitativeness) and the relativity (quality) of influences in the form of unfavorable for the body, especially conflict situations (at work, at home, in the family, etc.). Moreover, modern life not only increases this group of stressful influences on a person, but also often does not present opportunities to avoid the action of these stressors on the body, forcing it to adapt to them.
It should be noted, however, that the boundary between these two groups of stressful influences is rather arbitrary, because all sufficiently intense biological motivations of a person are socially mediated and always proceed with the activation of the emotional component.
Stress reactions arising in the body in response to the action of various stressors usually represent adaptive (useful) reactions for the whole organism, capable of restoring disturbed homeostasis and ensuring its normal vital activity.
At the primary action of the stressor arisesurgent (emergency ) adaptation , which allows the body to live under the conditions of this stressor. This is the positive significance of the stress reaction, although it is energetically wasteful and cannot provide an effective and stable adaptation of the body to the action of the stressor for a long time.
With repeated repeated effects on the body, both the same and different stressful factors of moderate intensity developstable long-term adaptation ... The body develops an increase in resistance to the action of both this and other stress factors.
With excessively strong and prolonged stressful influences adaptation becomes ineffective ... In the body, damage is formed and intensified, which can lead to its illness and even death.
According to Selye, stress is viewed as a syndrome caused by various damaging factors (1936, the journal Nature), or as a general nonspecific neurohormonal reaction of the body to any demand presented to it (1960), or as a condition manifested by a specific syndrome that includes all nonspecific changes in the biological system (1960, 1972).
In response to mild and moderate stress factors according to Selye, it develops eustress- stress without damage or stress with minor disturbances. According to L.Kh. Harkavi, E.B. Kvakina and M.A. Ukolova (1977), on weak, repetitive and increasing in strength impacts develop training reactions, and for medium-strength stimuli - activation reactions... These Scientific research Rostov scientists are recognized as a discovery. It is eustress that is most important for the life of the body. In this regard, one can even deduce the following dependence: absence of stress lack of adaptation lack of reserves disruption of vital functions death.
In the process of ontogenesis (starting from the prenatal period), the body is constantly exposed to a variety of stress factors. In response to stressful influences of weak and medium strength, duration and nature, certain reactions of training and activation are formed in the body.
The action of intense (strong or excessive), hopeless, uncertain and, especially, personally significant stimuli in the body develops distress- a pronounced adaptive reaction, which quickly turns into an inability of the body to adapt due to a decrease in adaptive reserves and suppression of anti-stress defense mechanisms. Distress is always accompanied by significant phenomena of breakage, damage, destruction, catabolism, dystrophy, ulceration, immunodeficiency and other dysregulatory disorders, leading to the development of various pathological processes, conditions, diseases and even death of the body.
Thus, stress can develop on the action of both damaging factors and many other stimuli that are not accompanied by damage phenomena (for example, physical or mental stress, temperature effects, humidity, dryness, windy weather, etc.).
At the same time, it can be argued that the stressfulness of the organism is determined not only by the intensity of the action of etiological factors and conditions, but also by the attitude of the individual towards them, his personality traits, upbringing and the ability to get out of various conflict situations.
Stress response can be short-term (acute stress) and long-term (chronic stress), systemic, general (systemic stress) and local, local (local stress).
Acute systemic stress characterized by the development of a general adaptation syndrome (OSA), which includes mainly adaptive nonspecific shifts in the whole organism. Local stress- the emergence of predominantly adaptive nonspecific changes in limited body part.
Both local and general stress are predominantly protective and adaptive, since they are able to increase the body's resistance to the action of various stressors.
Systemic stress (systemic stress response), accompanied by the development of a complex of behavioral and physiological changes in the body.
Behavioral changes in response to stressors, they are characterized by the development of orienting reactions, combat readiness (to attack) or readiness to run away. They include the excitation of many sensory systems, heightened attention, increased alertness, activation of mental activity, increased cognitive ability, activation of regulatory and executive systems, except for food and sexual and continue their genus and species).
Physiological changes under stress in the body, they include the mobilization of the functions of organs and systems responsible for adaptation, resistance, preservation of life and receiving more oxygen, nutrients and regulatory substances.
In general, stress has a positive adaptive effect, which allows the body to meet an unfavorable factor in a state of readiness, mobilization to fight it. As a nonspecific defense reaction, stress improves survival and helps to overcome negative influences. The stress response increases the body's resistance and trains its defense mechanisms. G. Selye wrote: “Stress is the aroma and taste of life and only those who do nothing can avoid it”.
However, stress can often lead to the development of various pathologies. Stress pathology is based on a violation of the body's ability to respond to stressors with an adequate protective and adaptive response. The likelihood of stress damage is determined not only by the intensity and duration of the adverse factor, but also depends on the state of the stress system (stress-implementing system) - its basal (initial) activity and reactivity, determined by the efficiency of the stress-limiting system.
The inadequacy of the stress response to the environmental requirements can occur in the following main forms: hypoergic (insufficient), hyperergic (excessive) and dysergic (perverted) forms of response.
In particular, in the case of a hypoergic response, the strength of the stressor exceeds the capabilities of the stress system of the body, and the development of adaptation is dominated by mobilization due to catabolic processes with pronounced breakdown of structures. A full-fledged systemic reaction of resistance does not occur due to the individual genetic insufficiency of one or another link of the stress-implementing system. This state of the organism was characterized by G. Selye "low adaptive strength." The entire set of shifts in the stress system (a sharp increase in hormones, a negative nitrogen balance, a decrease in body weight, hyperenzymemia, destruction of mitochondria and lysosomes of cells with the development of focal necrosis in adaptive systems) is not comparable with an increase in energy expenditure and forms the basis of the transition to illness, up to death of the body.
In the hyperergic variant, a strong or moderate stress response becomes prolonged due to the continued action of the stressor. This form of stress pathology is especially characteristic of a state of prolonged emotional stress - emotional stress. Given the numerous reasons for the formation of strong negative emotions, prerequisites are created for the summation of excitement and the appearance of a stagnant focus in the emotiogenic structures of the brain (hypothalamus, etc.), which create and maintain hyperactivation of the stress response. Great importance has an individual human experience that determines the significance of the stressor.
With chronicity of pathological processes the above-described adaptive mechanisms of stress response can turn into damaging ones. For example, an overload of Ca 2+ cells and an increase in free-radical forms of fatty acids lead to damage to cell membranes and disruption of cell structure and function. This is one of the mechanisms of stress-induced myocardial damage. Long-term mobilization of energy and plastic material with a redistributed nature of blood flow creates conditions for ischemic damage to "non-working" organs. This is one of the leading mechanisms for the development of stressful ulcers of the digestive tract. Prolonged stress leads to the development of stressful immunodeficiency (glucocorticoids have an immunosuppressive effect), which, in combination with the expression of protooncogenes, may be one of the mechanisms of the oncogenic effect of stress.
Diseases in the pathogenesis of which stress plays a decisive, decisive role G. Selye called “ diseases of adaptation ". Currently, they make up a large group of psychosomatic diseases - stomach ulcer and duodenal ulcer, arterial hypertension and atherosclerosis, immunodeficiency states, endocrine diseases, obesity, etc. Emotional stress is the leading cause of psychoses and neuroses.
Chronic systemic stress in contrast to acute, it includes mainly dysadaptive nonspecific changes in the body. It is, in particular, characterized by the development chronic fatigue syndrome.
The manifestations of the latter are:
physical and mental fatigue of the body;
frequent mood swings, prevailing feelings of fatigue, weakness, increased anxiety, irritability, absent-mindedness, intolerance and antipathy towards people around them;
decreased sex drive, impotence, dysmenorrhea, amenorrhea;
immunodeficiency (cellular, humoral, specific and nonspecific);
abdominal pain, diarrhea;
palpitations, arrhythmias, angina pectoris, myocardial dystrophy, heart attack;
impairment of vision, hearing, smell, taste;
headache;
development of neuroses and their progression;
development of psychoses and their progression, etc.
Thus, an urgent nonspecific adaptive response, such as stress, can turn into a cause for the development of damage to the body and become a mechanism for the development of many diseases.
It is very important to learn how to cope with your stresses on your own, while the key point is to determine as accurately as possible what kind of stressor you have encountered, and only then take certain measures.
· It is important to remember here that the stressor itself is only a pretext for the onset of stress, and we make it ourselves the cause of the neuropsychic experience. For example, a "three" for a student who has never opened a textbook for the entire semester is happiness, for a student who is used to working half-strength, a satisfactory grade is the norm, and for an excellent student, an accidentally received three can become a real tragedy. In other words, there is only one stressor, and the reaction to it varies from despair to delight, so it is very important to learn how to control your attitude to troubles and select adequate methods of dealing with them.
· Stressors that are beyond our control are prices, taxes, government, weather, the habits and temperaments of other people, and much more. You may be nervous and curse about a power outage or an inept driver who has created a traffic jam at an intersection, but apart from raising your blood pressure and increasing the concentration of adrenaline in your blood, you will not achieve anything.
