Psychology Of Stress: Types, Stages, Methods Of Struggle

The psychology of stress - why is it important to know as much as possible about it? Everything is simple. The pace of life has recently become higher, the loads - both physical and psychological - are constantly growing. Not surprisingly, being in a permanent state of stress has become almost the norm for many people.

The concept of stress

Stress is a non-specific response of the body to any change in conditions that requires adaptation. In simple words, some changes in the external environment require us to adapt. It got colder, warmer outside, we moved to a different climate, met other people - all this requires physical and mental effort from us. In general, this phenomenon can be described as stress. If adaptation occurs, then there is stress.

The concept of stress is translated as load, tension, pressure, a state of increased tension, and this is so. But not every state of tension is stressful. Only when you need to turn on the body's reserves for adaptation.

Stress is our internal adaptation mechanism of the organism and the way of its survival.

If a person stepped on the glass with his heel, a stress response will begin in his body. That is, stress is the mechanism of adaptation itself. The body begins to make some changes in order to adapt to this situation. He notices that there is glass in the heel, thickens the blood so that it begins to clot and prevent blood loss.

Stress is anything that disturbs our homeostatic balance. Homeostasis is the body's self-regulating system, which allows us to maintain constancy within our systems. Usually here we are talking about maintaining body temperature, blood glucose levels, approximately the same blood pressure and various other processes inside the body.

When stress upsets our balance in some way, the body uses neurotransmitters, hormones, and the nervous system to adapt to it and restore the balance back.

If in the case of animals, stress is only a violation of the homeostatic balance that already exists at a given moment in time, i.e. this is a factor that affects right now, then everything is more difficult with a person. When a wild dog Dingo grabs a jerboa by the spine, this is a stressful factor for him. In the case of a person, everything is different, it can also be the thought that the homeostatic balance can be disturbed, that is, this is not stress itself, not the stress factor itself, but thoughts about what can happen.

Psychological theories of stress

For the first time in 1915, the American psychophysiologist Walter Bradford Cannon spoke of the state now associated with the concept of stress, and called this reaction "fight or flight" ("fight or flight"). And he even described this phenomenon in the book "Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Anger." It can be considered the beginning of the European, American approach to this topic in 1915.

However, our compatriots found themselves in the same topic in the same years, and in the military medical academy in St. Petersburg, Professor Korenchevsky in 1913 already described the adaptation syndrome and said that it was not a pathological, but a physiological response to cell damage, tissues, damage to some external environment.

The Austrian doctor Hans Selye graduated from the Prague Medical University. After moving to Canada, he studied the effect of the secrets of hormonal glands, which he received by crushing organs isolated from animals and injected into mice (then not yet hormones, because they were not isolated in their pure form).

And those mice that were injected with substances the day before and those that were not injected gave the same reaction in the form of ulceration of the gastric mucosa. The next day, some of the test subjects even died. And that's when he first started talking about the General Adaptation Syndrome. Actually, this was the beginning of the history of stress.

Selye made very interesting conclusions that what really matters is the intensity of the need for restructuring or adaptation. And the irritant itself and the changes that led to the formation of this adaptation syndrome practically do not matter. The second conclusion that Selye made is that adaptive energy is available in a limited amount given from birth.

Later, the American researcher Goldstone in 1952 entered into a debate with Selye and began to talk about the fact that adaptive energy can be produced regardless of how much of it was given to the body at birth. It, of course, decreases with old age, but may be retained in the form of adaptation capital.

Gradually, this theme began to develop from the concept of the organismic and cellular, with which Selye began, into the concept of the social. From one experiment on mice, entire areas in biology, medicine, sociology, and even politics related to the topic of stress have developed.

4 types of stress conditions

Usually in classical textbooks they talk about three types of stress, but sometimes biological stressors are also distinguished separately.

1. Psychological

   We are constantly in psychological and sociological stress factors, especially people living in megacities. Psychological stress is information overload, which is now ubiquitous in children from a very early age, competition, threats to social status, threats to self-esteem, and so on.

2. Physiological

   The ancient, understandable mechanisms at which our defenses are directed are physiological stressors. This is excessive pain, loud noise, exposure to extreme conditions, temperatures, stress. By the way, physical loads are just the same conditions of constant stress for athletes.

3. Chemical stressor

   This is taking medications, coffee, alcohol, smoking, drugs, ecology, heavy metal poisoning.

