coping with stress

1. Coping with Stress
in
Middle and Late Adolescence

2. Let’s Ponder on these!
 What is stress?
How do you cope with
stressors?

3.  Stress is part of growing up. You may feel
pressure in everything you do, both at home
and in school. Dirty clothes, a lost Sim card, a
broken cellphone, a failed exam, a
misunderstanding with a parent, a conflict with
a friend- all of these are stressors or the causes
of stress in your life. You experience stress
when you respond to stressors that you
perceive to exceed your capabilities.

4.  Stress is defined as a reaction of the mind
and body to a stimulus that disturbs the
well-being, state of calm, or equilibrium of
a person. There is a common belief that
stress is unhealthy, but discussions among
experts conclude that this is not entirely
the case.

5.  Psychologists have agreed that small
and sporadic amounts of stress can be
helpful and beneficial to individuals,
while excessive amounts of stress
sustained over a lengthy period of time
can be destructive to both physical and
mental health.

6.  Stress can affect your appearance
negatively. Further, if you look closely at the
implications of stress, t can even damage
your physical psychological well-being. Now,
let us deepen your understanding of stress
by being familiar with its symptoms of your
bodily responses to it.

7. The cognitive symptoms include the
following:
1. Having memory problems
2. Being unable to concentrate
3. Having poor judgement
4. Seeing only the negative
5. Being anxious
6. Worrying constantly

8.  When you are stressed with school and
relationships, you worry about failing subjects,
meeting your teacher’s expectations, or
losing your friend. These result in having
a lack of concentration. Also, your anxiety may
cause you to forget things and to see only the
negative. Having poor judgment makes you
decide and act unwisely upon situations, which
may just worsen the situation.

9. You also would feel emotional
symptoms, which are the following:
1. Moodiness
2. Irritability and short tempered
3. Agitation or restless
4. Feeling or being overwhelmed
5. Sense of loneliness and isolation
6. Unhappiness

10.  When you are stressed or emotionally
uptight, you tend to be easily carried away
by your emotions. You find yourself grumpy.
Situations irritate you and your moods
swing quickly. You emote for various
reasons such as when you receive negative
criticisms, get a haircut that does not suit
you, or plan a date that does not push
through.

11. Stress has physical symptoms too, and
these include the following:
1. Body aches and pains
2. Diarrhea and constipation
3. Nausea and dizziness
4. Chest pain
5. Rapid heartbeat
6. Frequent colds

12.  When you are stressed, your body reacts
to it. Your immune system weakens, and
you would probably catch colds more
often. Moreover, responses to stress are
manifested through behavioral
symptoms, and these are the following

13. 1. Eating more or less
2. Sleeping too much or little
3. Isolating yourself from others
4. Procrastinating
5. Neglecting responsibilities
6. Drinking alcoholic beverages, smoking cigarettes, taking
illegal drugs, or playing computer for several hours.
7. Having nervous habits such snail biting and pricing restless.

14.  When feeling overwhelmed by
difficulties, adolescents react to stress
by eating more or less. Or sleeping too
much or too little. On the other hand,
when under pressure in a relationship
adolescents may isolate themselves
from others.

15.  Finally, another cause of wasted time is
being a perfectionist. Efforts are also
wasted in being a perfectionist. Much time
is spent to perfect one task, which is a
reason that you do not finish your tasks on
perfectionist. Much time is spent to perfect
one task, which is a reason that you do not
finish your tasks on time.

16. Here are some tips to improve your
time management skills.
 Monitor your time. Monitoring
your time is essential to be
successful in managing it. You can
use a fixed commitment calendar
to do so.

17. Here are some tips to improve your
time management skills.
 Plan your activities using a schedule.
And protect it as much as you protect
your goals. When unplanned
appointments and tasks pop, you need
to assess if your schedule still allows
you to do them. If not, tactfully say no.

18. Here are some tips to improve your
time management skills.
 Increase your efficiency so that you
finish your tasks in less time. For
example, learn to increase your
writing speed so that you take down
notes more effectively. Having good
notes facilitates studying.

19. Here are some tips to improve your
time management skills.
 Increase your efficiency so that you
finish your tasks in less time. For
example, learn to increase your writing
speed so that you take down notes
more effectively. Having good notes
facilitates studying.

20. Here are some tips to improve your
time management skills.
 Tackle one task at a time so that
you do not get overwhelmed.
Otherwise, you may end up
procrastinating.

21. Here are some tips to improve your
time management skills.
 Group similar tasks together so
that the fluidity of doing so
facilitates efficiency

22. Here are some tips to improve your
time management skills.
 Make use of your down time. For
example, you can opt to open your
notes and read them when you are
waiting for the bus, queuing in a
bank, or waiting for teacher to arrive.

23.  There are instant relaxes that you can do
as first aid in emotionally wrought and
stressful situations such as eating comfort
food, deep breathing, relaxing your
muscles, engaging in physical activities that
may help you calm down (walking, playing
basketball), using aroma therapy and
having a good cry.

24.  Eating healthy snacks can help you calm
down. Oranges and blueberries have
vitamin C which helps boost your immune
system. Blueberries and other dark-
colored berries are full of antioxidants
which repair and protect your body from
the effects of stress.

25.  There are several
points of views about
stress.

26. Stress as Stimulus, Response, and
Relational
 Aside from being a reaction (or response),
stress is also a stimulus, as well as a relational
condition between persons and the situations
they are in (Feist and Rosenberg, 2012).
 As a stimulus, stress is cause by situations
that may be life-threatening or life-changing,
such as separation, moving into a new home,
or having a new job. These situations or
events are often called stressors.

27.  Stress as response is the way the body
reacts to challenging situations. This
involves between the hormones, glands,
and nervous systems where the adrenal
gland drives the production of cortisol or
better known as “stress hormone.”

28.  Stress as relational is when a person
experiencing stress takes a step back to
look at the situation that is causing the
stress, and assesses it. Assessment here
means that when the person allows
reasoning to prevail and weigh the
relevance or irrelevance of the situation.

29.  If the relevance is positive, the
person will look at the situation in a
more positive light. If the relevance is
negative, this will produce negative
emotions that may lead to stress.

30. Types of Stress
 There are certain types of stress that
can benefit a person. Stress that is short
and sporadic can propel a person to a
necessary action. These types of stress
can motivate, energize, and spur an
individual into fruitful action.

31. EUSTRESS
 Good stress
 For example, speaking in front of an audience is a
healthy type of stress as it pushes the speaker to
prepare and be an effective speaker. Stage
performers are also under stress while performing,
and this same stress may bring out their best
performances.
 Other types of healthy stress would be competing
in sports. Healthy stress can propel the competing

32. DISTRESS
 Bad stress
 It can be transformed into good stress
depending on how an individual assesses the
situation. Adolescent students, who are in
constant stressful situations particularly related
to schoolwork and relationships, should learn
some coping mechanisms to assist them in
their development toward a healthy adult life.