· <<МЕТОДЫ>>
· Muscle relaxation
· Deep breathing
· Visualization
· Reframing
· Walks in the open air
· Dream
· Tasty food
· Sex
· Stressors We Can Directly Affect- these are our own unconstructive actions, inability to set life goals and determine priorities, inability to manage our time, as well as various difficulties in interpersonal interaction. As a rule, these stressors are in the present time or in the near future, and we, in principle, have a chance to influence the situation). If we have met with just such a stressor, then it is very important to determine what resource we are missing, and then take care of finding it.
· <<МЕТОДЫ>>
· Finding the right resources
· Setting adequate goals
· Social skills training (communication, etc.)
· Self-confidence training
· Time Management Training
· Analysis of causes and conclusions for the future
· Training of appropriate qualities
· Advice and help from loved ones
· Persistence b
· Stressors that cause stress just because of our interpretation- these are events and phenomena that we ourselves turn into problems. Most often, such an event is either in the past or in the future, and its occurrence is unlikely. This includes all kinds of anxiety for the future (from the obsessive thought “Have I turned off the iron?” To the fear of death), as well as worries about past events that we cannot change. Often, this type of stress arises in the case of an incorrect interpretation of current events, but in any case, the assessment of the situation is more influenced by the attitudes of the individual than the actual facts.
· <<МЕТОДЫ>>
· Reframing
· Positive thinking skills
· Changing inappropriate beliefs
· Neutralizing unwanted thoughts
· Developing optimistic views
· Humor
· Indifference
1.3. Causal classification of stressors 43.1. The degree of control of the stressor
As the experience of many psychotherapists, to whom people suffering from stress turn, the mistake of the latter is that they sometimes inappropriately transfer responsibility for their problems to external environmental factors. The essence of this position was well expressed by the British psychologist Xandria Williams, who has been conducting anti-stress seminars for many years.
“Currently, my business is not going very well: problems have accumulated. I have a lot of worries, very little money, too many responsibilities and sorely not enough time. Those whom I love do not love me, my friends have forgotten me, the boss is unbearable, there is only concern from children, the news is always bad, times are difficult. If the recession in the economy ended, the children would behave themselves decently, the boss quit, my marriage would be the same as in the beginning, and people would make fewer demands on me, then I would be happy. ”
Commenting on such views, K. Williams notes:
“People sincerely believe that if all these external circumstances changed, then people would be happy. They rarely realize that they can change themselves and thus change the situation for the better. There are many seemingly reasonable explanations for why life doesn’t turn out the way you would like it to. It's easier to think that the solution lies outside yourself, in the world around you. But it is not in your power to change external factors the way you like.
From the inability to change the factors of life, the erroneous conclusion is made that you are not able to improve the situation.
An alternative to this approach is to believe that you are to some extent responsible for your feelings. Of course, you are not able to influence the economic downturn in the country, but you are able to manage your
finances and change your attitude towards material well-being. You may not be able to change the behavior of children, but it is in your power to change your attitude towards them and your reaction to their behavior. You can improve your relationship with your boss at some point and then stick to that direction. "
In order to accurately choose a method of dealing with a particular stressor, it is important to identify its essence in time, and this requires the classification of stressors into several groups, each of which requires its own approach (Fig. 32).
The first way to separate stressors is to assess our control over the situation.
We can influence some events directly and to a significant extent. For example, if in the fall a person is worried about the cold in the apartment, and the heating season has not yet begun, then he has many ways to get away from this stress, from the simplest (dress warmly or turn on the electric heater) to more complex and expensive (go south before turning on the central heating).
Other events are more difficult to influence directly, but they can be affected indirectly. Such stressors, for example, include illness or relationships with friends. On the one hand, health is the result of taking care of it, as it depends on the nature of the diet, daily routine, physical education, etc., but, on the other hand, it also depends on the ecology and pathogens that are not subject to humans. The same is the case with interpersonal relationships. On the one hand, with your friendly and constructive actions you can create good relationship with people around you, but sometimes there are such conflicting personalities that cause stress, despite all efforts to avoid it.
Finally, there is another group of environmental stressors that are practically beyond the control of humans. The latter can only take the situation for granted and stop feeling stress about this. Fires, floods, thefts, injuries, illness or death of loved ones - all these stress factors are often beyond the control of a person, and all that remains for him is to accept the test sent with patience and courage.
Anger, irritability, anger and other negative emotions only interfere with adequately enduring the blows of fate, so you should learn to manage your feelings or translate them into a constructive channel. Gender identity, passport age (not pu
thief with biological age, which can be influenced!), weather conditions, government, the level of prices and pensions - much in Russia belongs to the third category of stressors. This also includes the habits and characters of other people.
Since no clear dividing line can be drawn between the above categories of stressors, they can be placed on a certain scale, ranging from those that we can certainly influence to those that are completely beyond our control (Fig. 32).
Under our control
Rice. 32. Degree of stressor control
It should be noted that a person, in principle, can, within certain limits, change the ratio of the part of the world under his control and the part independent of him. Take looks, for example. On the one hand, it is given to a person from birth, and he can only come to terms with it as an unchanging given. But, on the other hand, the successes of modern plastic surgery, endocrinology and other branches of medicine allow people to change the shape of the nose, transplant hair, change the size and shape of the breast, etc. Numerous cases of gender reassignment in recent years show how far people have come in their desire to modify their nature at will.
Often, justifying their laziness and saving self-esteem, people remove their responsibility for the problems that arise, transferring responsibility to external factors, which is especially characteristic of individuals with an external locus of control. For example, a bad teacher is to blame for a student's “deuce”, “narrow-minded” clients are to blame for low sales of a businessman, and the next day after the holiday, “left-handed” vodka, which was sold to a poor citizen by unscrupulous sellers, is to blame.
1.3.2. Localization of the stressor
Another way of separating stressors is based on the localization of the problem: it can be truly objective in nature or be the product of the individual's consciousness. So, green devils, which
rye torture an alcoholic during delirium tremens are a classic example of a subjective problem, and the orderly of a drug treatment clinic who took away a bottle of vodka from a given alcoholic is already an objective factor.
In the reality we are accustomed to, all stress factors can be built in accordance with a graded scale, at one end of which there will be invented problems, and at the other end there will be real problems, independent of human consciousness. Most often, real problems exist in a short period of the present time, and “virtual” ones - in the past or the future (Fig. 33).
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Rice. 33. Localization of stressor
Based on these two ways of separating stressors, a two-dimensional grid of coordinates can be generated that makes it easier to understand which stressor a person is facing and what can be done to reduce stress levels (Figure 34).
For example. Weather: “reality” by 8 points (a small subjective component remains: that it is frosty for an Italian, heat for a Yakut), “controllability” - about 2 points (we can only partially compensate for the vagaries of the weather with an umbrella or appropriate clothing). Therefore, it falls into the "Area of Wise Acceptance."
Poor housing conditions: "reality" by 7 points (although, in general, it is clear what this is about, but nevertheless, that for one there is a "decent apartment", for the other - a "wretched haven"), and "controllability" - by 8 points (you can earn or borrow money in order to improve living conditions). Accordingly, this stress falls into the “area of constructive action”.
Fear of the dark: “reality” - 1.5 points (in the case of phobias, the fear is caused by the darkness itself, and not the concrete that may lurk in it); "Controllability" is most often low (3 points), since people, as a rule, do not know how to control their own emotions, although it is quite possible to do this with the help of a qualified psychologist. Thus, this is the "area of subjective stress."
The stress of a businessman associated with fears about the fate of the concluded contract. “Reality” - 4 points (stress is caused by anxiety about possible, but unlikely events), “controllability” - 7 points (you can take protective measures to insure against failure). This situation can be attributed to the "area of self-regulation."
Fictional situations
Rice. 34. Localization of stresses on a two-dimensional grid of coordinates of the scale "Reality - Degree of control"
In the very general view the task is to try to move stressors to the right and up, that is, from the "area of stress" to the "area of constructive solutions".
4.3.3. Coping with different types of stressors
The method of overcoming it is selected according to the type of stressor.
For stressors of the first group (from the "Area of Wise Acceptance"), it is necessary, on the one hand, to divert consciousness from the traumatic situation, and on the other, to reconsider their attitude to unpleasant facts, to devalue them. Breathing techniques (deep breathing or breathing meditation), various muscle relaxation techniques, and visualization work well to achieve the first goal. To achieve the second goal, you can use the rational
nal psychotherapy and reframig (literally “frame replacement”), which consists in the ability to look at the situation from a different angle, to find the good where the familiar look is looking for only the bad.
For stressors in the toro and the group ("Areas of constructive action"), the most appropriate methods are aimed at improving behavioral skills: communication training, self-confidence training, time management training (time management). If stress is caused by frustration associated with the difficulty of achieving goals, then it makes sense to master the technique of choosing the right strategy and the technique of setting adequate goals.