4. biological stressor

   These are bacteria, viruses, pathogens. The constant exposure to some kind of slow, latent inflammation associated with a pathogenic object in our system, whether it be the intestines or the ENT organs, is a constant slow stressors that cause extreme damage to the body.

Psychological causes of stress

Stress can have a variety of causes: biological, chemical, physical and, of course, psychological. The last one is not easy. The psychological causes of stress are so diverse that it is simply not possible to list them all. Each person is unique: his way of thinking, habitual patterns of behavior together give a unique picture of personality and a set of possible reactions to stressful situations. There are many such reactions.

In psychology, eight causes of stress are distinguished, which are the most significant for a person and most strongly affect him.

• Death. When a loved one leaves, few people can keep their presence of mind and continue to live a normal life. This is the most powerful psychological cause of stress. The expectation of death (for example, a sick relative) is also the cause of powerful emotional stress.

• Finance. For a huge number of people, material difficulties are the main cause of stress.

• Lack of self-expression. Most people strive to express their own "I", but not everyone can do it.

• Lack of control over the situation. This can apply to both your own life and the lives of loved ones. The inability to control everything puts pressure on some people and plunges them into a state of stress.

• Illness and insecurity. Fear of getting sick, experiencing pain, fear of death - all this leads to a loss of peace of mind, a person ceases to feel safe.

• Job. For a huge number of people, work is a powerful source of stress. Difficult responsibilities, management pressure, difficult clients - all this keeps you in suspense, makes you constantly think, analyze, make plans.

• Friends and relatives. Communication with loved ones, relatives, friends is always emotionally colored, which means it can provoke stressful situations.

• A family. If not everything is going smoothly in relations with relatives, a person is unlikely to feel comfortable.

Any event can serve as a starting point for stress. Both women and men can become hostages of their psychological difficulties. It is important to remember that the primary task in a situation of constant emotional stress is to find out the cause of the uncomfortable state. Eliminating it or looking at the situation from a different angle, a person begins to feel much better. Without it, life can turn into a constant struggle with windmills.

3 stages (phases) of stress

1. Stage of anxiety

   It develops six hours after exposure to a stressor and lasts 24-48 hours, that is, up to two days. It is characterized by two phases: the shock phase and the anti-shock phase. With a significant strength of the stressor and anxiety, this can end in death for the body.

   The shock phase is characterized by shock changes: hyponatremia, hypotension, increased membrane permeability, blood thickening, leukocytosis, negative nitrogen balance, that is, the manifestation of catabolic processes, tissue destruction processes, hypoglycemia, muscle hypotension, and so on. All this happens against the background of activation of the production of glucocorticoids, mineralocorticoids and catecholamines - our internal biogenic amines.

   The countershock phase is characterized by countershock changes to smooth it all out. That is, the state is reversed: hypernatremia, hypertension, activation of the sympathetic nervous system, sympathetic-adrinal nervous system, and what all nutritionists are most afraid of - activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and everything that follows from this. In this phase, along with motor reactions, auxiliary, visceral auxiliary systems of respiration are activated, which are activated through the central nervous system.

2. The stage of resistance or adaptation of the body

   Here we can conditionally distinguish two stages. At the transitional stage, the general excitability of the central nervous system decreases, a functional system for managing adaptation to new conditions is formed, that is, our entire body begins to adapt to these extraordinary factors. The intensity of hormonal shifts decreases, the hormones of the adrenal cortex increase their action - they are responsible for adaptation. The adaptive reactions of the body gradually switch to a very deep, tissue level, and the nonspecific resistance of the body to harmful influences increases.

   The second stage is resistance. It is characterized by some normalization of the activity of the endocrine glands, the thymic-lymphatic system. The body must adapt, because it cannot constantly live in the "alarm" mode. At the feedback level, some moments are turned off, and, let's say, the body stops responding so actively to stressors.

   The main features of this stage are the mobilization of energy resources and the body's immune system, an increase in the synthesis of structural and enzymatic proteins.

3. Exhaustion stage

   This is a stage to which in no case should a person reach. Here the reaction of all endocrine glands occurs, it is again close to the reactions of the first stage: glucocorticoids predominate over mineralocorticoids, the function of the thyroid gland, sex glands decreases, the thymic-lymphatic system, the connective tissue system, and immunity are inhibited - that is, it really leads to the complete destruction of the body .

