KAPLAN UNIVERSITYHW410 Stress: Critical Issues in Management and Prevention

Stress

Management and

Prevention

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Program Resource

Guide

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KA P L A N U N I V E R S I T Y

Stress Management and Prevention Program Resource Guide

By

Lindsey Naylor

Kaplan University

HW410: Stress: Critical Issues in Management and Prevention

July 13, 2010

Table of Contents

U N I T 1 T H E N A T U R E O F S T R E S S

Information to Remember

Resources: Exercises: Exercises

Tools: Journal Writing: Journal WritingU N I T 2 T H E B O D Y A S B A T T L E F I E L D

Information to Remember

Resources: Exercises: Exercises

Tools: Journal Writing: Journal WritingU N I T 3 F E A S T O R F A M I N I N E

Information to Remember

Resources: Exercises: Exercises

Tools: Journal Writing: Journal Writing U N I T 4 O N E P L A N E T U N D E R S T R E S S

Information to Remember

Resources: Exercises: Exercises

Tools: Journal Writing U N I T 5 U N D E R S T R E S S : W H A T N O W ?

Information to Remember

Resources: Exercises

Tools: Journal Writing U N I T 6 A G E L E S S W I S D O M O F M E D I T A T I O N

Information to Remember

Resources: Exercises

Tools: Journal Writing U N I T 7 S I G H T , S O U N D , A N D B O D Y W O R K

Information to Remember

Resources: Exercises

Tools: Journal Writing U N I T 8 T H E W E L L N E S S M A N D A L A

Information to Remember

Resources: Exercises

Tools: Journal Writing U N I T 9 A P P L Y I N G S T R E S S : C R I T I C A L M A N A G E M E N T A N D P R E V E N T I O N T O Y O U R

P R O F E S S I O N A L L I F E

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Information to Remember

Resources: Exercises

Tools: Journal Writing

A D D I T I O N A L I N F O R M A T I O N

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Unit 1: The Nature of Stress

Information to Remember: General Adaptation Syndrome is the body's reaction to stress, and occurs in 3

stages:

Stage1: Alarm Reaction- the body releases adrenaline to stay in control.

Stage2: Stage of Resistance - the body's response to long term protection.

Stage3: Stage of Exhaustion - the body runs out of reserve energy and immunity. (Seaward, 2006, pg 13)

Define Stress- The experience of a perceived threat (real or imagined) to one’s mental, physical, or spiritual well-being, resulting from a series of physiological responses and adaptations. (seaward, 2006, pg. 3)

I feel like the advancement of science and technology has pushed people to feel a lack of community and belonging, which leads to a greater sense of isolation and this intensifies our personal stress levels. Everything from war to sickness causes great stress to our emotional and physical wellness. Even dramatic changes in weather can cause stress.

Chronic Stress: Stress that is not as intense as acute stress but that lingers for a prolonged period of time. (Seaward, 2006, pg. 9).

Prolonged or severe stress has been shown to weaken the immune system, strain the heart, damage memory cells in the brain and deposit fat at the waist. Good stress management is key when you are tying to avoid the health risk of chronic stress. Stress management might include prioritizing your life, setting a routine, getting enough sleep and enjoying life.

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Resources: Exercises: EXERCISE 1.1 The Nature of Stress Inventory: Are You Stressed?

This is just a simple quiz to assess your tendency towards stress and to recognize if you have adequate coping skills.

EXERCISE 1.3 Self-Assessment: Poor Sleep Habits Questionnaire

This quiz will help you determine your sleep behavior. You may consider that factors like circadian rhythms may contribute to patterns of insomnia.

Journal Writing:

Unit 2: The Body as Battlefield

Information to Remember: Serotonin: A neurotransmitter that is associated with mood. A

decrease in serotonin levels is thought to be related to depression. Serotonin levels are affected by many factors including stress hormones and the foods you consume. (Seaward, 2006, pg. 41)

Serotonin levels in the brain can alter the mood. For example, medications that affect the action of serotonin are used to treat depression. Which came first the chicken or the egg; did serotonin affect your mood or did your mood affect your serotonin. These question are still unknown.