For stressors of the third group ("Subjective stress area") the best option it may be overcoming the evaluative approach, mastering positive thinking skills, changing inappropriate beliefs, or blocking unwanted thoughts.
For stressors of the fourth group ("The area of self-regulation"), good results are obtained by the use of autogenous training, neurolinguistic programming, techniques of neuromuscular relaxation and the technology of biological feedback.
5. Factors affecting the development of stress resistance in learning activities.
6. The influence of pedagogical influence on the development of stress and stress resistance in educational activities.
7. The influence of interpersonal interaction on the development of stress and stress resistance in educational activities.
8. Influence of factors-stimuli on the development of stress and stress resistance in learning activities.
9. The influence of subjective factors on the development of stress and stress resistance in learning activities.
The mechanism of development of psychological stress can be demonstrated on the example of a student preparing to defend a thesis project. The severity of the signs of stress will depend on a number of factors: his expectations, motivation, attitudes, past experience, etc. The expected forecast of the development of events is modified in accordance with the already available information and attitudes, after which a final assessment of the situation takes place. If the consciousness (or subconsciousness) assesses the situation as dangerous, then stress develops. In parallel to this process, an emotional assessment of the event takes place. The initial triggering of an emotional reaction develops on a subconscious level, and then an emotional reaction is added to it, made on the basis of rational analysis.
V this example(waiting for the defense of the diploma) the developing psychological stress will be modified in the direction of wuxi
lazyvanie or decrease in intensity, depending on the following internal factors (table. 2).
Table 2. Subjective factors affecting stress levels
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The second group (subjective stress factors) includes two main types: interpersonal (communication) and nutritional stress.
The former can arise when communicating with higher officials, subordinates and colleagues at work (equal-status employees). A manager is quite often a source of stress for his subordinate, who may experience persistent psychological stress for a variety of reasons: due to excessive control on the part of the manager, due to his excessive demands, underestimation of his work, lack of clear instructions and instructions, rude or disdainful attitude towards themselves on the part of the boss, etc. In turn, subordinates become sources of stress for their bosses because of their passivity, excessive initiative, incompetence, theft, laziness, etc.
Individuals who do not work in the organization, but who are in contact with it, can also be a source of stress for the employees of the organization. An example is the stress of salespeople who have to communicate with a large number of buyers, or stress
accountants submitting a quarterly or annual report to the tax office. At the same time, for the tax inspector, the stressor will be the accountant, who in relation to him is an example of an external stressor.
Intrapersonal stresses, in turn, can be subdivided into professional, personal stresses and stresses associated with poor somatic health of workers. Occupational stressors stem from a lack of knowledge, skills, and experience (beginner stress), as well as a feeling of inadequacy between work and remuneration. The causes of personal stress are non-specific and are found in workers of a wide variety of processions. Most often it is low self-esteem, self-doubt, fear of failure, low motivation, lack of confidence in one's future, etc. The source of industrial stress can also be the state of human health. So, chronic diseases can lead to stress, since they require increased efforts to compensate for them and reduce the efficiency of the employee, which can affect his authority and social status. Acute illnesses also serve as a source of anxiety both through somatopsychic connections and indirectly, “turning off” the employee for a while from the labor process (which entails financial losses and the need to re-adapt to production).
5.2.1. Study stress
Exam stress is one of the first places among the causes of mental stress in middle and, especially, high school students. Very often the exam becomes a psycho-traumatic factor, which is taken into account even in clinical psychiatry when determining the nature of psychogenia and the classification of neuroses. In recent years, convincing evidence has been obtained that examination stress has a negative effect on the nervous, cardiovascular and immune systems of students.
In another study, it was shown that exam stress, especially when combined with caffeine intake, can subsequently lead to a persistent increase in blood pressure in students. According to Russian authors, during the examination session, students and schoolchildren show pronounced disorders of the autonomic regulation of the cardiovascular system. Long-term and very significant emotional stress can lead to the activation of the sympathetic or parasympathetic divisions of the autonomic nervous system, as well as to the development of transient processes, accompanied by impaired autonomic homeostasis and increased lability of the cardiovascular system's responses to emotional stress.
The unfavorable factors of the preparation period for exams include:
Intense mental activity; + increased static load; + extreme limitation of physical activity; + sleep disturbance;
Emotional experiences associated with a possible change in the social status of students.
All this leads to overstrain of the autonomic nervous system, which regulates the normal life of the body. Numerous studies show that during the exam, the heart rate increases significantly, blood pressure, muscle and psycho-emotional tension increase. After passing the exam, physiological indicators do not immediately return to normal and it takes several days for the blood pressure parameters to return to their original values. Thus, according to the majority of researchers, examination stress poses a serious threat to the health of students and schoolchildren, and the mass character of this phenomenon, which annually covers hundreds of thousands of students throughout our country, gives particular urgency to the problem.
At the same time, it should be noted that examination stress is not always harmful in nature, acquiring the properties of "distress". In certain situations, psychological stress can have a stimulating value, helping the student to mobilize all his knowledge and personal reserves to solve the educational tasks assigned to him. Therefore, we are talking about optimizing (correcting) the level of examination stress, i.e., reducing it in overly anxious students with an overly labile psyche and, possibly, slightly increasing it in inert, unmotivated students. Correction of the level of examination stress can be achieved by different means - with the help of pharmacological drugs, methods of mental self-regulation, optimization of the work and rest regime, with the help of a biofeedback system, etc. In this case, the school psychologist faces the problem of predicting the stress reactions of one or another student for the exam procedure. Its solution is impossible without a detailed study of both physiological and psychological components of examination stress, with the obligatory consideration of individual personality characteristics.
Based on the stages described in the concept of stress development by G. Selye, three "classical" stages can be distinguished, reflecting the process of psychological stress associated with passing exams.
The first stage (the stage of mobilization or anxiety) is associated with the situation of uncertainty in which the student is before the start of the exam. Psychological stress during this period is accompanied by excessive mobilization of all the body's resources, increased heart rate, and general restructuring of metabolism.
At the second stage (adaptation), which occurs after receiving the ticket and the beginning of preparation for the response, the body manages, due to the previous mobilization, to successfully cope with harmful influences... At the same time, the restructuring of the autonomic regulation of the body leads to an increased delivery of oxygen and glucose to the brain, however, this level of functioning of the body is energetically excessive and is accompanied by an intensive waste of vital reserves.
If the body for a certain time fails to adapt to an extreme factor, and its resources are depleted (for example, a ticket is very difficult or there is a conflict with the examiner), then the third stage begins - exhaustion.
In principle, these three phases of stress development can be traced over a longer time interval - throughout the session, where the anxiety phase develops during the test week preceding the exams, the second phase (adaptation) usually occurs between the second and third examinations, and the third phase ( exhaustion) may develop towards the end of the session. It is important to note that the intensity of the developing adaptive reaction in a person, as a rule, depends not so much on the characteristics of the stressor as on the personal significance of the acting factor. Therefore, the same exam can lead to various psychophysiological and somatic manifestations in different students. This side of stress reactions to sociogenic factors emphasizes the need for a personal approach to this problem. For some students, the examination procedure can have a significant traumatic effect on the psyche, up to the appearance of neurotic disorders. It is known that short-term emotional stress, even of significant strength, is rather quickly compensated by the neurohumoral mechanisms of the body, while a relatively small but long-term stress effect can lead to disruption of normal mental functions of the brain and cause irreversible autonomic disturbances.
The duration of the training sessions lasts two to three weeks, which, under certain conditions, is sufficient for the occurrence of examination stress syndrome, which includes sleep disturbances, increased anxiety, a persistent increase in blood pressure and other indicators. In a conditioned-reflex way, all these negative phenomena can be associated with the learning process itself, causing further fear of exams, unwillingness to learn, disbelief in own strength... Therefore, some specialists in higher education generally question the need for exams, suggesting replacing them with either a programmed form of teaching, or an attestation system with the determination of the final grade of a student based on the results of intermediate results.
If we turn to examination stress as the most pronounced form of educational stress, it can be noted that waiting for the exam and the associated psychological stress can manifest itself in students in the form different forms mental activity: in the form of fear of the examiner or a negative assessment or in the form of a more diffuse, poorly substantiated uncertain anxiety about the outcome of the future exam, and both of these states are accompanied by rather pronounced vegetative manifestations. In special cases, these phenomena can develop into an anxious expectation neurosis, especially in students, for whom, already in the premorbid period, traits of anxious suspiciousness and emotional lability were characteristic. However, much more often students do not have neuroses, but acute neurotic reactions, which have a similar picture, but proceed in a more limited time interval (hours - days - weeks). Clinically, on the exam, these neurotic reactions can manifest themselves:
Difficulty performing a habitual function or form of activity (speech, reading, writing, etc.);
In a feeling of anxious expectation of failure, which becomes more intense and is accompanied by complete inhibition of the corresponding form of activity or its violation. Traditionally, anxiety is referred to as negative phenomena, since it manifests itself in the form of anxiety, tension, fear of the upcoming exams, suspiciousness, etc. ...