   In fact, the onset of the exhaustion stage is not the only outcome of stress. In the event that the stress effect is moderate in strength and duration, the resistance stage can last a very long time. The body is adapted to new factors, it is quite viable.

   What does it mean? The body somehow lives. We understand that the hypothalamic-pituitary axis, the production of thyroid hormone, sex hormones, has already been disrupted, but we live, if it can be called that, or we exist in a not very good condition.

   Against this background, the action of an additional stressor and a further increase in resistance is possible. What does it mean? Against the background of collapsing systems, when endocrine destructive mechanisms are already involved, diabetes can also form, serious problems with the thyroid gland may arise, and this will grow like a snowball. Therefore, in no case should such an effect on the body be allowed.

stress symptoms

How to assess the state of a person when disadaptation has already set in, and when should one start to worry and give some recommendations? It is important to understand whether stress has come or not yet. Let's talk about diagnostic methods.

• By appearance

The person has puffiness, watery eyes, slightly bulging eyes, may be sweaty, may have perspiration on the face, may be malnourished or overweight in what is called chronic distress. The presence of these criteria may indicate that a person is in the first phase of stress.

• For somatic complaints

A person complains about his health. He can talk about high blood pressure, which increased suddenly after some event or experience. He may complain of a sudden palpitation, shortness of breath, constipation, a feeling of bloating, pain in the middle under the ribs, or a sharp increase in appetite, a feeling of insatiability - “here, I can’t eat, I eat, I eat, but the feeling that I’m not full.”

• By behavior

By behavior, we will notice some desire to reduce the area of ​​​​support, the area of ​​\u200b\u200bcontact is a manifestation of post-traumatic stress disorder.

“You-statement” is very typical for a person who is in a situation of stress and physical trauma too.

• Family history

In the family system, a person who seeks help may be found to have suicidal people - people who have committed suicide. Perhaps the person will say that he was not breastfed at all, or his mother refused to breastfeed early. This is a family history factor that leads a person to a tendency to react with distress to external circumstances. This is prematurity - the more profound prematurity a person has in history, the more he is prone to distress reactions.

• Predisposing personality traits

This is hyper-responsibility, pedantry, the so-called perfectionism - the desire to do some action ideally, this is some mental rigidity - the unwillingness to adapt to circumstances, the desire to do it your own way, to insist on your own. This is alexithymia - the inability to understand, express feelings and basic anxiety.

• mental complaints

This is a changeable mood - from irritability and anger to complete apathy, the feeling that I am not interested in anything.

This is insomnia, impaired memory, attention, anxiety higher than in the usual conditions, the appearance of panic attacks, asthenia, when there is not enough strength for some elementary actions, you don’t want to get up, drink water, brush your teeth, go to work. This is hyperinhibition, when a person suddenly slows down and stops responding in the usual way to familiar situations. And these are psychotic breakdowns, when suddenly a person begins to take offense, cry, scream, swear, which was not typical for him.

• Developments

In general terms, these are events associated with changes in life. Here it is important to understand what is important for a person and what is not very important, what kind of event can bring him out of balance so much as to cause stress.

9 ways to gently correct stress

• grounding

This is a practice that came from martial arts, from oriental medicine and is now used in almost all areas of body-oriented therapy.

Grounding is performed in a sitting, lying and standing position. When a person stands on his feet, he literally rests on his feet, with relaxed knees and with a straight back, with the feeling that he is throwing all the weight on his legs. Sometimes such metaphorical immersions help: you can invite a person to imagine that he is standing with concreted limbs or has gone into some very deep healing mud.

If a person is sitting, then there will be four points of support: two points are the feet that stand on the floor, and two more points are the ischial bones. To feel them, you need to sit a little closer to the edge of the chair, put your feet on the support (floor), stomp them a little so that the feet feel that they are, and at the same time focus on these four points. Naturally, in order to gain weight, you need to straighten your back a little, that is, it will be difficult to do this in a stooped state. Through this maneuver, the lungs open and their vital capacity increases.

And the next stage is abdominal breathing through the stomach. You need to breathe not too deeply, but usually, but at the same time rhythmically, regularly, that is, do not forget to take breaths and exhale long enough. There is no need to make any pauses, you should immediately exhale, and this breathing becomes productive. At this moment, the venous outflow from the pelvic organs improves, no matter what position the person is in - sitting or standing. In general, blood circulation improves.