Melatonin: A hormone secreted in the brain that is related to sleep, mood, and perhaps several other aspects of physiology and consciousness. (Seaward, 2006, pg.41)

Melatonin helps control your sleep and wake cycles. Very small amounts of it are found in foods such as meats, grains, fruits, and vegetables. You can also buy it as a supplement.

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Cortisol: A stress hormone released by the adrenal glands that helps the body prepare for fight or flight by promoting the release of glucose and lipids in the blood for energy metabolism. (Seaward, 2006, pg. 43)

While cortisol is an important and helpful part of the body’s response to stress, it’s important that the body’s relaxation response to be activated so the body’s functions can return to normal following a stressful event. Unfortunately, in our current high-stress culture, the body’s stress response is activated so often that the body doesn’t always have a chance to return to normal, resulting in a state of chronic stress.

Resources: Exercises: EXERCISE 2.2 Immediate, Intermediate, and Prolonged Stress Effects

This quiz will help reinforce your understanding of how you respond to stress. After you better understand your bodies reaction you can set out to correct what may cause you additional stress.

EXERCISE 2.1 Stress Physiology ReviewI choose to include this exercise as a reminder of the terminology used to describe hormones related to stress.

Tools: Journal Writing:

Unit 3: Feast or Famine

Information to Remember: The primary stress emotions are Anger and Fear. (Seaward, 2006, page 44)

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Anger is the fight response and shows up as impatience, guilt, envy, indignation, intimidation, intolerance, frustration, rage, prejudice, and hostility.

Fear is the flight response and shows up as embarrassment, anxiety, apprehension, insecurity, and paranoia.

Depression is anger without the enthusiasm.

If this Freudian like theory is correct then it would appear that depression is secondary to anger. Following this model, intervention for depression would focus on repressed anger and aggressive impulses. This may or may not be the case for severely depressed people because there anger would be so far repressed and unconscious.

The ego has many tricks up its sleeve for protection.

Denial: I didn't do it!

Repression: I don't remember doing it!

Projection: He did it!

Displacement: He made me do it!

Rationalization: Everyone does it!

Humor: I did it and a year from now maybe I'll laugh about this! (Seaward, 2006, page 56).

Resources: Exercises: EXERCISE 3.1 Stress and Disease Physical Symptoms QuestionnaireThis quiz will help you to identify and notice how often you experience stress related symptoms.

3.6 Energy Ball ExerciseThis is a great relaxation technique. Try this technique as a supplemental therapy to other meditative breathing exercises.

Journal Writing:

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Unit 4: One Planet under Stress

Information to Remember: The stress-prone personalities consist of:

Type A- Aggressive-based (used to be referred to as hurry sickness)

Characteristics of this type are the person having time urgency, rapid speech pattern, manipulative control, multi-tasking, and more.

Type D- This one is called Codependent.

Characteristics of this type are ones like perfectionists, Crisis Managers, self-sacrificing, and devoted loyalists.

Helpless-Hopeless personality-

It is based on an external Locus of Control perception that external factors control behavior. They often show signs of apathy and complacency and they take little responsibility for their actions. Poor self-esteem, low self-motivation, perceptions of failure dominates. They often are associated with emotional dysfunction, and depression.

The stress resistant personalities are:

The Hardy Personality-

This type of personality has personal control, strong commitment to oneself and one's work, and they also see problems and change as opportunities for growth.

Survivor Personality-

Beyond the classic will to survive, this personality type integrates the right-brain abilities of intuition, acceptance, and faith with the left-brain skills of judgment and organization.

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Type R Personality is also called the Sensation Seekers-

They are dominated by an adventurous spirit. Examples of people with this type of personality are rock climbers, skydivers, and hang gliders. (Seaward, 2006, pg. 135-147)

Self Esteem is what a person feels about themselves.

A person might give themselves positive affirmations in order to preserve it or they might generally regard themselves as a good person. With Self-Esteem you are able to empower yourself to overcome obstacles in your way of achieving your best possible day, week and year; therefore, you are able to resolve stress easily.

