Meeting Life Challenges

Written and reviewed by Subhra Gupta, Humanities faculty at UniDrill (M.A. Sociology, University of Delhi · 7 years teaching Humanities). Based on NCERT Psychology Class XII (Psychology), Chapter 3.

Why does the same exam scare one student and excite another?

It is the night before the board exam. One student is tossing in bed, replaying every chapter she has not revised. Another is calm, a little excited, and sleeps well. The question paper is identical, the room is identical, yet the experience is not. This chapter explains why: stress is not simply a thing that happens to you. It is what happens between an event, the way you read that event, and what you believe you can do about it.

The textbook's own picture is a cricket match. A number 11 batsman and an opening batsman face the same fast bowler. For one, the delivery is a danger. For the other, it is exactly what he came to do. Keep this image in mind, because the whole chapter is a way of explaining it.

What stress is, and the two faces of it

The word stress comes from two Latin roots: strictus (tight or narrow) and stringere (to tighten). They match what a stressed person feels, a tight chest and tense muscles. A stressor is any event that makes the body give a stress response: noise, crowding, a bad relationship, a daily commute. The reaction to an external stressor is called strain.

The chapter defines stress as the pattern of responses an organism makes to a stimulus event that disturbs its equilibrium and exceeds its ability to cope. Notice the two conditions. The event must disturb balance (homeostasis), and it must feel bigger than your ability to deal with it.

Stress is not always bad. The textbook compares it to electricity. The right amount gives energy, raises arousal and sharpens performance. Too much fuses the bulb. Too little leaves you listless and slow.

Two views. For the exam: Hans Selye, the father of modern stress research, defined stress as the non specific response of the body to any demand, meaning the body responds in the same pattern whatever the cause. Another reading: many researchers disagree, because different stressors produce somewhat different reaction patterns and different people respond in their own characteristic ways. Today stress is treated as a process in which the person and the environment interact, not as a fixed reaction.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: eustress is good stress and distress is harmful stress, and the electricity comparison explains why. In reality: the relationship between pressure and performance is often described as an inverted U, known as the Yerkes–Dodson law. Performance rises as arousal rises, peaks at a moderate level, and then falls. That is why a little exam nervousness helps and a flood of it makes your mind go blank. Why it matters: it tells you the aim is not zero stress. The aim is the right amount.

Appraisal: stress lives in the mind of the person

Richard Lazarus and his colleagues explained why people differ. Stress depends on how you appraise an event and your resources, in two steps.

Primary appraisal is your judgement of the event itself: is it positive, neutral or negative in its consequences? If it is negative, you size it up as one of three things.

Secondary appraisal is your judgement of your own coping abilities and resources: are they enough to meet the harm, threat or challenge? These resources can be mental, physical, personal or social. If you think you have a positive attitude, health, skills and support, you feel less stressed.

Cause → effect: the same event, say a surprise test. A student who has handled such tests before, who feels able to control the outcome and who has good friends to ask for help appraises it as a challenge and feels little distress. A student with none of these appraises it as a threat. The event did not change. The appraisal did.

Pause and predict: two students hear that the school will hold a surprise oral test. One thinks, "I have done these before and I can revise tonight." The other thinks, "I will be humiliated." Which step of appraisal differs most between them?

Check your answer: secondary appraisal. Both see a possible negative event (primary appraisal), but they judge their own resources very differently. One has confidence from past experience and a sense of control. The other does not.

Past experience and a sense of control are two big factors in appraisal. Someone who has handled similar situations before finds them less threatening, and someone who believes they can control the onset or consequences of a negative event experiences less stress. Self confidence and a sense of efficacy can decide whether a situation is read as a threat or a challenge.

Dimensions of stress. Stress also varies along four dimensions. Intense, prolonged, complex and unanticipated stress generally does more harm than the opposite kind.

Other factors shape the experience too: physical health and constitution, mental health, temperament, self concept, the cultural context that gives events their meaning, and resources such as money, social skills, coping style and support networks.

How the body reacts: two pathways

When a stressor is perceived, the hypothalamus starts action along two pathways. Learn which gland goes with which chemical, because this is a favourite matching question.

