Coping with Stress and Depression Class - Assignment Example

Question a) of a chronic stressor in my life The chronic stressor of my life is divorce. Divorce is defined as any formal dissolution of couples according to certain established customs. Divorce is considered very painful and sometimes has psychological effects to both parties. It interferes with living plans, household tasks, agendas, and finances. In addition, it can also affect the children and other family members. There are various effects of divorce on families and children. Such effects are felt in the hearts, minds, and souls of the victims in a number of ways. It is always not easy to guess how or to what extent the victims are affected. For instance, I used to see my parents fighting over family issues that later led to divorce where I ended up being with my father. This caused a psychological distress in my mind, as I could not stand the state of losing a parent. Since then, I have always lived with one parent with an imagination that one day I will meet my mother. b) Three original coping thoughts that I might use to help counteract the stress of the situation i) “Everything happens for a reason” ii) “If she loved me so much, she should have come looking for me” iii) “I’m a full grown up and take care of myself and no need to worry” Question 2 a) A brief description of the situation Arguably, divorce will always make me feel depressed and lonely. It will also affect my education, as it will create some emotional effects. Most of the times, I will not concentrate in my class work, but on the challenges coming my way. Divorce also has a number of challenges to the community and the world. For instance, children who are victims of divorce always end up in the streets and become drug addicts. This generally affects the community, as it will no longer have good reputation for bringing up many drug addicts and street children. Since divorce reduces the leaning ability of children, the effect will be greatly felt in the community considering that it cannot develop without learned individuals. In my opinion, divorce cannot be avoided, but the effects can be easily solved. It is ideal to major on how various divorce problems can be solved and not how divorce can be prevented. There are many signs of stress though some depends on the affected individual. This is because people act differently to stress and ways of curbing stress also differ from one individual to the other. Story of divorce Despite many stories related to the effects of divorce on the families and children, sultan’s story appears to be more emotional. Sultan was considered to be a naive boy, lived a horrifying life, and underwent a lot of suffering as a result of his parents’ divorce. This scenario made him to stay in unknown world. While he was young, Sultan used to watch his parents having troubles and fighting on the most considerable reasons. This did not only affect his life, but he also lost his situation between his parents. Sultan was considered to be a superior student when he was still young. This is because he was able to effectively compete with other students in class. As time goes by, in the intermediate school, Sultan’s teacher in the school had realized that his life was filled with deep thinking, and escaping mentally from real life. Unexpectedly, sultan’s like changed and he started to being away from people, having deep thoughts, and finding the imaginary life. His personally was now considered to be dark and in search of treatment. One day while at his elementary school, he was in a miserable condition since he appeared to be beaten with some damages on his shoulder. When he was asked by the teacher what went wrong, Sultan desperately kept on looking at the ground without talking or whispering to the teacher. The teacher became worried about his satiation and did not know what to do or say to him so that he could talk. Sultan’s teacher wondered why he suddenly became a desperate person, drawing dreadful paints on the wall, containing a dark outlook and a bloody brutal life. Finally, Sultan answered the teacher with a pathetic voice “I have been experiencing a complicated lifesince my parents divorcedas this resulted into a lot of troubles and completely affected my life.” He explained that there was an important reason why his life was completely destroyed. Since he now lived with his step mother, Sultan received unfair treatment and was also not allowed to hang out with friends. His teacher could not talk by the time Sultan was explaining what had happened to him after the divorce. Therefore, the school was considered to be the only place where Sultan could have a peaceful mind, think mentally, and escape the beatings and abuses from his step mother. After passing his exams and being admitted in high school, his father had taken him to another learning institution since they had already moved out from where they used to stay. Since they moved out from where they used to stay, the teacher did not have another opportunity to meet Sultan. b) The four techniques i) Physical signs of stress The physical signs of stress tend to differ from one person to the other. Some of these signs are health rated and may have short or long-term effects on an individual’s life. This depends on the strategies or coping thoughts that an individual uses to salvage the situation. Some of the common physical signs of stress are; Neck ache, heartburn, constipation, stomach upset, dizziness and mild