Resources: Exercises: EXERCISE 4.6 Guilt and Worry

Stress robs us of the present moment and guilt preoccupies the mind with events and feelings from the past, whereas worry focuses our attention on anticipated events. What both of these emotional states, or zones, have in common is that they immobilize our thought processes and leave us unable to function at our best. Self-imposed guilt trips are very stressful. Do you lay an occasional guilt trip on others to manipulate their emotions and behavior? This is a great exploratory exercise to admit what you really do to yourself or others.

EXERCISE 4.7 All You Need Is Love

This exercise explores how you feel about love and what it means to you to give and/or receive it.

Tools: Journal Writing:

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Unit 5: Under Stress: What Now?

Information to Remember: The purpose of cognitive restructuring is to widen one’s conscious

perspective and thus allow room for a change in perception; however, sometimes some belief system (usually an ego, fear-based one) hidden in the depths of the unconscious mind is holding on to old ways, thus negating any restructuring that might be attempted.

Toxic thoughts could be the underlying reason that you are unable to restructure your thoughts. Toxic thoughts are repeated negative thought processing that tends to pollute our view of our lives and ourselves. (Seaward, 2006, pg. 204)

Many people take great comfort in being a victim because it fulfills an immediate need to feel needed, as well as the instant gratification of sympathy and pity. (Seaward, 2006, pg. 207)

Resources: Exercises: EXERCISE 5.1 The Stress Emotions: Anger and Fear Anger

Recognition Checklist

The following is a quick exercise to help you understand how anger can surface in the course of a normal working day and how you may mismanage it.

Strategies for Well-Managed Anger: Dropping Hot Stones

This provides an understanding of the four “hot stones”. The stones that you throw at people that burn you.

Tools: Journal Writing:

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Unit 6: Ageless Wisdom of Meditation

Information to Remember: Diaphragmatic breathing: The most basic relaxation technique;

breathing from the lower stomach or diaphragm rather than the thoracic area. This has been long used in childbirth. It has been called “belly breathing” or Lamaze Technique. (Seaward, 2006, pg. 345)

The practice of meditation is the oldest recognized relaxation technique known. It is used to produce and enjoy a tranquil state of mind. (Seaward, 2006, pg. 353)

The practice of yoga can create many levels of inner peace. There are many forms of yoga.

Resources: Exercises: EXERCISE 6.2 Stress-Prone Personality Survey

This is a survey based on the traits of the codependent personality and thus if you score high enough then you are regarded as stress prone.

EXERCISE 6.3 Stress-Resistant Personality Survey

This survey is composed of statements based on the hardy, survivor, and risk-taking personality traits—all of which share common aspects that resist stress. If you score high enough you are regarded as stress resistant.

Tools: Journal Writing:

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Unit 7: Sight, Sound and Body Work

Information to Remember: Over the short term, stress can cause stomach aches, nausea, and

diarrhea.

In the long term, prolonged stress can aggravate chronic diseases such as irritable bowel syndrome and heartburn.

Basically, Stress can decrease nutrient absorption, increase nutrient excretion.

Two of the best ways to manage stress and maintain healthy digestion is moderate exercise and have proper nutrition. Digestion is affected by stress because your body doesn’t excreta enough of the enzymes to assimilate your food. This causes a major disruption to your elimination! Absorption is affected by stress; as a result instead of your intestines keeping out harmful substances and absorbing helpful nutrients, spaces open up that begin to allow in bulky, partially digested food particles, and toxic substance. This is referred to as leaky gut syndrome. The first signs of absorption problems might be allergic reactions, skin problems, joint pain, digestive difficulties, nausea, fatigue and lack of energy.

Resources: Exercises: EXERCISE 7.14 Health of the Human Spirit

These are ways to enhance the health of your human spirit. It is an exercise to help you enhance and engage in your emotional health.

EXERCISE 7.17 Honoring Mother Earth

I choose this exercise because I know the importance of connecting with the Earth’s elements in an effort to restructure and gain control of what seems to be uncontrollable stressful life.

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Unit 8: The Wellness Mandala

Information to Remember: Just as the body requires a state of calmness or homeostasis, it equally

demands physical stimulation or it will go into dysfunction. (Seaward, 2006, pg. 512)

One of the benefits of exercise that has been touted by exercise physiologists for years is the fact that regular rhythmical (cardiovascular) exercise promotes quality sleep and decreases symptoms of insomnia. (Seaward, 2006, pg. 519)

Aerobic exercise utilizes the stress hormones for their intended purpose rather than becoming a toxic hormonal cocktail in your body. (Seaward, 2006, pg. 514) Also, Aerobic exercise provides a great release for anger as well as anxiety.

