Psych Unit 3 Stress The steps that lead to stress and defense 1 awareness and appraisal of a stressor 2 attempt to cope 11 03 2013 3 if coping is effective process stops if not you respond to stress with a cognitive component or a physiological component 4 possible use of defense mechanism 5 If defense is effective stress is reduced but the stressor remains and may cause a problem later Defense mechanisms Denial someone else Repression doesn t occur Displacement don t respond to the source of the stress you displace onto Suppression distraction watch tv instead of thinking about the stress Other factors in the control of stress Social support counseling psychotherapy Writing about stress Aerobic exercise important component in coping Meditation and biofeedback no different than resting biofeedback is an electronic form of feedback Wear a device that measures heart rate and try to reduce your heart rate Neil Miller famous for seeing if animals could control physiological responses by putting electrodes on rat ears that measured temperature and stimulated pleasure system If heat increase was increased the pleasure center was stimulated Influence of genetics on stressors Some people are genetically programmed to be more responsive to stress than others The gene responsible for that has yet to be found though Stress your brain and your behavior Physical health Important function of behaviors Mind and body work very closely together illnesses Cardiovascular heart attacks and stroke Stress results in increased physical arousal which contributes to a variety of High production of cholesterol more chance of heart attack Heart attack due to progressive increase in cholesterol in artery It clogs it and blood cant flow easily IF the artery is connected to heart the muscle will start to die because it cant get blood and oxygen Cholesterol is not all bad we NEED some of it It nourishes and protects various cells When you become stressed you produce more cholesterol Too high of levels can also cause a stroke by clogging arteries connected to the brain which cuts off oxygen Type A personality is characterized by hostility competitiveness and time urgency Easy for them to get stressed and have high levels of cholesterol Cholesterol is produced when body is stressed as a means of protection Your body assumes its going to be harmed when it really isn t When the heart rate slows down after stress dies down the cholesterol isn t moving so fast and attaches to the other cholesterol and sticks inside artery walls Can be treated by Bypass surgery Angioplasty Personality change from A to B is extremely rare Blood Pressure Systolic high and Diastolic low 120 80 very good or average IF the pressure is too high the capillaries will burst which will kill neurons and make parts of the brain die Implication for strokes the pressure is high Cause for development of stretch marks because the arteries stretch when When guys do power lifts they lose neurons because of the stress Suffering from hypertension if you re at 140 90 you NEED to change lifestyle if its that high and take medication even though it can make you kind of spacey Suppression of emotions leads to high Blood pressure They NEED to get their feelings and concerns out Good example is black people facing discrimination Cortisol substance that leads to more energy and strength Cortisol can damage the hippocampus if there is too much in a short time This is why high stress moments can sometimes not be remembered too well Stress release cholesterol and cortisol Personality not in book Mask that the Greeks wear is called persona which is where the word personality come from Personality is a distinctive pattern that is reality consistent through a variety of situations situations You have a constant personality but you behave differently in different There is no rule on much personality depends on a situation Demands of situation can influence it Is personality consistent over time yes and no Level of self confidence changes frequently Younger people have way more confidence typically than older people Personality characteristic of neuroticism and adjustment is very consistent over time Freud tremendous influence on our thinking of personality Freud was always mentioned at one of the top ten influential people in past 100 years Sometimes he was even placed higher than Einstein A lot of things Freud thought were absolutely wrong though Freud was born in eastern Europe to a poor family Jewish Got on a train and moved to Vienna Austria after family went broke Freud was named as the most important kid out of all of the kids All of the family resources were poured into his education Freud had his own bedroom out of a two bedroom apartment for his whole family His mother called him her golden child Freud originally wanted to go into politics or the military but went to medical school instead Wasn t interested even though he was really good at it First clinical internship was at an eye place Learned about a good drug there for amnestic for eye surgery Shot it into his veins and discovered cocaine One of the first coke users and bought tons of it and sent it to everyone Started a practice that didn t go very well Joseph Brewer discovered him and thought Freud was really smart and started referring patients to him out a lot of physical problems Anna O Bertha was a patient who had difficulty with language and spaced Brewer didn t have any success treating her Brewer recognized the symptoms he couldn t treat with medicine were related to her early childhood experiences Brewer and Freud wrote a book about how early childhood affects personality Hysterical symptoms couldn t be treated with medicine Their book said Ana O was all cured but she wasn t She got worse and spent the rest of her life in asylums Bertha did function well when she wasn t hospitalized Theory talk to patients and find out what happened in their early childhood and clear it up and they will be cure psychoanalysis Castration anxiety Therapist would infer that a man talking about being cut off driving a lot would have castration anxiety Developmental theory Series of physco sexual stages 1 Oral stage ingestion and perception Babies put everything in their mouth Feeding schedule is important to Freud Child learns about the hostility of the environment have to cry and scream to get the bottle of food World is a mean and hostile stage 2 Anal stage Individual has to learn bowel and bladder control
View Full Document
Unlocking...