headache. ii) Reinterpretation of stressors In reinterpreting stressors, an individual should find the root cause of his or her stress and learn to apply the viable ways of reducing the stress. Stress as is one of the killers if not managed properly hence, failure to discover the root may lead to long-term problems. Interpretation and reinterpretation help in administering proper solution to the victim. After recognizing the stressor, an individual may start developing positive attitude towards the stressor. For instance, I learnt to fix my mind of the positive side of the situation that life has to continue and my mother still loved me wherever she was. iii) Identifying viable options There are many ideal ways of reducing stress depending on the magnitude of the stressor, Actually, stress being an alteration of the normal body functioning, and individual should learn to apply physical remedies to maintain normal body functioning. Some of the viable ways of stress reduction include; regular exercise (physical), having enough sleep, keeping oneself busy, getting directions from a physical or stress therapist. These are some of the common ways of reducing stress. In my situation, I used to do a lot of exercise and always made sure that my mind was occupied with some activity to avoid loneliness that that may trigger negative thoughts. iv) Accentuation of personal strengths After developing the coping thoughts and applying the necessary stress reduction exercises, the mind become stronger than before hence easy to cope with serious stressors. According to the information given in the class readings, stressors can be well managed by employing coping thoughts. As a onetime victim of stress, I learnt a lot after observing the damages of the first stressor in my life. One of the teachings was that, people have the strength to avoid stress after realizing the stressor. Actually, my personal strength and the only strength that people posses without their knowledge is to accept every occurrences or changes within our surrounding (those that are beyond our control) Question 3 a) Recent stressful situation Recently, I was involved in a lucrative business that involved buying of goods cheaply and selling inflating the prices after ferrying them to a distant location. For the business to grow and meet customer demands, I had to borrow secure a loan that was given by the bank after monitoring my business growth. After one year, a gang arrested one of my partners who was on his way to the bank to deposit the money realized from the business within a lot duration. They took the money and spared the lives of my business partner. The business deteriorated and we could not manage settling the bank loan, a process that forced the bank to assume the ownership of all our business assets leaving us with nothing. This became a chronic stressor of my life for some time before employing the possible stress reduction measures. I had a strong spiritual belief that thinks will be ok without the huge lump of money lost. I created positive stress coping thoughts inmy mind and this propelled me towards achieving stress freedom. I assumed that everything was all right even though things were worse. b) Discussion on I could apply two or more approaches from the course material to a similar situation in the future According to the information displayed in the course material, there are many approaches of reducing stress. One of the ways of reducing stress is the creation of coping thoughts. This helps in strengthening one’s self-esteem and perception towards a negative occurrence. In case of the same event in the future, I would start by developing coping thoughts, as this would help me console my feelings about the situation. Again, interpreting and reinterpreting the stressor will be of great importance as it helps in identifying the stressors and employing viable strategies. The use of regular exercises and getting my mind preoccupied by other activities will also help in reducing stress. This clears the mind of negative thoughts as exhibited in the course material. Question 4 a) Relaxation technique Of all the relaxation techniques, mediation was my favorite b) What makes it my favorite Meditation does not involve many body-exhausting exercises. When I first tried meditation as a stress reducing technique, I realized that it relieves the physical, mental and psychological problems caused by stress. When meditating, one’s mind becomes relieved of the present problems as this enhances developments of coping that reduce stress within a short duration. Actually, mediation gives options and opens the consciousness of an individual hence a good technique for stress management. Meditation as per my perception is better than deep breathing as a technique of stress management. When I tried deep breathing, I experienced an increase in heartbeat and this made me to feel even weaker than before. This makes meditation an ideal and effective technique of stress management. c) Application of meditation technique in future Meditation can be used in relieving almost all types of stress regardless of the stress magnitude. Actually, meditation should be used before experiencing physical injuries to avoid double stress management. In a case where there are physical signs of stress, both mediation and use of medical therapies is ideal. This makes meditation an important technique than can be applied together with other stress measures in combination or independently. Read More