Stress Management and Resilience

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Stress Management and Resilience

• This too shall pass

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Fulton Psychological Group

• Individual Therapy
• Group Therapy
• Parent Training
• Family Therapy
• Couples Therapy
• Psychological Testing
• Psychiatry

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What is Stress

• A physical response to a perceived threat
• Involves fight or flight response
• Necessary to keep safe from danger
• Helps you stay motivated, energetic and focused
• Is natural and inevitable

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Hebbian Yerkes Dodson Law
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Positive, Tolerable and Toxic

• Positive Stress
• Short lived motivating (new school, break up)
• Teaches how to cope with stress
• Tolerable Stress
• Still relatively short lived (divorce, death,
  accident)
• Significant, but able to be overcome
• Toxic Stress
• Intense adverse experiences over long time

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Top Stressors

• School work
• Conflicts with family
• Problems with friends
• Romantic relationship
• Problems at school
• Drugs and bad neighborhoods
• Crammed schedules

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Emotional/Behavioral Signs of Stress Reaction

• Restlessness, nervousness
• Irritability, crying spells
• Sadness, withdrawal or emotional numbing
• Forgetful, confused, time management issues
• Increased drug and alcohol use
• Inaction, cant make decisions
• Rumination, intrusive thoughts, OCD

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Physical Signs of Stress Reaction

• Physical tension in muscles
• Chest pains, headaches and back pain
• Rapid heart rate, increase blood pressure
• Stomach problems
• Change in appetite
• Lack of sleep
• Acne

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Facts about Teen Stress

• Teenagers experience stress as more stressful
• Interferes with decision making (frontal cortex)
• Stress can lead to more risky decisions
• Releases extra hormones
• adrenaline, cortisol

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Long Term Effects of Stress

• Psychiatric problems depression, PTSD, anxiety
• Drug and alcohol abuse
• Health problems obesity, compromised immune
  system, high cholesterol
• Can lead to changes in brain development
• Smaller brain, damage to hippocampus (memory)
• Leads to over-reactive brain

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Characteristics of a Child who is Vulnerable to
Stressors

• Anxious
• Takes things personal
• Negative or unrealistic
• Reactive, angry
• Black white thinker
• Procrastinator

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Ways to Manage Stress Reactions

• Modify lifestyle
• Change perspective
• Learn emotional regulation and recovery skills
• Learn problem solving
• Reach out for support
• Create healthy habits
• Conflict resolution and communication skills

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Start with Yourself

• Are you too involved and stressing about
  something that has nothing to do with you?
• Are you guessing or imagining what others are
  saying or thinking?
• Are you being too hard on yourself?
• Are you trying to control people or situations
  you have no control over?
• Are you letting others stress increase your own?

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Modifying Lifestyle

• Set boundaries with others
• Reduce stressful activities, classes
• Slow down life
• Make time for self
• Remove people from your life that create stress
• Be proactive and dont be passive
• Take care of a pet

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Changing Perspective

• Internal locus of control
• Feelings come from perceptions
• Putting things in perspective
• This too shall pass
• Increase perceptual flexibility
• Create reasonable expectations
• Have honest appraisal of self

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Self-Regulation

• Ability to monitor and control emotions (tension)
• Includes two components
• Cognitive (self-reassuring)
• Physiological (adrenalin, cortisol)
• Calm down before doing anything else
• Social referencing

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Recovery Skills

• Ability to bounce back
• Avoid shame
• Reflect on what happened
• Take responsibility but avoid internalizing
• Consider alternatives for future action
• Learn from mistakes

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Teaching Problem Solving

• Dont fix it and dont get mad
• Ask before offering suggestions
• Role model and think aloud about problem
  solving and preparation
• Ask your child how he would handle situations
  outside himself (e.g. in a movie, a friends,
  your own)

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Social Support System

• Make sure you work on having a positive
  relationship with your child
• Make sure your child can go to you for help
• Teach your child how to reach out
• Make sure your child has good peer relationships
• Make sure your child has good relationships with
  adults
• Get child involved with group activities

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Conflict Resolution

• Problem solving (empathize-identify
  problem-identify viable solutions-come up with
  solution)

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Teach Communication Skills

• Active listen, respond to both content and
  emotions
• Respond to both manifest and latent content
• Give feedback
• Help establish feelings vocabulary
• Do the try that again method
• Model good communication
• Work on timing

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Healthy Habits

• Take care of body through exercise, nutrition and
  sleep
• Reduce energy drinks
• Keep a balance in life between work and fun
• Visualize hopeful outlook
• Learn and practice relaxation skills

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Other Strategies

• Cognitive prioritize, make lists, put into
  perspective, problem solve
• Physical exercise, sleep, meditation, massage,
  relaxation, nutrition
• Emotional express, journal, distract self
• Relational share with friends, socialize
• Spiritual pray, attend services, be in nature

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Resilience

• Adapting well in the face of adversity and stress
• Bouncing back

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Resilience Factors

• Personal Factors
• Easy temperament outgoing, flexible
• High self-esteem
• Mastery approach success due to ability and
  failure due to self (made a mistake, didnt
  prepare) or environment
• Family Environment
• Warmth, closeness and structure
• Close relationship with someone outside the
  family
• Offers support system and positive coping model
  (mentor)

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Characteristics of a Resilient Child

• Maintains a hopeful outlook (has faith)
• Able to accept circumstances that cannot change
• Develops realistic goals and works toward them
• Takes responsibility and learns from mistakes
• Keeps a long term and broader perspective
• Manages strong feelings
• Problem solver
• Self confident

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Threats to Resilience

• Trauma
• Abuse
• Divorce
• Disability
• Loss of a loved
• Chronic stress
• Too much change
• Lack of a support system

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How Parents can Improve Resilience

• Be empathetic (we want to feel understood)
• Have reasonable expectations
• Teach the model of success
• Give more decision making as child matures
• Be communicative (think aloud)
• Dont react negatively to negative emotions
• Give more responsibility to your child
• Model healthy lifestyle