Welcome to the course on stress management today is the first lecture on the scientific

foundations of stress and in this module we shall discuss.

What stress is?

Why two individuals respond differently during a stressful situation and definitely explore

the history and genesis of stress research but before that I would like to start with

a thought imagine just before you switched on the computer today to listen to this lecture

think if your computer would not start and it after a long time, a long amount of effort

that you could start your computer but you realize that there are several important files

missing from the hard disk how would you feel?

What were the what would be the bodily changes that would occur what would be the thoughts

that would rush to your mind now many of my students would tell me that this is a panic

button and this would immediately the panic button will switch on now what exactly is

the panic button and why does it switch on in such situations let us see so today in

our lecture we will cover this and we will start with what is stress?

Now stress can be defined as a response of the body to any demand placed on it.

So, it could be an external demand or it could be an internal demand.

So now what is an external demand?

It could be something like the fallen temperature outside it could be something like excessive

heat in the you know claustrophobic in a closed up room it could be a biological demand like

the illness trying to affect you and you are feeling easy about it there could be a psychological

demand like fear of being ridiculed in a public situation.

Now, why do individuals behave differently during stress?

We have seen that a stress affects individuals differently because of the way they perceive

the stress is stressful situation so it could it's I will give you an example say teacher

comes into the classroom and says that all of you have failed this exam and minded this

is a very important exam.

There will be many students who start crying or who get really perturbed by the teachers

statement maybe some are not bothered at all maybe some rebuked the teacher for the way

he has corrected the paper.

Now why do people respond differently one of the reasons is that it depends on the perception

of the situation as well as the individual’s perception to cope with the situation.

So this one individual who thinks oh god!

This is the end of the world I will never be able to pass this exam then, his bodily

stresses and his mind will respond differently to the situation compared to another individual

who thinks, that it's not a big deal next time there will be another exam and I will

show the teacher that I know much more than he thinks I do so the individuals judgment

that a stressful situation exists initiates a stress response now without this is very

important without this appraisal there is no stress in the person's psychological domain

or psychological schema.

So that is if I think that this situation is stressful I might be more stressed if I

think it is no big deal then I will not be stressed an example say if you were asked

to speak in your in a public forum when you were a child you do not have a problem but

when the sticks grew higher say you have to speak before a crowd who are going to evaluate

you on your performance how you stand how you look how you talk what kind of vocabulary

you are using then definitely the stakes are high and you perceive this situation as more

stressful than you did as a child.

So now that is what the psychological?

What we mean by the psychological schema?

And how it changes with time?

And with personal experiences?

We will talk about this later in a different module but another thing that I would like

to emphasize is that even though a situation is perceived as a demand or threat it may

not mobilize a straight stress response that is even if I think that this is serious, I

am going to land myself in trouble or is it is an O God!

Responds but it may not mobilize some of the stressful thoughts are the stressful bodily

changes.

Now one of the reasons being that I feel that there is a way.

I can cope with it now these coping strategies again we are going to discuss this later this

the coping strategies of an individual primarily based from his internal coping strategies

some are from the way he thinks and some are external protective factors like family friends

social support so it could be like if I did not do well in this exam never mind.

I have my friend who is really great in this paper so he is going to help me to deal with

this so it will not be a problem so I am not getting stressed because I have the ability

or the coping mechanism to deal with it.

Now we will talk about the internal and the external factors again but right now we will

get into the pioneers in stress research.

Now stress has been a topic of study over centuries and even in different metallurgical

texts and biblical references we come across stress and emotion and sudden cardiac death

which is also mentioned in the Indian metalogical effects also there is a biblical reference

to there are earlier other earlier decisions to the concept of stress where physicians

and patients have linked adverse life affects life events and illness.

And of course many contemporary cultures this is very interesting regard illness as the

outcome of being out of balance with the environment and its demands that is there is an absence

of harmony between the environment and the individual.

I will give you an example think about an individual who is got a job in a city where

he does not know the language he is unaware he is not used to the food habits and he is

the environmental conditions are very different from where he was brought and bread so think

about his harmony with the environment.

Now if he can accommodate himself to the changing demands of the environment then he will not

have a potential stressor affecting him but if he feels that there is I cannot accommodate

I cannot adjust to the changing demands say if it is a very cold country and he is not

able to adjust to the extreme cold harsh temperatures or if he is a very social person and he has

work in isolated conditions then he may not have he may have adjustment problems.