It has also been shown that high performance indicators are demonstrated by students who have both a high level of ability (determined by the "B" scale of the Cattell test) and a high
the level of personal anxiety.
Sometimes even an insignificant failure or illness that caused a transient change in some function is the reason for the emergence of a neurosis of expectation. An inadequate anxiety develops, the expectation of a repetition of failure; the more attentively and biasedly the patient watches himself, the more this expectation really complicates the impaired function - in this way the so-called "self-fulfilling negative predictions" are realized, when the expectation of any misfortune naturally increases the likelihood of its realization. A person suffering from anxiety neurosis creates in his consciousness a negative “model of the world”, for the construction of which he selects from the whole variety of environmental signals only those that correspond to his attitude to see everything only “in black”. In the case of exam stress, a student inclined to this type of response mentally goes over in his mind all the negative factors, according to which he can be expected to fail on the exam: a strict teacher, missed lectures, a bad ticket, etc. causing him to fear the future, and he does not even realize that he himself is the author of this "hopeless" and "terrible" future. Thus, the "probability" of an unfavorable event turns in the consciousness of a person into a real "possibility" of its occurrence.
10. Subjective causes of psychological stress.
4.1. Subjective causes of psychological stress
There are two groups of subjective causes of stress. The first group is associated with a relatively constant component of a person's personality, while the second group of stress causes is dynamic in nature. In both cases, stress can be caused by a mismatch between expected events and reality, although human behavior programs can be long-term or short-term, rigid or dynamic (Fig. 23).
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4.1.1. Inconsistency of genetic programs with modern conditions
Many of our stresses and problems will be clearer if we remember the evolution of man and his historical path from the wilderness to the bosom of civilization. Scientists have now firmly established that most responses to biological and physical impact are reflexive and genetically programmed at the DNA level. The problem is that nature has prepared a person for life in conditions of increased physical exertion, periodic starvation and temperature changes, while a modern person lives in conditions of physical inactivity, overeating and temperature comfort.
It can be noted that, by their nature, people are quite resistant to natural factors (hunger, pain, physical exertion), but they have an increased sensitivity to social factors, for which innate protection has not yet been developed. Let us recall the well-known story of AP Chekhov, "The Death of an Official," in which a minor official dies of fear of a general, whom he accidentally sneezed at. This may be hyperbole, but, according to European doctors, tens of millions of people die on earth from sociogenic stresses and the psychosomatic diseases caused by them every year. Someone dies from a stroke after an outbreak of anger at their loved ones, someone from an exacerbation of an ulcer caused by hard work, someone is killed by cancer that has developed after many months of experience and prolonged depression. Our ancestors did not have antibiotics
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covs and electric heaters, but their bodies possessed powerful natural defense mechanisms against stress. Our contemporaries, it would seem, have all the power of today's science, but thousands die from heart attacks, strokes and cancer (Fig. 24).
4.1.2. The stress of implementing negative parenting programs
Some of the behavioral programs are embedded in the child's head by his parents, teachers or other persons, while his consciousness is still distinguished by increased suggestibility. These programs are called "unconscious attitudes", "life principles" or "parental scenarios", and they can play a very significant role in the future life of the individual. These settings can be quite useful for little child, but as he grows up and changes in living conditions, they begin to complicate life, making behavior inappropriate and causing stress.
For example, the parents forbade the girl to go to the forest, frightening her with a “gray wolf”, “bum” or a sex maniac, and as a result, fear was formed that prevented an adult woman from getting pleasure from communicating with nature.
Another example: young people raised in the 70s or 80s received a political attitude that condemned doing business. “Buying cheap and selling dear is not good! This is speculation for which you can go to jail, ”the young were told. This was a completely adequate setting of the era of socialism, but when perestroika began, it began to interfere with doing business, since the resale of goods for the purpose of enrichment was subconsciously perceived as something shameful and bad.
4.1.3. Cognitive dissonance stress and psychological defense mechanisms
As we have already found out above, the source of many stresses is a person's emotions, which provoke him to spontaneous reactions in spite of the voice of reason, trying to calmly and rationally evaluate a particular situation. However, it also happens that the mind begins to play along with the feelings, finding “pseudological” explanations to justify the illogical actions of a person. As the environment is developed, a certain “virtual” picture of the surrounding world is formed in the consciousness of each person, which describes and explains everything that happens to himself and other people, as well as to the rest of nature. If reality comes into conflict with our idea of what is possible and what should be, then stress arises, and quite strong. This phenomenon was first described by the psychologist Leon Festinger, who introduced the concept of cognitive dissonance - a contradiction between two realities - the objective reality of the world and virtual reality of our consciousness, describing the world. If some event cannot be described in the system of existing human ideas about the world, then he rarely changes the model of the world. More often than not, a person either creates additional structures that reinforce the model, or ignores reality.
For example, in general terms, we know the principle of the telephone, and we are not surprised that you can hear another person hundreds of kilometers away. At the same time, it seems incomprehensible and illogical to us the sudden death of a native who was "cursed" by a local sorcerer for breaking some stupid taboo. And the native's tribesmen, on the contrary, will calmly accept death "from the evil eye", but will be shocked by a mobile phone that does not fit into their picture of the world.
When life begins to destroy our myths with which we are used to living, the psyche builds barriers against reality, which are called forms of psychological defense. In particular, quite often using such forms as "denial", "rationalization", "repression", a person ensures the safety of consciousness from stress, leaving untouched his (false) picture of the world. R.M. Granovskaya describes the essence of psychological defense as follows:
« Psychological protection manifests itself in a person's tendency to maintain the usual opinion about himself, to reduce dissonance, rejecting or distorting information, regarded as unfavorable and destroying the initial ideas about himself and others. "
Denial means that stressful information is either ignored by consciousness or devalued. For example, sociologists let people read articles about the dangers of smoking, and then asked them if the press coverage convinced them that smoking caused lung cancer. A positive answer was given by 54% of non-smokers and only 28% of smokers. In other words, most smokers were reluctant to admit that they were contributing to fatal dangerous disease.
Rationalization is a pseudo-rational explanation by a person of his actions in the event that the recognition of the real reasons threatens the loss of self-esteem or destroys the existing picture of the world. An example is Aesop's fable "The Fox and the Grapes", in which the fox, unable to reach the high hanging grapes, consoles himself with the fact that they are green and tasteless. Rationalization is one way to avoid the stress of worrying about past events that we cannot change. Only we should remember that the rationality and validity of the explanations of our actions are often only visible, but in fact they are the focuses of the subconscious, which protects our self-esteem and opinion about ourselves.
Displacement is the most universal way getting rid of internal conflict by displacing unpleasant information or an unacceptable motive into the subconscious. So, a person who was scolded by his boss or who was cheated on by his wife seems to “forget” these facts, but they do not disappear forever, but only plunge into the depths of the subconscious, sometimes emerging from there in the form of painful dreams or unconscious reservations.
All these phenomena show that special mechanisms of protection against psychological stress are not able to eliminate the real causes of the conflict, but only smooth it out or postpone the moment of its resolution, which in itself cannot relieve a person of stress. However, they can be avoided if we remember that reality is always primary in comparison with the “map” in the mind of a person, which reflects this reality. “The map is not a territory yet,” NLP adherents argue, and most of our problems stem from a misunderstanding of this thesis.
4.1.4. Stress associated with inappropriate attitudes and beliefs of the individual
Optimism and pessimism
One of the fairly general attitudes of consciousness is optimism and pessimism - that is, the tendency to see good or bad moments in the phenomena of the surrounding world. In fact, there are quite a few pronounced optimists or pessimists, and most of the people are located near a certain midpoint, moving away from it according to the laws of normal distribution. A significant distance from it corresponds to personality accentuations, which, in fact, are designated by people as "optimism" and "pessimism", and extreme
the meanings already belong to the field of psychopathology (manic-depressive syndrome).
Both of these strategies have their advantages and disadvantages, and each individual subconsciously or unconsciously chooses his own type of attitude to life, based on his own experience, the examples of parents and the characteristics of higher nervous activity. The benefit of pessimism is that this attitude makes a person prepare for an unfavorable outcome of events, and also allows him to more calmly take the blows of fate, but this is where his positive meaning ends. Experience shows that positive thinking (looking for the predominantly good sides in life) brings a lot more benefits to a person, significantly reducing the total amount of stress in his life.
At Harvard University in the USA, 2,280 men were under observation for 32 years. Based on the results of numerous psychological and medical studies, the conclusion was made: "Pessimists suffered from serious disorders of the cardiovascular system 4.5 times more than those who show an optimistic attitude to life problems."
An optimistic attitude helps to get out of the most hopeless situations. After all, if a person believes that there is a way out, then he is looking for it, which means that he has more chances to find it. If a person accepts the pessimist's attitude and recognizes the situation as a dead end, then the closed doors seem to him to be locked, and he does not even try to open them 1. As an illustration, you can recall the famous fable
A. Krylova "Casket", in which the master, accustomed to complicating everything, initially decided that the casket was locked with an ingenious lock, while "the casket simply opened!"
