Tag: English

Phases of stress

In certain moments of our lives, we face different moments that can be stressful. These are not necessarily negative, as it is a necessity for our body. The problem comes when these moments become periods and adhere themselves to our rhythm of life.

Upon finding ourselves facing a stressful situation, each person behaves in a different way but thanks to the investigations done by Hans Selye in 1975, today we can conclude that there are three phases which can explain how stress acts on our body and mind.

Alarm phase

In the reaction phase of alarm, the body reacts automatically when faced with stressful stimuli, and prepares the response that it will give.

In this phase the sympathetic nervous system is activated,giving signs of: dry mouth pupil dilation,sweating, muscle tension, increase in blood pressure and decrease in gastric secretion, rise in glucose synthesis and the secretion of adrenaline and noradrenaline.

There is also a psychological activation with an increase in attention span and concentration to maintain the perception of the stressful stimuli.

This reaction is transitory, adaptive and not harmful for the individual if the body has time to recover.

Resistance phase

This involves the phase of adaptation to the stressful situation. In this, a series of physiological, cognitive, emotional and behavioural processes destined to “manage” the stressful situation in the least damaging way for the person are developed.

Exhaustion phase

If the resistance phase fails, that is, if the adaptation mechanisms are not efficient, the depletion phase begins where physiological, psychological or psychosocial disorders tend to become chronic or even irreversible.

How stress affects

On the basis that the organism acts as an integrated whole, so that we cannot separate the physical, biological or psychological aspects that are given together in any response to stress, let us see what happens in our body, when it produces the stress response, in the three systems: physiological, cognitive and motor or behavioural.

Physiological

Stress responses travel through the sympathetic nervous system, activating the responses of fight or flight which, at a physiological level, use several systems: endocrine, nervous and immune, involving multiple networks. It is normal to have an increase in heart rate and blood pressure, general muscle tension, sweating, increased respiration…etc.

Cognitive

When you feel stressed it brings about a cognitive evaluation process in which different aspects are involved. In the first place, automatic processes of assessing a situation appear. There is also the appearance of a conscious process of assessing the relevant and irrelevant elements, favourable and unfavourable elements of the environment in a complementary way,an evaluation is made on the resources themselves and on environmental resources and finally also brings about the selection of coping strategies focusing on managing emotion: relaxation, breathing, use of food, smoking to relax, getting away from the problem… or even the problem: search for information, analysis of the problem… 

The behaviours that come in the face of stress do not only depend on the characteristics of the person and the coping strategies that they use, they also depend on other factors such as learning suitable behaviours or the release of behaviours that have been useful in the past. Basic behaviours are: fight, flight, avoidance and apathy or mental block. 

In this course you will learn new behaviours aimed at managing your stress. 

What is stress?

The term stress is derived from the Greek “stringere” meaning to cause strain and although this word and its derivatives have existed for centuries, the concept of stress can be traced to the middle of the 19th century.. More than half a century ago, Hans Selye defined stress for the World Health Organisation as “the nonspecific response of the body to noxious stimuli” which is named General Adaptation Syndrome GAS.

In other words, our body becomes stressed, it activates a series of physical and psychological responses to meet external demands, the stress factors that cause a threat to our survival. For example, in the case of being cold our body reacts to conserve and generate heat: our hair stands on end and we get goosebumps, we shiver, etc…, our attention and our perception sharpen to focus on the problem…we move around looking for heat.

Do you think that your tasks, daily activities such as making a report in the morning, presenting a project to a committee, answering emails… can they be noxious environmental stimuli or stressors?

In the 1980s, new study models appeared about stress, in which the importance of subjectivity in each individual when assessing whether a situation is stressful or not, was emphasised.

The most influential model is the transactional or interactional model by Lazarus and Folkman, according to which, stress is a dynamic process of interaction between the individual and the environment.

According to this theory, stress emerges as a consequence of implementing cognitive assessment processes: if we interpret a situation as dangerous, or threatening, as for example a table with a stack of papers, lists of tasks on the computer, and we consider our resources, capabilities, abilities are few to face the negative consequences* that we perceive can bring stressors, a stress reaction will emerge**, which will launch coping strategies to try to eliminate or alleviate the non-desired consequences.

Stress introduction

Nowadays the word stress is present in any conversation that we have, whether it is about work, family, friends, dreams… 

Sentences such as “I would like to have a less stressful job” or “I am mentally drained, I can’t do more… if I continue like this I will get ill”, form part of our daily vocabulary.

It has been relatively easy to include in our speech the word ‘stress’ but when using it, we do not always  know its scope. How does it manifest? Why does it affect some people and not others? What does “suffer stress” really mean?

For all of that, talking about stress, knowing its meaning, how it manifests in us and in others, how we can evaluate it, prevent it and above all how we can manage it from our personal perspective, are the tasks that we propose to undertake in this course.

For this we need you, your participation and your interest, that is the only way this training course about work stress prevention will have any meaning.

Regular and systematic training that provides us with skills and abilities to manage our levels of activation can be beneficial, as much in the personal sphere as in the working one. Currently, virtual reality is a highly efficient means of technology that can make this objective easier for us and allow access to learning and practising the techniques, such as breathing control, different types of relaxation and training to focus attention through simple and effective Mindfulness exercises.

Through the Amelia Virtual Care application, you can do the learning in an independent way at home as well as receiving psychological and interactive assistance for any query, doubt or question.

Learn to manage your stress with virtual reality, improve your quality of life!

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Dorrigo national park is famous for its dramatic waterfalls surrounded by dense rainforest. Specially the Crystal Shower Falls offer a stunning view from behind the waterfall.