Understanding Stress and Coping

In my college stress management textbook, Coping With Stress in a Changing World, I define stress as “a holistic transaction between an individual and a potential stressor resulting in a stress response.” This way of defining stress combines three elements of most modern definitions of stress;

(1) viewing stressors as potential stressors,

(2) transforming a potential stressor to actual stressor involves a transaction between you and the potential stressor that takes place in a specific holistic context, and

(3) the result of the transaction determines whether a physiological stress response kicks in.

Stress begins with the presence of a potential stressor, something that is personally threatening and has the ability to trigger a stress response within you. This potential stressor can be a person, place, thing, situation, thought, emotion or body sensation. There is a limitless array of potential stressors. It is important to understand that a stressor is really only a potential stressor until you feel threatened by it and unable to cope with it. A bill, for instance, is usually not a stressor if you have enough money in your checking account to pay it. It becomes a stressor when you don’t know how you are going to pay it or when you know you need that money for something else. Often, the threat posed by a potential stressor is more ambiguous than just described and the uneasiness you feel when exposed to it is caused in part by your inability to put your finger on what is making you feel uncomfortable. The threat could be to your self-esteem, someone dear to you, or a variety of other things.

A transaction is the actual assessment of the threat posed by the potential stressor. It involves weighing the degree of threat posed by the potential stressor against your perceived ability to cope with it. Coping involves your own psychological strengths as well as outside resources. An important fact about stress transactions is that they do not occur in a vacuum. They are holistic because they are influenced by your overall level of physical, social, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, occupational, and environmental health at the time you are exposed to them. Your overall level of health and wellness provide a frame of reference (or context) for your exposure to, and appraisal of, the potential stressor.

Your evaluation of a potential stressor is always influenced by the time and place in which you are exposed to it and your overall level of health and wellness at the time. This is why you will evaluate the same potential stressor differently the next time you are exposed to it. Not only will you be exposed to it at a different time and under different circumstances, you will be a different person (a little older and wiser, maybe more rested, perhaps on your way home from a wonderful vacation etc.).

The last component of my definition refers to the response that is triggered once you perceive a potential stressor as threatening and beyond your ability to cope with. The stress response begins in your brain as it sends messages throughout your body via nerve transmissions and circulating hormones that initiate a complex response designed to mobilize energy to fight or flee from the stressor. This fight or flight response is immediate, life-saving, and the same for all people in response to all stressors. If fight or flight is not possible, your body shifts into a lower-intensity response that adapts to and resists the presence of the stressor. In time, if the stressor is not removed, or coped with effectively, it exhausts you. While the stress response initially is beneficial and designed to get you out of harm’s way and save your life, frequent or continual activation of this same response can cause serious physical and psychological health problems.

Stress as a Holistic Phenomenon

Let’s use getting stuck in traffic and being 20 minutes late for an appointment as an example of what I mean by the holistic nature of stress. Imagine you are on your way to work this morning. Last night you had a bitter argument with your husband/wife and slept on the couch. You had a fitful night’s sleep and woke up late, with a sore back. Running late, you rush to get out of the house, forget your briefcase, and don’t have time for breakfast. On your way to work you buy coffee and an egg sandwich at the drive-in window of your local fast-food store. Still angry at your spouse and feeling distracted by being rushed, you pull out of the store without looking and almost ram into another car. You swerve to avoid the other driver and in the process spill hot coffee on your new business suit that you just got last night. Five miles into your 30 mile commute to work there was an accident on the road involving a tractor-trailer and a mini-van that slows traffic to a crawl. You realize that this is going to make you 20 minutes late for work and that you are going to miss your appointment. Now you are really furious and scream and yell at the accident as you pass it on the highway. You fumble for your cell phone and, while trying to drive and dial, call your boss explaining that you are going to be late for work. Your utter sense of helplessness and inability to cope with this situation sounds the alarm for the initiation of a stress response.

