Lesson 1: Don’t Mess with Stress
Lesson 1: Don’t Mess with Stress
Lesson goals:
- Understand what stress is and how our body responds to it.
- Learn the definition of coping.
- Understand the family stress model.
Before you begin this course. Please take a minute and complete this short pre course survey. Click on the link here https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BCD3QWX
Introduction: Have you ever felt as though you can’t keep up with the daily demands of being a wife and mother/husband and father? Do you feel like you have too much on your plate? This is stress and stress is a common occurrence in this busy, fast paced world that we live in. There is always so much to do in too little time.
I know how stressful being a parent can be from firsthand experience. By the age of 25, I had a 4 year old, a 2 year old and a newborn baby. Six weeks after I had the C-section for my third child, I went under the knife yet again for an ACL knee reconstruction surgery. Sleep deprivation overcame me, I could not keep up with the daily demands of being a mother such as, cleaning the house, making home cooked meals, entertaining my children, grocery shopping, chauffeuring my children to activities and school, being a good wife, and the list goes on. Social media and websites such as Pinterest can create a romanticized image that parents think they need to keep up with and be like. This can create additional unnecessary strain and stress in our lives. -Lori’s story
Reflections questions throughout this course can be answered in a personal journal.
Have you ever felt like this?
When are times that you just felt like you are failing at everything and just can not keep up?
We will now take a closer look at what stress is.
What is stress?
The dictionary defines stress as:
1. Pressure or tension exerted on a material object.
2. A state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or very demanding circumstances.
This video below explains how stress affects our mind and body.
Reactions to stress
How do you react to stress? Do you fight back? Do you have a flight response where you want to just get away and run from it? Or do you freeze and just hope it goes away?
These two video’s below explain what reactions our bodies naturally have to stress.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtRrxNTnyh8
Reflection Questions:
Personal application- Please give deep thought to these questions and discuss them with your spouse or a friend.
-What are some ways that we use these responses in our daily battles with stress?
Relating to the story shared at the beginning of the lesson. I remember being so stressed out at times. My husband was working crazy hours and going to school, so he was not home a lot. I also provided in home childcare watching extra kids for more income. The house would get so messy, the kids would fight, dinner needed to be made, groceries needed to be purchased and taking several little kids to the grocery store in of itself can be incredibly stressful. I am sure those of you with kids can relate. I could choose to fight and figure out a way get it all done even though it was so hard and stressful. I could choose to run and avoid my responsibilities at all cost. Or I could choose to freeze and just do nothing. The choice was mine to make and we all make these same kinds of choices daily.
- In your reflection journal give examples of a time when you were stressed and explain what reaction you had to the event.
How stress affects the brain-
A study was done analysing the long-term effects of acute stress on the prefrontal-limbic system in the healthy adult. The participants in this study included forty-two healthy undergraduate students, they participated in this study about forty-one months after the 5/12 Wenchuan earthquake. The researchers “investigated the effects of trauma exposure on the structure and functional connectivity of the brains of trauma-exposed healthy individuals compared with healthy controls matched for age, sex, and education. They used machine-learning algorithms with the brain structural features to distinguish between the two groups at an individual level”(Li, et. al, 2017). The results of this study showed that in trauma exposed healthy individuals there was more gray matter density in prefrontal-limbic brain systems, including the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, amygdala and hippocampus, than in the controls. Individuals who go through traumatic experiences have more gray matter and this is found to be related to emotional regulation (Li, et. al, 2017).
What is Coping?
Dictionary.com describes coping as follows;
- To struggle or deal, especially on fairly even terms or with some degree of success.
- To face and deal with responsibilities, problems, or difficulties,especially successfully or in a calm or adequate manner.
In lesson 3 of this curriculum you will learn about effective and ineffective ways of coping.
Stress can only overtake us if we let it. The key is finding effective coping mechanisms that will help us get through any trial.
Stress Theories
One of the theories that involves stress in family life is the Family Stress Model. It looks at how economic difficulties can impact marital relationships, parenting practices, and child development. While finances are only one cause of stress, most people at some point or another feel overwhelmed when it comes to monetary matters. Masarik and Conger (2017) use this model, shown below, to explain in further depth the effects of economic hardship on the family.
Economic hardship can occur through a variety of ways: loss of a job, a pay cut, and raised prices on common items are just a few. As these hardships occur, economic pressure, or stress, is put upon the parents of families. Being providers for the family, this economic stress can sometimes cause extreme psychological distress, especially in the face of wanting to provide what is best for children. If this stress isn’t handled effectively, marital discord and disrupted parenting can occur, which leads to problems in child development. While all of this is occurring, factors or influences are acting upon the family for good or for bad. These influences can come from individuals, families, or communities, and include how one handles stress and what resources are available to help (Masarik et al., 2017).
The University of Texas investigated whether or not the family stress model was applicable to American Chinese families. Participants in this study included 444 Chinese American families residing in Northern California. The results of this intensive study showed evidence that, for both mothers and fathers, economic status indicators affected developmental outcomes through mediating family processes. “Economic stress and economic status were related to parental depressive symptoms, which, in turn, were associated with more hostile and coercive parenting, less nurturing and involved parenting, and greater interparental hostility.” (Benner & Su Yeong, 2010)
Conclusion:
One of the goals of this course is that you are able to find joy in the midst of trials. In order to meet this goal we ask that at the end of every day throughout this course, you get your personal journal out and write down at least one positive thing that is connected to a trial that you experienced that day. If you don’t have a journal, we would highly recommend you get one to write down thoughts from these lessons.
Please take a minute and complete this end of lesson survey by clicking on the link https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/BDLL93M
References:
Benner, A. D., & Su Yeong, K. (2010). Understanding Chinese American Adolescents' Developmental Outcomes: Insights From the Family Stress Model. Journal Of Research On Adolescence (Wiley-Blackwell), 20(1), 1-12. doi:10.1111/j.1532-7795.2009.00629.x
Coping/stress. (n.d.). Retrieved October 31, 2017, from http://www.dictionary.com/browse/coping?s=t
Li, Y., Hou, X., Wei, D., Du, X., Zhang, Q., Liu, G., & Qiu, J. (2017). Long-Term Effects of Acute Stress on the Prefrontal-Limbic System in the Healthy Adult. Plos One, 12(1), e0168315. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0168315
Masarik, A. S., & Conger, R. D. (2017). Stress and child development: A review of the family stress model. Current Opinion In Psychology, 13(Relationships and stress), 85-90. doi:10.1016/j.copsyc.2016.05.008
Williams, M. D. (2013). Family Stress & Coping. Rexburg, ID: Department of Home and Family, Brigham Young University.
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