Political and religious attitudes
Quite often, a person's ideological attitudes - political or religious - are a source of stress. Such stresses take on a massive character in the era of socio-economic changes (which include various revolutions, reformation and "perestroika"), however, even in relatively stable periods of society's existence, these stresses are encountered quite often. If we turn to the recent past of our country, we can recall what a powerful ideological stress experienced by millions of Soviet people who believed in the ideals of socialism, while the laws of "wild capitalism" were already in force in the country. The decrease in the average life expectancy of the population noted in the last decade of the 20th century was not least caused by the exacerbation of various psychosomatic diseases in the elderly. This is especially true for those whose political attitudes were especially strong and rigid.
Religion, especially of a monotheistic one, has even stronger ideological attitudes. Any such religion (be it Judaism, Christianity or Islam) presupposes the existence of a single god and a set of certain sacred books, the content of which cannot be questioned because of their divine origin. Therefore, any information that contradicts religious dogmas is, by definition, stressful in nature.
Attitudes - ldetamodels of reality
These attitudes include subconscious programs that "force" a person to adhere to certain behavioral strategies even in those cases when they clearly lead him to failure, stress and disappointment. These programs can have very different origins (introduced into the minds of parents in early childhood, teachers at school, received by the person himself in the case of inappropriate generalization personal experience etc.), but in this case it is not so important. The main thing is that each person has such erroneous attitudes to one degree or another, and one should try to recognize them and be able to neutralize them (Table 5).
Continuation
Table 5. (End)
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4.1.5. The impossibility of realizing an urgent need
Currently, the most famous and at the same time simple scheme describing the organization of human needs is the "pyramid" Abraham Maslow... According to this scheme, as the "lower" biological needs are realized, a person tries to satisfy social and then spiritual needs, and, according to A. Maslow, the highest human need is his desire for self-realization of his unique essence.
Self-realization Respect and prestige Belonging and love Security and stability Physiological needs
Rice. 25. Abraham Maslow's pyramid of needs
In accordance with the "Maslow pyramid" (Fig. 25), let us single out the main stresses corresponding to its structure.
Physiological. Stress caused by hunger, thirst, lack of sleep, inadequate temperature, mental and physical fatigue, an excessively fast pace of life or its abrupt change.
Security. Stress associated with fears and anxieties: fear of losing your job, fear of failing in an exam, fear of death, fear of adverse changes in your personal life, fear for the health of loved ones, etc.
Affiliation. Stress from moral or physical loneliness, stress from the loss of loved ones or their illness. The stress of unrequited love.
Respect. Stress from the collapse of a career, from the inability to realize their ambitions, stress from the loss of respect from society.
Self-realization. The stress of not being able to fulfill your vocation, the stress of doing something you don't like. Often a person refuses what he loves because his parents insist on it, or under the influence of public opinion, which is always conservative.
As K. Williams writes, “a significant share of stress is caused by the fear of hearing ridicule or condemnation of other people about yourself
and about your actions. Decide who you really are and what you want to become. Set a clear goal for yourself and develop a life program. Remember the main thing all the time. Act accordingly and a lot of your stress will disappear. "
The inability to fulfill the existing need leads to frustration, and numerous clinical observations show that frustrations can lead to various psychosomatic diseases - arterial hypertension, stomach ulcers, nonspecific colitis, bronchial asthma, etc. Frustration can manifest itself in the following forms:
1) aggression and antisocial behavior;
2) isolation and feeling of resentment towards the world around us;
3) devaluation of needs with the help of psychological defense mechanisms;
4) analysis of possible causes of their stress and correction of their actions.
The first and second paths lead to increased stress, the third and fourth - reduce stress to a minimum.
Studying the relationship between stress and human needs, one cannot fail to mention the informational hypothesis of the emergence of emotions, developed by P.V. Simonov. He came up with a formula that connects together needs, feelings and information, the essence of which can be expressed as follows: emotions are a consequence of the mismatch between our expectations and reality. Moreover, the magnitude of the emotion is proportional to the strength of the need that prevails at the moment.
E = / - Px (I n-I s),
where E is the strength and quality of emotion; / - functional relations, including a number of objective and subjective features; P is the value of the actual need; And n - information about the means necessary to meet the need; And s - information about the means that exist at the moment; (I n - And s) - an estimate of the likelihood of meeting this need.
For example, an athlete who intends to take second place in important competitions on the basis of certain information (his sports results, the results of rivals, his psychophysiological state, etc.) will experience stress and negative emotions if his forecast does not come true and he will take fourth place ... If his expectations are fulfilled exactly and the athlete takes second place, then emotions will be minimal, and stress will be absent. Stress and expressed emotions will also be absent if the rank of the competition is low and the victory at them cannot fulfill the needs of the athlete. If this athlete takes first place (for example, due to the absence of the main rival), then he will also experience stress and strong emotions, but already with a positive sign.
4.1.6. The stress of poor communication
There are many reasons for stressful communication. The most important of them are shown in Fig. 26.
 |
One of the most important sources of communicative stress is conflicts, that is, the interaction of two or more people, whose needs in a given situation seem incompatible to the participants in the interaction. Physiological studies have shown that protracted conflicts can lead to serious disruptions in the functioning of the body. In particular, K. V. Sudakov noted the important role of the so-called "conflict situations" in which a person cannot satisfy vital biological or social needs... On the basis of both his own research and literature data, the author concluded that the consequence of conflict situations are emotional stresses, which are the leading cause of the development of cerebrovisceral disorders.
Conflict situations differ in a number of features that increase the intensity of the stresses arising on their basis: + transfer of responsibility for the conflict to another person and minimizing one's own responsibility for what is happening; + the emergence and further strengthening of negative emotions in relation to another person, and negative feelings persist outside the situational conflict situation; + stubborn unwillingness to change your point of view and accept the point of view of your opponent.
Recently, many researchers have been paying attention to the negative consequences of stress caused by industrial or domestic conflicts. The main causes of serious health problems are: + emotional stress; + interpersonal conflicts in the family; + tense industrial relations, etc.
If a person finds himself in social conditions, when his position seems unpromising to him, then anxiety reaction, a feeling of fear, neurosis, etc. can develop. Participants in the conflict can reduce the intensity of stress by applying certain strategies of behavior: withdrawal, compromise, rivalry, concession or cooperation ... The main features of these strategies for resolving conflict situations are shown in "Table 6.
| Table 6. Application of different strategies for resolving conflict situations |
| Mode of action | The essence of the strategy | When it makes sense to apply |
| acceptable) | * If your opponent is clearly stronger than you and is only set for a tough competitive position. | |
| Avoidance (you move out of the stress zone) | Leaving the conflict. Changing the topic of communication. Deliberately underestimating the essence of the conflict | 4 If you see that the conflict leads to the growth of negative feelings and it takes time to let the emotions cool down and return to the problem in a calmer state. Ф If the core of the conflict is not very important to you. * If you do not see real chances to constructively resolve the conflict in a different way |
| Compromise (you minimize stress) | Search for mutual concessions, translation of the conflict into the conclusion of a deal, equal participants | * If you have equal rights and opportunities with your opponent. * If there is a risk of seriously spoiling the relationship, overly firmly insisting on your own. 4 If you need to get at least some benefits and you have something to offer in return |
| Collaboration (you replace distress with eustress) | Striving to work out an agreement that meets the needs of both parties. Emphasis not on losses, but on gains by each party in the dispute resolution process | * You are seeking a complete resolution of the conflict and the final "closure" of the dispute. Both opponents are tuned in to constructive interaction. * Solving the problem is equally important for both parties |
4.1.6. Stress from inadequate implementation of conditioned reflexes
Other programs are developed in the process of life - these are the so-called conditioned reflexes, discovered by I.P. Pavlov. While mastering the habitat, our brain learns to recognize signals that indicate the onset of events important for the body. So, the clink of dishes before dinner causes the secretion of gastric juice, and the sight of the door to the waiting room of a stern boss makes the heart beat faster. These can be useful reactions that help us prepare in advance for future events (the mere sight of the stadium prepares its body for participation in the competition), but sometimes conditioned reflexes prevent people from living.
For example, some people are unable to use elevators or ride the subway because of their pathological conditioned reflexes, which have become claustrophobic or agoraphobic, and these examples show that not all learning is good for the body.
In one of his experiments, I.P. Pavlov developed a conditioned reflex in a dog between lighting a light bulb and feeding. Immediately after turning on the light, the dog was given a piece of meat and salivated in response. At the same time, the hungry dog experienced positive emotions associated with food intake. At the same time, the same dog developed a different reflex: after turning on the metronome, its paw was irritated with an electric current. The dog, of course, did not like it, so when she heard the sound of the metronome, she whined pitifully and tried to pull her paw away. Then the scientist changed the reinforcement of these reflexes. That is, after the light bulb came on, the dog was expecting a pshtsi, and it was shocked. When the sound of the metronome sounded, she shrank in anticipation of the inevitable punishment, and she was fed. This "collision" of opposite conditioned reflexes led to a breakdown in the animal's nervous activity and inhibition of many previously developed conditioned reflexes. Thus, for the first time in the world, an experimental neurosis was obtained. After I.P. Pavlov returned the usual stimuli to their places, the animal's psyche could not return to its normal state for a long time. Revolutions, social upheavals, betrayals and betrayals of loved ones are examples of such
"Collisions" of stimuli.
