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Chapter 1What is Stress?

© 2007 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.

Overview Examines the etiology of the

author’s new way of defining stress by tracing its roots in four common ways of defining stress

Describes how the author’s new definition of stress integrates these four common views of stress

© 2007 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.

Outline

Many researchers and theorists have contributed to defining what stress isEarly physiological research

pioneersPsychological stress researchersThe holistic health/wellness

movement A new definition of stress

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Stress Is Universal But Different for Different People

Everyone experiences stress To be alive is to be stressed Stress means different things

to different people

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What Is Stress?

Four common ways of defining stress Stress as response Stress as stimulus Stress as a transaction Stress as a holistic health

phenomenon

© 2007 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.

Stress as Response

The early pioneers Claude Bernard (milieu

interieur) Walter Cannon (homeostasis) Hans Selye (General

Adaptation Syndrome—GAS)

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Stress as Stimulus

Psychological stress researchers

Holmes and Rahe (life events approach)

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Stress as a Transaction

Other psychological stress researchers Simeons (symbolic threats) Lazarus (threat appraisal model)

A person perceives a stimulus as threatening

This transforms it into a stressor, triggering the stress response

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Stress as a Holistic Health Phenomenon

Stress can be better understood in the context of one’s functioning level across six dimensions of wellness

Emotional Spiritual Environmental/

Occupational

Physical Social Intellectual

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Author’s Definition of Stress

Stress is a holistic transaction between an individual and a potential stressor resulting in a stress response

© 2007 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.

To Understand This Explanation of Stress . . .

Potential stressors only become actual stressors when they are perceived as being beyond one’s ability to cope with

Determined as a result of a transaction between the individual, the potential stressor, and the environment in which the transaction occurs

Holistic transaction because it is influenced by the person’s overall well-being level

© 2007 McGraw-Hill Higher Education. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1: What Is Stress?

Summary