If this practice is performed lying down, the entire horizontal surface of the body on which the person leans becomes the support, he imagines that this weight spreads over the body in an even layer.

• Centering

The next part is centering. A place in the body is chosen where a person feels his center, with the exception of the head. Some people are so focused on their thoughts that they think that the center of their personality is here. Most often, people show somewhere in the chest area, a little higher - to the neck or a little lower - to the stomach.

Or you can ask, as a test, to name the part of the body where a person will poke a finger if asked “Where are you?”. "I'm here". And then you can put your hand there and try to feel yourself. And somehow play with the voice in order to feel its vibration with the palm of your hand. You can try to pronounce the following text, in different timbres - a little higher or a little lower than the speech that you are used to using in a conversation: “I am. I'm here". At this moment, the eyes are open so that the person understands exactly where he is. Sometimes you need to name the address, city, street, house, floor, room where I am specifically located. And the next statement: "I exist." They are pronounced slowly, with a good feeling, with the aim of returning the person to the reality in which he really is now.

If you sum up all these parts of the practice, then in reality they are performed in just two or three minutes.

• Water

It is very important that it is enough and exactly as much as you need. If there are diseases, then the calculation of water per kilogram of body weight per day is equal to forty milliliters per kilogram of body weight. If a person is conditionally healthy, but is simply in distress due to some external circumstances, then thirty milliliters per kilogram per day will be enough.

Conventionally, if a person drinks a liter per day and weighs seventy kilograms, then the deficit of his norm will be 1100 ml, provided that he is somatically healthy. Just yesterday, a person still drank a liter, and today he needs to drink 2 liters 100 ml.

Of course, you don’t need to make such jumps right away, because the kidneys and bladder will be against it - swelling may occur and distress will further aggravate. Therefore, you need to increase this volume of water gradually, one glass a day. Within about five days, a person reaches his norm. And you need to set the person up to the fact that, having come out of distress, he is recommended to leave this volume of water further for himself, so that it becomes habitual.

• Getting rid of information clutter

A person gets up in the morning, turns on the TV, there is news, he turns on his smartphone, there, on social networks, there are some events that do not concern his personal life in any way. And plus, he still constantly scrolls in his head what he needs to do, what he needs to do, plan, some of his fears, anxieties. Thus, a person plunges himself into chronic distress. Therefore, it is good and healthy to arrange informational asceticism from time to time.

This means assigning yourself some days of the week when there will be no TV turned on, there will only be calls on some necessary issues, and in general there will be no flashing pictures in front of your eyes, extra people and contacts.

• Getting rid of toxic thoughts

So-called toxic thoughts have a toxic effect on the psyche. They appear most often from the feeling that a person is responsible for the actions, actions, behavior, reactions, well-being of other people. That is, speaking in philistine words, this is some megalomania or a fantasy of omnipotence.

And such ideas that you can influence others in order to save them, help them, or, as psychologists say, “do good”, increase your anxiety, it becomes completely hopeless, because in fact you cannot do it.

Also, a serious reason for this endless endogenous stress is the idea of ​​​​total control - "I can control everything." At some point in a distressed life, a person will have to face their helplessness and say I give up. Because if a person does not give up in time and does not give up the idea of ​​​​total control, then it will be impossible to do anything with his self-destructive tendency to plunge into distress and go into a psychosomatic reaction.

• Uncertainty Tolerance

Here we have to come to terms with the fact that we not only cannot manage a part of the world, the space of information, but we cannot foresee it. We are all in some sense in this unknown. We will never get any guarantees from the world and other people that we will be alive and healthy, that nothing unforeseen will happen tomorrow. And this idea will have to come to terms. All that remains is sober planning and the belief that I am doing my best.

• Good dream

Sleep problems manifest themselves as difficulty falling asleep or some early anxious awakenings, nocturnal awakenings, when a person wakes up at two or three in the morning and cannot fall asleep. Somnologists are an excellent way to help a person work with insomnia, if necessary. But there are certain universal recommendations.

It is necessary to make a rule that the bed is only for sleeping and sex. Nothing else should happen there - neither reading literature, nor talking about how our life will develop further, nor doing homework with children, that is, nothing else.

