Understanding Stress: Sources, Responses, and Coping Mechanisms
Stress refers to a physiological or psychological response that the body gives to an external situation. This process involves physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral reactions motivated by a significant imbalance between environmental demands and perceived ability to respond. Today, stress is considered “a transaction between the person and the environment,” or as a situation resulting from the interpretation of events and personal opinion.
Stressful Situation Features
- Novelty: Lack of or change in information.
- Unpredictability: Uncertainty.
- Ambiguity: Temporal factors.
Sources of Personal Stress
Personal characteristics and situations that cause conflicts of personality and styles of thought. These sources usually come from life events and patterns of interaction between different members of the family.
Social Sources of Stress
These are related to the contexts in which a person interacts. In these settings, the workplace is probably the most significant among adults, and school among children and adolescents.
Stress Responses
Stress responses occur mainly at the following levels:
- Physiological
- Emotional
- Cognitive
- Behavioral
Coping Mechanisms
Coping refers to actions taken to confront an enemy, a danger, or a responsibility. It can be defined as the set of responses to a stressful situation, executed to reduce the aversive qualities of that situation.
Coping Resources
These are the internal or external elements and/or skills that a person has to cope with the demands of a potentially stressful event or situation.
- Physical/biological resources
- Psychological or psychosocial resources
- Cultural resources
- Social resources
Coping Responses
Cognitive or behavioral strategies used to cope with stress. These can be grouped into:
- Focus (problem or emotion)
- Method used (approach or avoidance)
- Process (cognitive or behavioral)
Stress-Related Health and Disease
The relationship between stress and disease can be analyzed from two viewpoints:
- Stress as a causative agent or an adjuvant in the genesis and development of the disease.
- The disease as an event that produces stress in the person.
Burnout Syndrome
Burnout syndrome is characterized by three fundamental dimensions:
- Emotional exhaustion: The professional feels spent and depleted.
- Depersonalization: Experiencing feelings of emotional hardness, apathy, detachment, loss of ability to connect, and insensitivity toward clients and their needs.
- Lack of personal accomplishment: Negative feelings of inadequacy, ineffectiveness, and inability to develop work.
Effects of Labor Stress
These effects represent the short-to-medium-term impact and can be placed into three broad categories:
- Physical effects
- Psychological and behavioral effects
- Professional effects
Consequences of Labor Stress
Although labor stress can be parallel to the effects or a result of those, these consequences generally relate to the chronic or long-term impact and may affect:
- The professional
- Family and/or friends
- The users
- The profession
- The institution
Strategies for Prevention and Control
In addition to the strategies that the instinct of conservation develops to eliminate or alleviate stress, there are systematic and planned interventions that act on the prevention or treatment of the syndrome when it occurs.