Now with adjustment problems now you have to see that these actually are created due

to disharmony between the environment and the individual now this creates a stress within

the individual that brings about other psychosomatic problems other bodily issues that make create

and that may cause several that may be the cause of several illnesses several psychological

illnesses like depression light psychosomatic disorders physiological disorders extra.

So now talking about the Pioneers another very interesting fact to observe is that the

most the maximum amount of stress research started during the world wars now I will leave

it to you to understand why it was very important to understand stress during the world war

now one of the famous pioneers in stress research was Walter cannon.

Walter cannon was a physiologist in Harvard Medical School and he first described body's

response to stress I will give you a situation imagine walking down a lonely dark alley at

a very dimly lit dark alley at night and there is nobody around and while when you have reached

almost a point of no return you see a burly figure coming with a club in his hand and

approaching you how would you respond?

What would be the immediate thought and immediate bodily changes that you would go through?

I will mention some of them it could be an increased heartbeat perspiration dryness of

mouth sudden tremor muscle stand up and there could be a lot of other responses that your

body is going through.

Now in many of you would know have heard of the word adrenaline rush and people very often

talk about the adrenaline rush and we respond to a situation immediately so this what is

happening to the body.

The body is preparing itself to confront a threat and why the stand ground that is either

to fight or flight or run away.

Now Walter cannon termed this response as the fight-or-flight response now this is the

way he described body's response to stress.

Now this is very important for the body to prepare itself to face the threat one of the

reasons being that if it does not then it will be affected by the threat or rather the

threat will actually overpower you in this case the burly figure might just hit you or

it might cause a stress or cause a problem to your survival.

So in this case the body prepares itself to either fight or run away from this place.

Now this concept of the fight-or-flight response introduced by Walter cannon was very much

appreciated and by several researchers across the world and some of the researchers actually

followed up the theory and propounded menu theories and one of them being Hand Selye.

Hand Selye was an endocrinologist and he found while working with rats he found that the

rats response he introduced some stress on the rack and he saw that there were several

changes in the body that happened due to that introduction of the stressor.

Now a stressor is something that is that has a potential to create stress we will talk

about this later again now he saw Hand Selye saw that there was his rats who were given

stress stressors had developed an enlargement of the adrenal cortex shrinkage of lymphatic

structures and also in the stomach these were to name a few of the bodily changes that happen

to an exposure to stressors in there in his rats.

So Selye he identified that regardless of the source of stress the body responded in

the same manner to a stressful situation and this he summarized as stress reactivity and

this he stress reactivity he said it was a three phase process which he termed as general

adaptation syndrome you can go through his famous work the stress of life in 1956 Hanny

and Selye had published this work and it is a very interesting read.

Now talking a little about the general adaptation syndrome so Selye said that the first phase

is the alarm reaction where the body shows changes at the first exposure of the stressor

so the body is identifying that there is a stressful stimulus so that is the stage of

alarm reaction the next stage is the stage of resistance where the body is trying to

fight the stress or so and is trying to get adapted to the stressful situation if it can

adapt well and good if not the body shows signs characteristic of the resistance their

resistance Rises higher than the normal and definitely.

After that is the stage of exhaustion where long-continued stressful situation makes the

body get when deplete the energy of the body and leads to exhaustion now the alarm reactions

may reappear but this time the body is not able to fight it now I will give you an example

of fever.

Now fever is where the immune system of the body is trying to fight the infectious agents

like virus and bacteria.

So when a virus or bacteria is trying to enter the body the body's first reacts by an alarm

reaction so it is aware that there is a foreign agent trying to affect the body the next stage

is that of resistance where the temperature of the body rises to kill these germs.

Now if the temperature that has risen is not enough to actually manage these infectious

agents then exhaustion strikes that is the less strikes the individual.

Now let us see this was a biological stress or where I explained it to you now let us

see what happens in a psychological situation.

Say in the alarm phase for example an individual is has gone to a party and this individual

suffers from social anxiety so he is anxious of what people are thinking about him how

they are observing each of his movements as to what he is saying what he is wearing whether

he is fumbling whether he is talking a little too much so he is this is an individual with

a social anxiety gone to a party situation and he this is the first alarm this is a serious

stressor for me the resistance phase when others are trying to involve that individuals

in the situation in the party now he experiences different guidance of physiological changes.