Resources: Exercises: EXERCISE 8.3 Positive Affirmation Statements

We continually feed ourselves negative thoughts, which continually deflate self-esteem. So, we can counteract those thoughts with positive one’s that will leave us in better physical and mental health.

EXERCISE 8.6 Healthy Pleasures

This exercise asks you to list twenty-five healthy pleasures that you participate in on a regular basis and if you can’t name 25 of them, it suggest that you should come up with some that you would like to incorporate in your routine.

Tools: Journal Writing:

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Unit 9: Applying Stress: Critical Management to your Professional Life

Information to Remember: Forgiveness. It's such a hard thing to do, but it can be so liberating to

the soul. What makes it difficult for most of us to do is the way we define it. We think of forgiveness as meaning that we should say all is forgotten and things will go back to what they were. This Biblical definition of forgiveness is very hard for most of us to swallow. How can you forget the unforgettable? How can you forgive the unforgivable? To enjoy the benefits of forgiveness, however, we needn't go that far. All that's really required is that we make the decision to move forward, to let go of the old hurts. We don't have to condone what's been done. What's wrong is still wrong. We don't have to invite the person back into our lives or even be friendly with them. What we do have to do is allow ourselves to release all the negative emotions associated with that person. As long as we hold onto the pain, we are choosing to allow that person's past actions to continue to hurt us. We can also choose to stop letting them hurt us. That's a definition of forgiveness that's more doable for those of us who are less than saintly.

Negative emotions have been proven to cause many of our chronic diseases. This alone should be the reason that we all make the effort to give forgiveness.

Social orchestration: A coping technique; either (1) changing stress-producing factors in the environment or (2) changing the entire stress-producing environment; the path of least resistance.(Seaward, 2006, pg. 326) This doesn’t mean to pack up and move to another area, as this is a more stressful situation.

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Resources: Exercises: EXERCISE 9.3 Healthy Boundaries

Healthy boundaries require willpower and discipline to honor what you yourself have established, in order to give you better structure and stability in your life. This exercise will help you put on paper what you want your boundaries to be.

EXERCISE 9.4 Reinventing Yourself (Again)

This is a creative worksheet to describe what you would want the new and improved you to be.

Tools: Journal Writing:

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Additional Information Why Zebras Don’t’ Get Ulcers: The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, Third Edition Sapolsky, Robert M. (2004)

Psychological Therapy Gains Popularity By: Amanda Waldroupe July 14 2010http://www.thelundreport.org/resource/psychological_therapy_gains_popularity

Carol Ruby experienced helplessness. Four years ago, she injured her hip and lower back when she lifted a heavy box while working as a cook. Now because of therapy she has overcome her need to lay down all the time and is getting on with her life.

Stress Management- Job Stress Management Resourceshttp://www.mindtools.com/smpage.html

This site helps deal with job-related stress. Here, you will find help to overcome stress in a range of situations.

Stress Management Health Centerhttp://www.webmd.com/balance/stress-management/stress-management-topic-overview

I like Web MD for it’s well rounded medical advice on many issues including this one on Stress Management.

Guide to Stress Managementhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOpZU320v5E

This is a quick two minute refreshing you tube video on how to relieve stress in your life.

Overview of Stress Management: Power Point Presentationhttp://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=9&ved=0CEsQFjAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kingcounty.gov%2Fhealthservices%2Fhealth%2Fems%2Fcommunity%2F~%2Fmedia%2Fhealth%2Fpublichealth%2Fdocuments%2Fems%2Fstress_management.ashx&rct=j&q=stress%20management%20powerpoint%20presentation&ei=S149TPXTMYGisQP3rbTaCg&usg=AFQjCNE7jBKCS6xlcO7dc8Wh7ukblEmKCg&sig2=BzQfFyRQb1MFwe6j4LwXog

This is an animated ppt of what, when, how, why stress occurs in life and shows ways of overcoming stressful events.

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