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Stressful Experiences
Kinds of stressors:
Hassles - small, irritating, frustrating events that we face daily and that we usually appraise or interpret as stressful experiences.
Uplifts - small pleasurable, happy, and satisfying experiences that we have in our daily lives.
Major life events - potentially disturbing, troubling, or disruptive situations, both positive and negative, that we appraise as having a significant impact on our lives.
Major life events (Social Readjustment Rating Scale)
Situational stressors:
Frustration - the awful feeling that results when your attempts to reach some goal are blocked.
Burnout - refers to being physically overwhelmed and exhausted, finding the job unrewarding and becoming cynical or detached, and developing a strong sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment in this particular job
Violence - may result in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which is a disabling condition that results from personally experiencing an event that involves actual or threatened death or serious injury, or from witnessing such and event, or hearing of such an event happening to a family member or close friend.
Stressful Experiences: Conflict - the feeling you experience when you must choose between two or more incompatible possibilities or options.
Approach-approach conflict - involves choosing between two situations that both have pleasurable consequences.
Avoidance-avoidance conflict - involves choosing between two situations that both have disagreeable consequences.
Approach-avoidance conflict - involves a single situation that has both pleasurable and disagreeable aspects.
 Five styles of dealing with conflict:
1. Avoidance - by avoiding or ignoring conflict, it will disappear or magically go away.
2. Accommodation - hate conflicts and tend to please people & worry about approval.
3. Domination - go to any lengths to win, even if it means being aggressive & manipulative
4. Compromise - recognize that others have different needs and try to solve conflicts through compromise.
5. Integration - try to resolve conflicts by finding solutions to please both partners.
Three ways of developing anxiety ( an unpleasant state characterized by feelings of uneasiness & apprehension as well as increased physiological arousal, such as increased heart rate and blood pressure) :
1. Classical conditioning: conditioned emotional response
2. Observational learning
3. Unconscious conflict (Freud)
Coping with anxiety can be done using extinction procedures (problem-focused, conscious coping techniques) & freudian defense mechanisms (emotion focused, unconscious coping techniques).
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