L5 Coping with Stress in Middle and Late Adolescence

• Stress is a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding

  circumstances. This is the response of individuals to stressors, which are circumstances and events that

  threaten them and tax their coping abilities. (J. Santrock, 2008). Stress may come from many different

  sources for adolescents among the sources are life events, daily hassles, and sociocultural factors.
• Environmental Factors (Life events and daily hassles)

  Think about your personal life; what events have the most stress for you? Break-ups, death of someone you loved, failed grades, family problems, or physical injuries may cause tremendous stress on you. Some health psychologists studied the impact of life events and daily hassles. People who have had major life changes (loss of a close relative, a divorce of parents) have a higher incidence of cardiovascular disease and early death than those who do not.
• Sociocultural factors may help determine which stressors individuals are likely to encounter, whether they will most likely perceive events as stressful or not, and how they believe stress should be confronted (Berry,2007). In other studies, females are fight or flight response than males are. They argue that females are likelier to "tend and befriend."
• (2) two faces of stress – eustress and distress.
• Stress could, therefore, be a good

  thing or a bad thing, depending on one's reaction to it. When you allow stress to discourage

  you or deflate your spirits, you become powerless to face the source of stress. But if you only

  react positively to the pressures of the different stressors in your life – to view them as mere

  challenges and obstacles you would have the capacity and the drive to address these stressors

  head on.
• When you experience eustress, you become motivated to find ways in which you could address

  the problems causing stress, which would, therefore, open the possibility of eliminating the

  source of stress altogether.
• when you become too affected and experience

  distress, you worsen the stressful situation by running away from stressors instead of facing them head on. Whatever happiness you might feel by escaping from the stress is temporary, because eventually, you would have to be confronted by the stressful situation again.
• Happy Stress

  It is a common misconception that stress can only be related to negative events and circumstances. In the story of Hannah, her health has been affected by the stress caused by activities that she enjoys. Although you may not notice it as profoundly as stress that comes

  from negative experiences, positive experiences are equally stressful.
• coping strategies