So it could be that he is perspiring he is having muscle tension he has increased heart

rate he is fumbling for words he is trying to escape the situation and in the exhaustion

face if this carries on for a long time then he may undergo an exhaustion phase where he

is actually suffering from an illness it could.

He could develop something like blood pressure problem or also coronary heart disease now

this I have adapted from a Greenville 2012.

Now hand celli does define stress as a nonspecific response of the body to any demand upon it

so that means the good things so whether it is whatever this stressful demand it could

be a positive demand it could be a negative demand so it could be something like a good

thing like a job promotion which you must adapt to that was this is known as you stress

and the bad things like the bereavement or leaving a place and going to different place

which must wish you must adapt to again so this is termed distress and both these situations

are actually experienced the same way physiologically.

So that is why it is very important that the life events we understand the life events

that an individual is going through when we are talking about stress management.

So rather I should say when we are talking about stress so what are the life events that

an individual is going through in the recent period of time because that is going to affect

the physiological changes.

Now Simeon's another very interesting individual in 1961 related evolution to psychosomatic

disease I have spoken of psychosomatic disease before psychosomatic disease is bodily change

a body in bodily illness that is created due to a stress within the individual.

Now single said that the human brain has failed to develop at the pace needed to respond to

symbolic stressors and the 20th century.

Now what does he mean by symbolic stresses.

Symbolic stressors are stresses that are actually not a threat to our survival for example say

if I think that this will sit in this situation I may be ridiculed that is not a threat to

my biological survival unfortunately the brain has not developed to accommodate itself to

this change or to this symbolic stressor so the what does a brain do?

The brain responds in the same way as it would do to a survival threat.

So see if there is a threat to the self-esteem from a fear of embarrassment during public

speaking now the fight-or-flight response would not be a healthy response or say if

you have to if you are facing if you have to face an interview and that is causing real

anxiety to you running away from the interview situation the flight response or hitting the

interviewer the fight response would not help you.

Now several other researchers have added to the work of cannon Selye and Simeons and they

shed more light to the relationship of stress to the body processes so with this understand

we have better understood several illnesses and diseases and how this the more important

thing is that we realize that we need to address the stress to prevent these conditions from

developing and a lot of research has continued on how to reduce the stress burden from society.

Holmes and Rahe here again two very important people in 1967 they emphasized on the role

of life events in stress.

I was just talking about like events in stressed they showed that the more significant the

changes in one's life the greater is the chance of the on set of illness in fact I have a

paper one of my research work on life events suicide and stress shows that the life events

are a very important factor as a perceived stressor to cause attempted suicides to that

is to force an individual to compel an individual to attempt suicide.

Now Lazarus the longest and others found that daily hassles are also a very important factor

and which is detrimental to health and major life changes.

Harold wolff in 1953 found that a large number of this I'll explain it a little this as I

told you that during the world wars there was a lot of stress research and Harold whose

research he tried to identify why there were so many people dying in the Japanese concentration

camps as compared to German concentration camps just before release.

Now they were he found that around one in 30 would die outer in the Japanese concentration

camps so now this as compared to the German concentration camps which is around 1 in 100

so this was very strange considering that the environmental context and the food and

the other conditions being constant what was the reason that led to so many deaths in constant

Japanese concentration camps.

So he found that a large number of death before release in inmates of Japanese concentration

camps were due to an increased amount of a new emotional stress as compared to the German

camps.

Now we will have to remember that most of the constant people in the concentration camps

in Germany were from nearby land so they were also used to the they were familiar with so

there were some familiarity with the conditions environmental conditions but the for Japan

being faraway place and maybe the emotional stressor was much higher as compared to that

in the German concentration camps.

Now this is a list that I give before you can go through it and you can see how very

interesting research on stress has been carried out across centuries I would like to mention

Benson and Jacobson who later worked on relaxation training.

We will talk about relaxation training in a different module but this is very important

because Benson and Jacobson showed that with relaxation you can actually reduce the stress

response and that this was identified as one of the major areas ways to relieve stress.

Now to summarize we have seen what stress is and why individuals differ in their stress

response and we have explored the history and genesis of stress in the next module we

shall discuss about the sources of stress learn to distinguish between new stress distress

and find out how stress can also be helpful to the individual.

Thank You.