Stress

Main Ideas:
There are different ways to measure stress (operational defintions) that are related to how we conceptualize stress
Some of those ways have to do with identifying aspects of the event (stressor), the person's perception of the experience, or separating stress and coping perceptions.
Match the approaches described in the text to the the different ways of thinking about stress mentioned above, such as the Holmes & Rahe Life Events scale, Lazarus's primary and secondary appraisal, Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome
Distinguish between primary and secondary appraisal
Use primary / secondary model to discuss stress and challenge - how similar and different.

1. Describe two situations where you (or a friend/family) were learning (school, job, working the garage, putting together a quilt) and got frustrated or irritated while you were trying to learn. Describe the difficult times in the learning and analyze it by Lazarus's 2 step model of stress (primary and secondary appraisal) , how could you tell it was a demand, and did you have the resources to handle it? Compare the two primary appraisals to each other and the two secondary appraisals to each other. Was there a difference in either appraisal? Did it effect how you handled the frustration? (could look at emotion vs. problem focused coping skills)

11. Describe a healthy and unhealthy way to use each of the following: problem focused coping strategies and emotion focused coping strategies. Ideally, these are different things one does or thinks in response to the same problem.