4.1.8. Inability to handle time (stress and time)
Inadequate time boundaries as a cause of stress
Quite often, the cause of stress is excessively blurred time boundaries of the psychological state. This happens if a person attaches too much emotional importance to the past or the future.
In the first case, the source of mental stress and negative emotions is the obsessive recollection of some traumatic episode from the past. The list of events that can be a stressor is very extensive - from such serious events as participation in hostilities or rape, to seemingly harmless episodes like an unsuccessful public speech or an unpleasant conversation with a loved one. If a person cannot consciously limit the boundaries of his temporary existence, he will again and again "replay" a negative episode in his mind and repeatedly experience psychological stress.
Another option is associated with anxiety and worry about future events that have not yet happened. In this case, a person also repeatedly constructs in his brain an image of the future (and undesirable), filling it with details and "reviving" to such an extent that he begins to believe more and more in the unfavorable prognosis that he creates in his imagination. Such stress is also dangerous because it often programs future failures. At the same time, the person's fears are actually confirmed, which negatively affects the self-esteem and confidence of the individual.
To overcome such stresses, it is useful to remember that at every moment of our life, like grains of sand in an hourglass, we are between two Eternities: the one that has already passed and the one that has not yet arrived. And while we lingered for a moment between the Past, in which nothing can be changed, and the Future, which cannot yet be changed, we, because of the brevity of this situation, are safe. In this infinitely small and at the same time infinitely large moment of the Transition we have, firstly, the opportunity to relax and take a breath, and secondly, the chance to change our life for the better. Therefore, you need to learn to appreciate the precious moment of the present - the only reality of human life.
Time ineffective stress and overcoming it
The famous American psychologist A. Elkin says that you should learn to manage your time, otherwise time will control you [GO]. He identifies the following signs that a person is experiencing stress precisely from ineffective use of time:
Feeling in a constant rush;
Lack of time for favorite things and communication with family; + constant delays; + lack of a clear time plan; + inability to delegate authority to other people; + inability to refuse people who take up your time; + recurring feeling of a waste of time.
As noted by A. Elkin, the presence of at least half of these signs indicates that a constant lack of time can lead to serious stress.
Another well-known specialist in management psychology, one of the founders of time management, Peter Drucker notes that a person will experience stress and anxiety about the use of time if he does not have the skills of effective time management, which includes four stages:
1) analysis of own time;
2) planning the distribution of time;
3) reduction of non-productive costs;
4) enlargement of time.
Before you start solving the current tasks of the day, feeling stress from the fact that there is not enough time for everything, you should start by analyzing the distribution of your time and only then move on to planning it. Next, you need to try to reduce unproductive time costs. The last stage should be used in order to bring your "personal" time into the largest and most interconnected blocks. P. Drucker draws attention to the fact that the big mistake of managers who are in constant time trouble is trying to do a big business in small portions. In fact, the efficiency of such work is extremely low, because large cases require solid blocks of time (just as it is impossible to create a solid sculpture from pieces of marble).
Thus, the correct use of time allows you not only to get the job done faster and better, but also to avoid the stress associated with a sense of wasted time.
The stress of not knowing how to enjoy your time
Introduction
Factors causing stress
2Reflection of stressors in activity
2.1 Physiological research method
Conclusion
Bibliography
Introduction
Stress - This term is used to refer to a wide range of conditions that arise in response to a variety of extreme influences.
For the first time this concept was introduced by the psychologist G. Selye to designate the non-specific reaction of the body in response to any adverse effect.
Later, it began to be used in psychology to describe the states of an individual in extreme conditions at the physiological, psychological and behavioral levels.
Depending on the type of influences and the nature of their influences, stress in psychology is classified into several types: physiological stress and psychological stress. Moreover, the latter is divided into: informational stress and emotional stress.
Information stress arises in situations of information overload, when the subject does not cope with any task, does not have time to make decisions at the required pace - with high responsibility for the decisions made and their consequences.
Emotional stress manifests itself in situations of threat, danger, resentment ... At the same time, changes occur in emotional states(tantrums often occur), in speech and motor behavior ("loses the gift of speech", "stood rooted to the spot").
However, stress can also have a positive, mobilizing effect on activity - distress.
In this case, a person is able to solve many problems related to security in a moment, find non-standard approaches. At such moments, there is a surge of strength and energy from nowhere. And although a long stay in such a state is extremely undesirable and dangerous for the body, but for many it is a great opportunity to be in good shape.
Factors causing stress
1The concept and essence of stress, types of stressors
If you believe Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia, then stress (from the English. Stress - "pressure, tension") - the state of the individual, which arises as a response to various extreme types of external and internal environment, which unbalance the physical or psychological functions of a person.
The author of the doctrine of stress G. Selye wrote: “Stress is life, and life is stress. Life is practically impossible without stress. " At the same time, an indispensable condition for a free and independent life, according to Claude Bernard, is the constancy of the internal environment, and according to V. Kennon, the ability of the body to maintain this constancy (homeostasis, homeostasis, homeokinesis, that is, dynamic constancy). Given this view of life, stress is a state of temporarily disturbed homeostasis, and stressors are various factors that can cause a violation of the body's homeostasis. Stressors are any new, sufficiently informative, especially personally significant, and different in intensity, duration and nature (quality) stimuli that can cause disturbances in the body's homeostasis of varying severity.
So let's define that stress is a nonspecific (general) reaction of the body to an impact (physical or psychological) that violates its homeostasis, as well as the corresponding state of the nervous system of the body (or the body as a whole).
The factors that trigger the stress response are called stressors. They can be physical (high and low temperature, poison, excessive physical activity, etc.) and psychological (conflict situation in the family, death of a loved one, resentment, information overload, etc.).
A stressor (from the English stress - pressure, pressure, pressure, oppression, load, tension; synonyms: stress factor, stress situation) is a factor that causes a state of stress. A nonspecific irritant or stress-causing effect.
Stressors can be external (exogenous) and internal (endogenous, i.e. formed in the body itself). By nature, stressful stimuli can be very different: physical, chemical, biological, informational, psychogenic and emotiogenic.
An important place among physical, chemical and biological stressors (group 1) is occupied by mechanical, chemical and infectious effects, lack or excess of food, water, oxygen, carbon dioxide, cations, anions, salts, PAS and other substances that cause damage to cellular tissue structures and disruption of homeostasis at various levels of the body's organization. Their main characteristic is the absoluteness (intensity) of the impact. Thus, the stressfulness of these factors is determined by the quantitative characteristics and the degree of disturbance in the homeostasis of the organism.
Social (informational, psychogenic and emotiogenic) stressors (group 2) are characterized by both the absoluteness (quantity) and the relativity (quality) of influences in the form of adverse for the body, especially conflict (at work, at home, in the family, etc.) situations. Moreover, modern life not only increases this group of stressful influences on a person, but also often does not present opportunities to avoid the action of these stressors on the body, forcing it to adapt to them.
Stressors can be conditionally divided into:
)controlled (depend on us);
)uncontrollable (beyond our control);
)those that are not inherently stressors but induce a stress response as a result of our interpretation of the factor as a stressor.
The key to coping adequately with stress is the ability to distinguish between stressors that we can control and stressors that we have no control over. The most common manageable stressors are interpersonal in nature. People's behavior is often determined by factors of health and ill health. Behavior stereotypes, unconscious actions, inability to control your emotions, lack of knowledge of norms interpersonal relationships Failure to manage conflict can be a source of stress.
A person in a state of stress is capable of incredible (compared to a calm state) actions: at the moment of stress, a large amount of adrenaline is released into the bloodstream, all the reserves of the body are mobilized and a person's capabilities grow sharply, but only for a certain time.
The duration of this period and the consequences for the body are different for each person. In general, it is believed that small and short-term stress can even be beneficial for the performance of work and harmless to humans, while long-term and significant stress can lead to various undesirable consequences. According to research by physiologists, if stress lasts a month, a year and has already become the cause of any disease, it is almost impossible to return the physiological functions of the body to normal.
The most common forms of stressors are:
)physiological (excessive pain, loud noise, exposure to extreme temperatures, taking certain medications such as caffeine or amphetamines);
)psychological (information overload, competition, threat social status, self-esteem, immediate environment, etc.).
Types of stressors:
)fear;
)hunger;
)thirst;
)pain;
)fatigue;
)insulation.
The factors causing stress are the impact on a person from the external and internal environment, which leads him to a state of stress. The main factors affecting the occurrence of human stress in the organization: organizational, intraorganizational, personal.
