Vertiefungswissen anzeigenVertiefungswissen verbergenStress reactions and coping
Stress reactions
- Cognitively
- Emotionally
- Vegetative
- Muscularly
Learning goals:
- The participants recognize the warning signals of their body and can react to stress at an early stage.
- The participants will be aware of the particular stress factors that are particularly burdensome.
Method
Participants must be asked to specify their individual stress reactions on a prepared worksheet. The guiding principle of the task is that one only gets ready with stress or overload, if one has a certain knowledge about how stress and / or overburden is presented. Typical stress reactions can serve as a kind of early warning system. Participants should be familiar with their stress reactions and keep them in writing in order to be able to use them as warning signals for timely switching in stressful situations.
This gives you an overview of the level of particular stressors and they can deduce where they are going to relieve their stress.
Long-term stress management
Learning goal:
- The participants focus on major stress causes and develop an individual plan of action to cope with stress in the long term.
Participants can overcome stress only through their own actions. Through the previous work steps, the participants have recognised their individual stressors and stress reactions.
For an effective and long-term stress management they should concentrate on a few stressors.
Method
The next step for the participants is to create an action plan. This plan should include specific action steps, which clarify what the participants want to do against the stressors in the next 4 weeks.
The plan should not be too demanding. It must not overstretch the participants in time and not be too complicated. It should be feasible and simple. The participants should be made aware that there are also stressors, where they can only change a little. That is why they should focus their energies on what they can change.
Manual
The participants should note on one sheet the stress causes which they want to process in the next 4 weeks. They should be limited to a maximum of two stress causes, which they feel as a heavy burden and a maximum of 4, which they think will not be difficult for them to cope with.
The participants should write down the measures, which they want to implement, to the right of each of the listed stress causes. In the third column the dates are to be defined when they will implement each individual measure within the next 4 weeks.
Short-term stress management
- Breathing technique
- Thoughts stop!
- Positive self-talk
Learning goals:
- The participants know a way to relax quickly and quickly, to perceive consciously their breath and to use it in a targeted way.
- The participants learn to interrupt their negative stressful thoughts.
- Participants can recognize and change stress-generating and stress-enhancing thoughts.
Methods for short-term stress management are useful when:
- The situation cannot be changed, if the cause of the stress cannot be eliminated
- You are in an acute stress situation and want to continue to think clearly
- To avoid escalations
Breathing technique
When learning relaxation techniques, an undisturbed atmosphere should be taken into a darkened and well-tempered room.
The clothing should be comfortable and the body position should be relaxed. After each relaxation phase, activation of the organism should take place by means of loosening and stretching. A participant should not be compelled to carry out the exercise.
ExecutionThe participants should be informed the day before to bring along blankets.
Talk to the participants about the benefits of the exercises: It is a good method to reduce stress before you step in front of a group or before a difficult situation to cope with. Deep breathing relaxes and supplies the body with oxygen.
Three-stage breathingRepeat every exercise 5-10 times.
1st stage: collarbone inhalation
- Breathe in – the hands lie on the upper part of the thoracic cavity, slowly inhale, so that the chest increases slightly.
- Breathe out
- While breathing out, make sure that all the air flows out to allow room for new oxygen-rich air. The hands remain passive, lie loosely on the chest and feel the lifting and lowering of the chest.
2nd stage: breast breathing
- Breathe in
- Place both hands on the ribs so that the fingertips almost touch each other. When inhaling, feel the ribs widen to the outside and the hands apart.
- Breathe out
- When exhaling, the fingertips approach again.
3rd stage: abdominal breathing
- Breathe in
- Place the hands at the level of the navel on the abdomen. First exhale. When breathing in, the abdomen lifts. This lowers the diaphragm and the lower lung areas fill with air. The hands are thereby pushed upwards.
- Breathe out
- When exhaled, the diaphragm returns to its dome-shaped position. The abdomen becomes flat and the hands return to their starting position.
Thought Stop!
Stress causes need to be explored so that you can get rid of them. But until that is possible, the stressful thoughts do not have to be delivered continuously. With the stop technique, stressful thoughts can be interrupted most effectively.
Manual
The participants will be guided to imagine something, which stands for immediate interruption of their stressful thoughts. This could be a red stop sign as they know it from road traffic. Another option is they imagine how they turn a water tap and thus immediately stop the running of the water. Each participants should decide for an individual stop image.
The participants should say “stop!” in their own thoughts. If the situation permits, they can also say or call “stop”.
They should be supposed to make a positive thought, for example a favourite song or a view during their walks.
If the stress thought recurs, the exercise should be repeated.
Positive self-talk
Positive thinking is necessary because negative thinking often generates stress. An important technique in stress management is to re-program negative thinking into positive thinking.
In self-talks often premature conclusions are drawn, situations are assessed one-sidedly and wrong results are made. The aim of a positive self-talk is to recognize precisely these negative stress-generating thoughts and transform them into positive ones.
Positive thinking:
If the given situations, facts and possibilities are judged appropriately and there exist the willingness change the present actively in order to improve in the future. Positive thoughts are closely linked to self-confidence, self-acceptance, well-being, performance and zest for life.
sources:
https://wiki.zum.de/wiki/Kompetenzen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stress_management
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coping_(psychology)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness-based_stress_reduction
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