The reactions to stress also show up as emotional ones (fear, anxiety, embarrassment, anger, depression or denial), behavioural ones (fight or confrontation, flight or withdrawal), and cognitive ones (beliefs about the harm or threat and about its causes, plus inability to concentrate and intrusive, repetitive or morbid thoughts).

Types and sources of stress

The three types are interrelated. A hot, noisy classroom (environmental) can sharpen a quarrel with a classmate (social), which you then keep replaying (psychological).

Psychological stress has four common sources, and these are tested often.

Social stress varies widely from person to person. A party can drain a person who likes quiet evenings at home, while an outgoing person may find staying home stressful.

Where stress comes from in daily life. Three broad sources are life events, hassles and traumatic events.

The more stress people report from daily hassles, the poorer their psychological well being. Trauma can leave anxiety, flashbacks, dreams and intrusive thoughts that persist, and professional help is needed if they last for many months.

Measuring life events. Holmes and Rahe developed a life event scale. The Indian version is the Presumptive Stressful Life Events Scale by Singh, Kaur and Kaur, a self rating questionnaire of 51 life changes, each given a numerical weight. Both positive and negative events count, because both kinds of change cause stress. The respondent's score is the weighted sum of the events ticked for the past year. Death of a spouse carries the highest weight (95), then personal illness or injury (56), failure in an examination (43), appearing for an examination or interview (43) and change in sleeping habits (33).

If a question asks you to order events by severity, use this ladder. The mean number of stressful events a person experiences in a year without overt physical or mental illness is about two. The link between life events and any particular illness is weak, so a high score is a signal to look after yourself, not a prediction of illness.

Effects of stress

Stress has four kinds of effects.

Short bursts of this response help you function under pressure. Over long periods it damages the body.

Examination anxiety. Tension or uneasiness before, during or after an exam is common, and a little of it is motivating. It becomes a problem when it is so high that you cannot perform at the level your ability shows in less stressful settings. The textbook calls this evaluative apprehension. Highly test anxious students see evaluation as a personal threat, and their negative, self centred thoughts ("I am hopeless") steal attention from the paper. Instead of plunging into the task they "plunge inward", so they miss cues that are in front of them or hit attentional blocks. Good preparation means enough study time, weighing strengths and weaknesses, discussing difficulties with teachers, planning a revision timetable, condensing notes, spacing out revision and staying calm on the day.

Stress and health. Prolonged stress affects physical health and psychological functioning. People feel exhausted and develop attitudinal problems when demands are high and support from family and friends is low. The physical exhaustion appears as chronic fatigue, weakness and low energy. The mental exhaustion appears as irritability, anxiety, and feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. This combined state of physical, emotional and psychological exhaustion is burnout. Stress is also implicated in cardiovascular disorders, high blood pressure and psychosomatic disorders such as ulcers, asthma, allergies and headaches.

Selye's General Adaptation Syndrome

Selye subjected animals to high temperature, X-rays and insulin injections over long periods, and observed patients with injuries and illnesses. He found a similar bodily pattern whatever the stressor, and named it the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS).

The sequence in one line: presence of a stressor → alarm reaction → resistance → exhaustion.

Selye's model has been criticised because it gives psychological factors a very limited role. Research shows that the appraisal of events is important in deciding whether something is stressful, and that people's responses depend heavily on their perceptions, personalities and biological constitutions.

Stress and the immune system

Psychoneuroimmunology studies the links between mind, brain and the immune system. The immune system guards the body against attackers from outside and within. Its white blood cells (leucocytes) identify and destroy foreign bodies (antigens) such as viruses, and lead to the production of antibodies.

Stress can reduce natural killer cell cytotoxicity, which is vital in defence against infection and cancer. Lower levels have been found in highly stressed people, including students facing important examinations, bereaved persons and those severely depressed. Immune functioning is better in people who receive social support, and changes in immunity matter more for people whose immune systems are already weak.

The chain runs like this. Psychological stress brings negative emotions (depression, hostility, anger, aggression). Stress hormones are released. The immune system weakens. Mental or physical illness follows. Long term stress also increases panic attacks and obsessive behaviour, and feelings of hopelessness are linked with worsening disease.