Organizational factors are determined by the position of the individual in the organization, in particular, the lack of work that corresponds to his qualifications; poor relationships with employees; lack of growth prospects, the presence of competition in the workplace, etc.
Consider examples of organizational factors:
)insufficient workload of the employee, for which the employee is not able to fully demonstrate his qualifications;
A situation that is quite common in domestic organizations that have switched to a reduced mode of operation or are forced to reduce the amount of work through non-payment by customers;
)insufficiently good understanding by the employee of his role and place in the production process, the team, such a situation is usually caused by the lack of clearly defined rights and responsibilities of a specialist, the ambiguity of the task, the lack of growth prospects;
)the need to simultaneously perform various tasks that are not related to each other, but urgent, this reason is often found among middle managers in an organization in the absence of a delineation of functions between departments and management levels;
)non-participation of employees in the management of the organization, decision-making on the further development of the organization's activities during the period of a sharp change in the direction of its activity, this situation is typical for a significant number of large domestic enterprises where the personnel management system is not established and ordinary employees are cut off from the decision-making process.
Many Western firms have entire programs for attracting personnel to the affairs of the firm and developing strategic decisions, especially when it is necessary to increase production or improve the quality of products manufactured.
Changing the tasks of an employee after moving to work in private structures, the employee's awareness of his main task - to increase the profits of the owner of this company.
Intra-organizational factors cause stress as a result of such circumstances:
)lack of work or long-term search for it;
)competition in the labor market;
)the crisis state of the economy of the country and the region in particular;
)family difficulties.
Personal factors that cause a state of stress begin to act under the influence of unfulfilled personality needs, emotional instability, low or high self-esteem, etc.
There are many types of stress.
Chronic stress implies the presence of constant (or such that exists for a long time) significant physical and moral stress on a person (long-term job search, constant success, clarification of relationships), as a result of which his neuropsychological or physiological state is extremely stressful.
Acute stress is a person's condition after an event or phenomenon, as a result of which he lost his psychological balance (conflict with the boss, quarrels with loved ones).
Physiological stress arises from physical overload of the body and exposure to harmful environmental factors (high or low temperature in the working room, strong odors, insufficient illumination, increased noise level).
Psychological stress is a consequence of a violation of the psychological stability of a person from a number of reasons: offended pride, work inappropriate.
In addition, such stress can be the result of psychological overload of the person: performing too much work and responsibility for the quality of complex and lengthy work. A variant of psychological stress is emotional stress, which arises in situations of threat, danger, and resentment.
Information stress occurs in situations of information overload or from an information vacuum.
In addition, today the so-called "managerial type of stress" is distinguished, it is caused by many factors associated with the activities of managers and their relationships with people in conditions of complex market relations.
When the environment and market conditions change dynamically, the competition intensifies, and therefore it is necessary to make prompt and adequate management decisions to ensure the sustainable development of the enterprise and its competitiveness.
For a legal assessment of a person's behavior in a state of stress, it should be borne in mind that in a state of stress, a person's consciousness may not narrow - a person may be able to maximally mobilize his physical and mental capabilities to overcome extreme effects in reasonable ways.
Human behavior under stress is not relegated entirely to an unconscious level. His actions to eliminate the stressor, the choice of tools and methods of action, speech means preserve social conditioning. Narrowing of consciousness with affect and stress does not mean its complete breakdown.
2 Reflection of stressors in activity
psychological stress
It is very important to learn how to cope with your stresses on your own, while the key point is to determine as accurately as possible what kind of stressor you have encountered, and only then take certain measures.
It is important to remember here that the stressor itself is only a pretext for the onset of stress, and we make it ourselves the cause of neuropsychic feelings. For example, a "three" for a student who has never opened a textbook for the entire semester is happiness, for a student who is accustomed to working half-heartedly, a satisfactory mark is the norm, and for an excellent student, an accidentally received three can be a real tragedy. In other words, there is only one stressor, and the reaction to it varies from despair to delight, so it is very important to learn how to control your attitude to troubles and select adequate methods of dealing with them.
Stressors beyond our control are prices, taxes, government, weather, other people's habits and temperaments, and more. You may be nervous and curse about a power outage or an inept driver who has created a traffic jam at an intersection, but apart from raising your blood pressure and increasing the concentration of adrenaline in your blood, you will not achieve anything.
Participation in conflict situations is often accompanied by an increase in the stressful state of a person. Conflict is a complex relationship between opponents, marked by strong emotional experiences. Participation in a conflict involves the expenditure of emotions, nerves, forces, and this can lead to one-time or chronic stress. At the same time, inadequate perception of the situation, which occurs through the stressful state of one of its participants, quite often leads to conflicts.
For example: the head of a department on his way to work stood for a long time in a "traffic jam" on the road, being late for an important meeting in the organization. As a result, the employees of the unit - his subordinates - were reprimanded for sins that did not exist. (There was a transfer of negative emotions from an external situation, beyond the control of a person, to an internal one).
Stress, just like conflict, is closely related to a person's needs, the inability to fulfill them, and this leads to a multiple increase in action psychological mechanisms protection, physiological capabilities.
In general, stress is a fairly common and common phenomenon. Minor stress is inevitable and harmless, but excessive stress creates problems for both the individual and the organization in performing the assigned tasks. Psychologists believe that a person suffers more and more often from the wrongs inflicted on him, a sense of his own insecurity, uncertainty about the future.
Example. The subordinate does not agree with the opinion of the boss, he insists and makes him do as he sees fit. Although the question is extremely important for the subordinate, he is not able to convince the boss, and it is still impossible to leave for another job, then the employee concedes, obeys.
As a result, the subordinate is in a state of intrapersonal conflict, which results in his stressful state. If the subordinate is confident in his righteousness, insists on it, then a conflict with the boss will certainly arise, the result of which may be the dismissal of this employee from the organization.
Conflict situations are often accompanied by strong feelings that turn into stress. Skillful stress management allows you to prevent conflicts, and if they arise - to competently resolve them.
Small and short-term stress can only slightly affect a person, and long-term and (or) significant unbalance his physiological and psychological functions, negatively affects health, performance, efficiency of work and relationships in the team (in this case, it is called distress).
Stressors that we can directly influence are our own non-constructive actions, inability to set life goals and determine priorities, inability to manage our time, as well as various difficulties in interpersonal interaction. As a rule, these stressors are in the present time or in the near future, and we, in principle, have a chance to influence the situation). If we have met with just such a stressor, then it is very important to determine what resource we are missing, and then take care of finding it.
Stressors that cause stress only because of our interpretation are events and phenomena that we ourselves turn into problems. Most often, such an event is either in the past or in the future, and its occurrence is unlikely. This includes all kinds of anxiety for the future (from the obsessive thought “Have I turned off the iron?” To the fear of death), as well as worries about past events that we cannot change. Often, this type of stress arises in the case of an incorrect interpretation of current events, but in any case, the assessment of the situation is more influenced by the attitudes of the individual than the actual facts.
V Everyday life we call various events that affect us negatively as stress. But do we know how much stress there is in the life of a modern person?
So, what are the stresses:
)information stress. In our modern society the amount of information falling on us has long passed all reasonable limits. Television, Internet - these media have made available such volumes of information that it causes congestion;
)information aggression. The same media, as a rule, speculate in pursuit of a rating, pouring out on us huge volumes of information that awakens negative emotions (fear, anxiety, etc.). This is understandable - it’s easier for them to chain us to screens. And we are buying;
)stress of brain processing of information. There is a lot of information, the brain is actively working, trying to "sort it out". In this case, mainly the left hemisphere is involved. At the same time, the right one is idle, and the interhemispheric balance is disturbed. There is a deficiency in natural trance.
Because of this deficit, the so-called Frankl Trinity (a famous Austrian psychotherapist) arises:
)depression;
)aggression;
)addiction;
Motor stress. It is believed that a person normally has to walk 10 thousand steps every day. Let's think how much we go through ?? The answer is clear. But when walking, the active points of the foot are stimulated, blood flow throughout the body increases, and the brain is kept in good shape from the working muscles!
Stress of speed and distance. We are so arranged that it is unnatural for us to move at a speed greater than we can develop ourselves. And the distances for us are physiological only those that we could walk on foot. This also includes the reaction to the change of time zones, which is called desynchronosis. All physiological rhythms fail!
The stress of a metropolitan resident. Here is what is meant. The whole environment of a big city is, in general, unnatural for a person. Artificial lighting forcibly stretches the length of the day - people used to go to bed with sunset. Staying at a height of more than the third floor is also stressful - after all, a person did not live in the wild at such heights. The man watched, mainly into the distance, as birds fly and herds graze, and now - constant visual stress. There is constant noise in the city, which was not the case in the natural environment of human habitation.
Emotional stress. We have to admit that in modern society it's a gift that people live crowded. But warm, emotional contact is not enough. Communication between people is often superficial, formal.
The stress of constant change. Everything is changing rapidly in the present world. What previously seemed stable and unshakable can collapse in an instant! There is no certainty about the future, especially with the growing financial and economic crises. This condition is one of the biggest stressors for a person.