Let’s look at the same accident and 20 minute delay under different circumstances. Imagine it is six months later. You are on your way to work this morning. Last night you had a wonderful romantic evening with your husband/wife. Your daughter slept over a friend’s house and your spouse suggested that you play a little tennis together and then go out for a late dinner and drinks, even though it was the middle of the week. You had a great game of tennis, a wonderful meal, shared an excellent bottle of wine, and had the best sex in a long time, knowing that your daughter was sleeping soundly at her friend’s house. You slept like a log and woke up late, but with a smile on your face.

You rush out of the house, but make sure to stop and give your spouse a big hug and kiss. On your way to work you buy coffee and an egg sandwich at the drive-in window of your local fast-food store. You are careful not to spill the coffee all over yourself as you slowly pull out into the traffic. A car cuts in front of you but you are see it coming and are able to avoid it without spilling coffee all over yourself. As you pull out of the store you find yourself smiling and singing along to a song on the radio. You can’t remember when an egg sandwich tasted so good. In a few minutes you enter the highway. Five miles into your 30 mile commute to work there was an accident on the road involving a tractor-trailer and a mini-van that slows traffic to a crawl. You realize that this was going to make you 20 minutes late for work. As you pass the scene of the accident you sip your coffee and are thankful it isn’t you in the wreck. You pull over and call your boss on your cell phone explaining that you would be late for work. You call the person that you had the appointment with, apologize, and reschedule for another date.

In both situations you were exposed to the same potentially stressful situation; running behind schedule, getting stuck in traffic, and being 20 minutes late for work and an appointment. You encountered the potential stressor under two different sets of circumstances. These circumstances and the time between the two occasions definitely played a part in how you perceived the potential stressor each time it presented itself. In the first scenario you were already tired and in a bad mood from the events of the previous night and early morning. Under those circumstances, you rushed unnecessarily and were distracted. Getting stuck in traffic and being late for work was very threatening and something that you just couldn’t cope with. In the second scenario you were in such a great mood from the events of the previous night and early morning that you felt that you could cope with just about anything. You were thinking more clearly and realized that rushing unnecessarily would not get you to work much quicker at that time of the morning. Rather than feel stressed, you felt lucky that you were safe in your car as you crawled past the scene of the accident.

A New Way of Looking at Coping

Defining stress as a holistic transaction between an individual and a potential stressor resulting in a stress response sets up an entirely new way of coping with stress. When you view stress this way, you no longer see it as something that just happens to you, and is beyond your control. Stress is more than just “bills” or “traffic” or “the government.” Stress is now viewed as something that you can play an active role in understanding and managing. This gives you a sense of power because it provides multiple places where you can step in and intervene in the transaction. The progression from potential stressor to actual stressor and stress response does not have to automatically happen. You play the biggest part in determining how it proceeds.

The first way to intervene is to make a subtle shift in your language. Just using the words potential stressor, instead of calling them stressors, defuses their power to create stress. It allows you to stop accepting the outdated belief that certain things are inherently stressful. The whole notion of universal stressors (things that are threats for everyone under all circumstances) is nonsense and something you will no longer just accept without question.

Another example of how you can intervene in the leap from potential stressor to stress response is to build a toolbox of different kinds of coping strategies that are based on your values and work for you. In my approach to stress management I teach students and clients a variety of strategies and levels of coping that will give them all of the tools they need to cope with an infinite variety of potential stressors. Think of each coping strategy as a resource you have at your disposal to deal with stressors. The more different coping resources you have at your disposal, the easier it is to find one that works for you against a specific stressor in a specific place and time. Once you develop such a repertoire of coping strategies you begin to build confidence in your ability to cope with almost any potential stressor. This is called your perceived ability to cope. If you believe you can cope with a potential stressor it will keep you from perceiving it as threatening. In other words, if you feel that a potential stressor is not threatening and you believe you can cope with it, you can short-circuit the stress response.

Lastly, by understanding that the stress transaction is holistic in nature, you’ll begin to recognize the important role that your health plays in the stress response. Since every stress transaction is influenced by your overall level of wellness across the seven dimensions of health (physical, social, spiritual, emotional, intellectual, occupational and environmental), you can become more stress-resistant by building high-level health. High-level health can help you prevent potential stressors from ever becoming actual stressors by giving you the energy and resources you’ll need to assess them accurately and cope with them properly.

Understanding Stress and Coping by Richard Blonna