Beyond the textbook. For the exam: stress weakens the immune system, and the NK cell finding is the evidence. In reality: the effect is a matter of degree, not an on and off switch. Short bursts of stress can even prepare the body to respond, while long lasting, unpredictable stress is most linked to weaker defence. This is why feeling run down after exam week is common but does not mean you are ill for certain. Why it matters: it explains why the textbook keeps stressing chronic, prolonged stress and social support.

Lifestyle. Stress can push us toward unhealthy habits: poor nutrition, less sleep, smoking and alcohol. These feel pleasant for a short time, so we underestimate their long term damage. Health promoting behaviours such as a balanced diet, regular exercise and family support work the other way. Positive thinking added to a low fat balanced diet and regular activity enhances health and longevity.

Coping: how you respond matters more than what hit you

In recent years the conviction has grown that it is how we cope with stress, not the stress itself, that shapes psychological well being, social functioning and health. Coping is a dynamic, situation specific reaction to stress: a set of concrete responses meant to resolve the problem and reduce stress. People who cope poorly show weaker immune responses and lower natural killer cell activity.

Lazarus and Folkman saw coping as a dynamic process, not a fixed trait: constantly changing cognitive and behavioural efforts to master, reduce or tolerate demands created by a stressful transaction. They divide coping responses into two types. Endler and Parker describe three strategies. Do not mix the two models.

Both problem focused and emotion focused coping are needed, but people generally use problem focused coping more often.

Pause and predict: a student whose result is delayed keeps scrolling videos so she does not have to think about it. Which Endler and Parker strategy is this?

Check your answer: avoidance oriented coping. She is replacing a stressful thought with a distraction. It may calm her for an evening, but it does nothing to change the situation. Compare a classmate who finds out the date of the result and plans backup options. That is task oriented coping.

Stress management techniques

"Inoculation" is the key word for Meichenbaum: like a vaccine, the training prepares you for stress before it strikes.

Life skills and positive health

Life skills are abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that help people deal with everyday demands and challenges. They can be learned and improved.

Perfectionists must get everything just right, find it hard to relax, are critical of themselves and others, and tend to avoid challenges. Avoidance is putting an issue under the carpet. Procrastination is putting off what you know you need to do, often to avoid fear of failure or rejection.

Positive health. Health is a state of complete physical, mental, social and spiritual well being, not merely the absence of disease. Positive health includes a healthy body, high quality personal relationships, a sense of purpose in life, self regard and mastery of life's tasks, and resilience to stress, trauma and change. Five factors act as stress buffers.

Stress resistant personality. Suzanne Kobasa found that people with high stress but low illness share three traits, her hardiness or "three Cs": commitment (to work, family, hobbies and social life), control (a sense of purpose and direction in life) and challenge (seeing change as normal and positive, not as a threat). Not everyone has these naturally, so many of us have to learn life skills such as rational thinking and assertiveness.

Social support has three forms, and the difference between quality and quantity is a classic trap.

Perceived support, the quality of support you feel you have, is positively related to health and well being. Social network, the quantity of contacts, is unrelated to well being, because a large network is time consuming and demanding to maintain. People with high social support experience less stress and cope more successfully, and social support reduces distress such as depression and anxiety.

Resilience. Resilience is a dynamic developmental process of maintaining positive adjustment under challenging life conditions, the capacity to bounce back. It is described through three resources.

A resilient child needs more than one of these. A child with plenty of self esteem (I AM) but nobody to turn to (I HAVE) and no problem solving ability (I CAN) will not be resilient.

Why it matters. Many of us will face a crisis at some point, and some people rebuild their lives positively. If you ever feel that stress has become too heavy to carry, or it is not easing after weeks, talking to a parent, teacher, school counsellor or doctor is a sign of strength. Seeking support is itself a coping skill.

Exam traps

60-second revision

Where this chapter connects

• Previous: Self and Personality explains self concept and traits such as self efficacy that shape how you appraise stress.
• Next: Psychological Disorders shows what happens when anxiety, trauma and stress reach levels that disrupt everyday life.
• Related: Therapeutic Approaches covers relaxation, cognitive therapies and other ways professionals help people cope. Motivation and Emotion covers emotions such as fear, anxiety and anger, which are part of the emotional response to stress.