Work stress is an important issue in today's workplace. About a third of employees are exposed to it. A quarter of workers believe that their work is a stressful factor in their lives. Three-quarters of workers believe that earlier (that is, a generation ago) work was not so exhausting. Many also recognize that stress is the main cause of employee turnover.
Working conditions are the cause of work stress. Whether the working environment or the personal characteristics of the worker has the greatest impact is controversial. Different answers to this question give rise to different ways of solving the problem. If we consider that personal characteristics are more important, then adaptability and communication skills come to the fore. It is assumed that these skills will help the employee to adapt even to not very good working conditions. This view underscores the importance of strategies to help the worker adjust to changing working conditions.
You can still enumerate all sorts of sources of stress for a long time - I have named the main ones. It is important to understand that all these influences do not pass without leaving a trace for people. Stress tends to build up.
Stress is a response to the changes taking place in our life. Our body reacts physically, emotionally and mentally to any change in the status quo. Moreover, changes do not have to be negative; positive changes can also be quite stressful. At times, the thought of an impending change can be stressful.
It is important to learn how to remain calm and self-possessed. The first person who needs anti-stress help is yourself!
2.Methodological aspects of the study of stress
1 Physiological research method
Stress is one of the mechanisms of adaptation in the human body in response to stressful effects of any nature, including psychological. Stress criteria are objective indicators of the nervous, endocrine and visceral systems (cardiovascular, skin, etc.)
According to V.D. Nebylitsina, the stability of the optimal working parameters of the subject depends on factors of a personal nature:
) the state of the internal organs and, first of all, the cardiovascular system, visual acuity and hearing, autonomic reaction;
) dynamics of the properties of the nervous system: strength and balance;
) proper psychological factors - characterological characteristics of a person.
Physiological research methods allow us to consider stress as an oscillation of homeostatic processes with the obligatory consideration of the social conditioning of biological adaptation. Measurements should be taken at the same time, after sleeping before workload, because it is necessary to register trace processes in the change of functions.
The health coefficient (KZ), or the index of functional changes (IFI) is designed to assess the level of functioning of the circulatory system and determine the adaptive potential of the latter. It was proposed by A.P. Berseneva and R.M.Baevsky, the authors propose to consider changes in the heart rate in connection with the adaptive response of the whole organism as a manifestation of various stages of the general adaptation syndrome.
IFI (KZ) is determined in conventional units, points. To calculate the IFI (CP), data on the pulse rate (HR), blood pressure (BP - systolic, BP - diastolic), height (P), body weight (MT) and age (B) are required.
Calculated by formula 1.
Formula 1
Based on the obtained value of the Baevsky index, each subject can be attributed to one of four groups according to the degree of adaptation: satisfactory adaptation (IFI less than 2.59), stress of adaptation mechanisms (IFI from 2.6 to 3.09), unsatisfactory adaptation (IFI 3 , 1 to 3.49) and adaptation failure (IFI more than 3.5). The higher the IFI value, the higher the likelihood of stress adaptation mechanisms.
Let's calculate personal data according to the formula: PE - 76 beats / min., ABP - 110 mm. Hg, BPd - 80 mm Hg, R - 172m, MT - 85 kg, B - 24 years old.
IFI = 0.011 * 76 + 0.014 * 110 + 0.008 * 80 + 0.014 * 24 + 0.009 * 85-0.009 * 172-0.27
IFI = 2.229, hence satisfactory adaptation of the organism.
2 Scale of stressful life events
The scale of stressful life events was proposed by T. Holmes and R. Reich in 1967. Despite the empirical nature of the methodology, its undoubted advantages are: 1) taking into account the total level of psychosocial stress, that is, the global mass of events and the degree of their severity, and not individual events, as it was before; 2) taking into account everyday, frequent factors, and not catastrophes and other out of the ordinary events; 3) the study of a person in everyday life, and not in the laboratory 4) an idea of a change in the social situation this person, and not the social situation as such 5) the study of the impact of events closely spaced in time, and not child psychogenias.
Using the scale below (Figure 1), try to recall all the events that have happened over the past year and calculate total number Points "earned" by you. You may have other events that occurred to you that were not included in this scale (for example, flood, home renovation, robbery). How many points would you assign to these events and add them to the points obtained on the scale.
In accordance with the studies carried out, it was found that 150 points means 50% of the likelihood of a somatic illness due to stress, at 300 points it increases to 90%.
Figure 1 - Scale of stressful life events
Let's make a scale of stressful life events using a personal example.
Let us present the result in table 1.
Table 1 - Scale of stressful life events by Zaikova O.P.
Life eventsEvent value in pointsDeath of a close family member100A new family member56Changes in financial situation42Changes in job18Starting at an educational institution23Changing a place of residence9Credit for buying things13Vacation11New Year12
In total, we get the result - 289 points. We conclude that the likelihood of developing a somatic illness as a result of stress is very high.
Conclusion
In everyday life, a person constantly finds himself in different situations. Among their many, those that we designate as stressful situations stand out.
All living organisms capable of interacting with the environment are equally susceptible to stress. Stress is a stressed state of the body, i.e. a nonspecific response of the body to a demand presented to it (stressful situation). The stress response is aimed at adapting the body to the changing conditions of the internal and external environment. The adaptive resources of the body are different for different people and, accordingly, the ability to restore them also differs individually. The influence of the same stressor on different people differ in the severity of stress in terms of the strength of the effect on the adaptive capabilities of the individual. Under the influence of stress, the human body experiences stressful tension, and at the same time stress is not just nervous tension, but also a nervous overload and strong emotional arousal.
The consequences of stress include emotional reactions, for example, inappropriate, overreacting to minor problems, excessive irritability and intolerance, as well as overeating or lack of appetite, increased use of alcohol, tobacco or drugs, feelings of constant anxiety, inability to relax. Stress is multifaceted in its manifestations. It plays an important role in the occurrence of not only mental disorders of a person or a number of diseases of internal organs. It is known that stress can provoke almost any disease. As a result, there is a growing need to learn more about stress and how to prevent and cope with it.
Bibliography
1.Personal page of the practical psychologist E.P. Koval. - Electronic data. - Access mode: # "justify">. Grechikhin A.A. Sociology and Psychology of Reading: tutorial for universities / A.A. Grechikhin - M: MGUP, 2007 - 383 p.
.The Free Encyclopedia Wikipedia - Electronic Data. - Access mode: # "justify">. Panchenko L.L. Diagnostics of stress: a tutorial / L.L. Panchenko - Vladivostok: Mor. state un-t, 2005 - 35p.
.Chikszentmihayi M. Sociology and psychology of management / M. Chikszentmihayi, Elena Perova. - M: Alpina non-fiction, 2011 - 555s.
.The page of the practicing psychotherapist Eremeev - Electron. Dan. - Access mode: # "justify">. BrainTools.ru - Electron. Dan. - Access mode :: //www.braintools.ru/article/9548
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SA Razumov (1976) divided the stressors involved in organizing the emotional-stress response in humans into four groups: 1) stressors of vigorous activity: a) extreme stressors (combat actions); b) production stressors (associated with great responsibility, time pressure); c) stressors of psychosocial motivation (exams);
2) stressors of assessments (performance assessment): a) "start" - stressors and stressors of memory (upcoming competition, recollection of grief, expectation of a threat); b) victories and defeats (victory, love, defeat, death of a loved one); c) spectacles;
3) stressors of activity mismatch: a) separation (conflicts in the family, at school, threat or unexpected news); b) psychosocial and physiological limitations (sensory deprivation, muscle deprivation, diseases that limit communication and activity, parental discomfort, hunger);
4) physical and natural stressors: muscular loads, surgical interventions, trauma, darkness, strong sound, rolling, heat, earthquake.
Short-term stressors are everyday troubles (can be of small or medium negative significance) that take minutes to adapt.
Prolonged stressors include critical life events, traumatic events that require a qualitative structural reorganization in the structure of a person's personality and are accompanied not only by short-term emotions, but by persistent affective reactions; take longer to adapt than everyday stressors; Chronic stressors act for a long time in time: as a result of constantly repeated troubles to the family, overload at work, or after serious, subjectively significant events (divorce, for example).
Stress reactions are:
Typical emotional stress reactions are reactions of two types: sthenic (anger, anger) or asthenic (fear, sadness, resentment). Among behavioral reactions, two extreme poles of behavior can also be distinguished: the flight response or the struggle response.
The fight or flight response is sometimes called stress reactivity. This reaction consists in an increase in muscle tension, an increase in heart rate, an increase in blood pressure and nervous excitement, etc. (we will consider the physiology of stress in more detail in the next lecture). This reaction prepares us for quick action. At the same time, our body produces substances that are not used in the future. Then it affects our health.
The longer we are in an altered physiological state (duration) and the more this change differs from the norm (degree), the more likely it is that such stress reactivity will turn into a disease for us. Of these two metrics - duration and degree - duration is the most important.
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