It is not recommended to watch TV before going to bed while lying in bed. You need to turn off the lights, close the dark curtains, turn off the nightlight. In the process of waking up at night, a person turns on the light, and melatonin, which is tuned for a good, deep, productive sleep and the normalization of the immune system, ceases to be released. After a person turns off the light after half an hour of being awake, melatonin does not begin to be synthesized again: in order for this to happen, a special immersion is needed again.

• Borders

Very often, the cause of distress reactions is a violation of the boundaries of both mental and physical. We need to try to organize these boundaries for ourselves. Physically, this is a distance with others, even with the closest ones, and, of course, mental boundaries. Psychic boundaries are violated by advice without demand, prescription of attitude and duty - you must do this regardless of whether you want it or not. This also includes assessments of comparison and devaluation towards a person, especially if he depends on these assessments.

Violation of obligations and agreements is also a source of distress, because it affects mental boundaries. Also on the list are lies, distortion and concealment of facts, disclosure and discussion of the personal information of another person without his consent and knowledge, and ignoring.

• Needs

Take the pyramid of needs. In the first place are natural, basic physiological needs - this is water, healthy food. These are also some everyday factors of natural safety and hobbies, friendship, hobbies, contacts related to the theme of respect.

These are factors that help to feel and develop their self-worth, self-respect. And, of course, education, creativity is what we love to do so much. And it would be great if the previous layers of needs were satisfied in order to do this productively.

Keep track of your needs, ask the question: where in the pyramid of needs is some kind of deficit.

Prevention of stress conditions

Stress prevention is the foundation of mental health. Timely efforts in this direction can help avoid serious problems in the future. What is needed for this?

• Change your attitude to the situation

Most problems are temporary. You need to understand that no matter what happens, it's not forever. When some difficulties arise, it is necessary to soberly assess the situation and try to look for ways to overcome them. Sometimes this takes a lot of time, and you should be prepared for this. Self-organization and a calm look at the problem are the main helpers in the fight against stress. As the saying goes, you can't change the situation - change your attitude towards it.

• Set up the right way

The way we look at difficulties can affect the course of events. The simpler and more optimistic a person perceives reality, the less stress in his life. It is important to learn this from an early age, to form the right attitudes, not to let negative beliefs take root in our minds. If this does happen, it makes sense to use cognitive behavioral therapy, during which the psychoanalyst tries to find out what are the true causes of negative life attitudes. The patient must understand that his beliefs are false, imposed from the outside, they need to get rid of.

• Change the way you think

In order not to experience stress on an ongoing basis, you need to restructure your thinking. And to do this is incredibly difficult, it's a lot of work on yourself. You will have to analyze your behavior throughout life, your reactions to events, your usual way of solving problems and, perhaps, turn it all around 180 degrees. This will help to become a person who is more self-confident, aware, accepting responsibility and not afraid of it.

• Use the technique of self-hypnosis

Stress is based on a person's inability to cope with a problem and the resulting anxiety and guilt.

To deal with such states, you can practice self-hypnosis. This is done at home and takes about 15 minutes a day. Affirmations are taken as the basis - special motivating or calming phrases that a person says to himself. It is important that they resonate in his soul, have real significance for him. Affirmations can be changed periodically depending on the situation and state of mind. Sooner or later, working on yourself will lead to positive results in the form of increased stress tolerance, a positive attitude, and self-confidence.

• Use switching technique

The essence of the method is to abstract from the problem, to switch. However, this is effective only if a person cannot influence the course of events in any way, but at the same time feels guilty, is in tension. You can switch to some types of activity: sports, hobbies, meditation, etc.

• Analyze your mental attitudes

It is important to analyze your thoughts, reactions, feelings. Mindfulness is extremely important in eliminating stress, because it is much easier to fight an enemy that you know by sight.

• Form positive thinking

Of course, it is impossible to become a positive person at the snap of your fingers, you will have to work hard on this, go through the previous stages, and prepare the ground. In addition, positive thinking is a constant work on oneself, because it is very easy to slide back into the negative.

Thinking shapes our reality. A person who constantly thinks about the bad, sets himself up in advance not to fail, does not notice the obvious positive aspects, is constantly stressed. To avoid this, you will have to constantly control yourself, but this work will certainly bring positive results.

• meditate

Why is meditation necessary? You can answer briefly - “look into yourself”, “see your essence”, “calm and free the mind”, “gain inner strength and energy”. One of the proven effects of meditation is to reduce stress levels and the physiological manifestations of anxiety.