It is obvious that people need the fight or flight reflex under certain circumstances just to survive or to help others survive but it is when stress is experienced on a day to day basis that there can be some negative results. There are many reasons a person would experience stress, Holmes and Rahe (1967) devised a scale ranging from the death of a spouse (100 points) to minor law violations (11 points). The idea being that your score, taken from the list of life changing events, indicates the likelihood of you suffering illness due to these stressors. A major flaw with the Holmes-Rahe scale is that it does take into account an individual’s ability to cope with these events in a positive or indeed negative way.
There are many physiological symptoms of stress including headaches, muscle spasm, stomach upset, heart palpitations, skin problems etc. These symptoms may occur in individuals at irregular intervals for most people, but it is when they occur regularly and in conjunction with behavioural changes such as crying, impotence, sleep problems, decreased or increased appetite that a person may be in danger from suffering an illness brought on by stress. Arthur Rowshan in Stress: An Owner’s manual (1997) highlighted seventy five symptoms of stress within five categories; physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and social. In this publication he suggested that the symptoms are often interlinked e.g. an argument can bring on a headache which may affect sleep thus making you irritable and as such making a person susceptible to an argument. This theory would show that the effects of stress can be compounded by themselves leaving a person open to a spiral of negative symptoms, however Rowshan has been accused of elaboration in his work and has little investigatory evidence to back his claims up.
There are many different ways in which people try to cope with stress when it occurs over a prolonged period. One obvious solution is to remove the reason for the stressor or to get away from it. It is not always easy to avoid stress as this may lead to avoidance of responsibility which in turn could be problematic and create a more stressful outcome in the long term. Stress can be created from an overload of factors e.g. more and more tasks being given to a person at work while they also have a family live to cope with; or stress can derive from underload where frustration sets in when there is not enough to do. According to Cooper and Smith (1985) people at the bottom of hierarchies suffered more stress than those at the top.
There tends to be two broad bands when it comes to coping strategies for stress, these are short term avoidance/denial methods and longer term realisation techniques. The short term methods can also have a negative effect on the body both mentally and physically. Overeating or comfort eating is one reaction to stress, sugary snacks raise blood sugar levels giving a person a feeling of satisfaction and increased energy levels this is, however, only temporary and the energy low can leave people feeling tired and irritable exacerbating the negative feelings of stress. There is also the danger of binge eating to attempt to maintain the sugar high and possibly leading to obesity, feelings of low self esteem and creating more stress. Although the negative feelings are relieved through overeating the act itself can lead to more stress and depression and does little to confront the reasons for the stress.
Smoking is another negative strategy for coping with stress. Although there may be a reduction in anxiety and some comfort from the habitual ritual of smoking it is undoubtedly harmful to health and not a good coping tactic for dealing with stress. Alcohol can have some benefit by helping people to relax after a hard day, it has been stated that drinking in moderation can be beneficial; however heavy drinking can produce feelings of anxiety or depression and cause sleeplessness. In extreme cases reliance on alcohol to cope with stressful situations can lead to alcoholism, serious illnesses and eventually death, as such alcohol does not appear to be a good way to deal with stress. People can sometimes turn to drugs to release themselves from stress but the release from daily misery can lead to temptation to return for more and may turn into an addiction with the negative possibilities of job loss and break ups of families. Even allowing for the possible legal consequences of drug taking this is obviously a negative way of dealing with stress.
The negative ways of dealing with stress in the above paragraph are not natural reactions for humans so it is interesting from a psychological viewpoint to examine why there are so common today. As smoking and drinking are seen, in this context, as reactions to stress it could be suggested that the behaviourist theory for learning plays a strong part. Evidence from this could be drawn from Albert Bandura (1959) who created the phrase “reciprocal determinism”, in his theory Bandura stated that that environment causes behaviour and that behaviour causes environment, as such if we see our father reach for the whiskey bottle after a hard day at work or mother lighting a cigarette when she receives bad news this could indicate to their children that both these things are stress relievers and further that they are acceptable actions.
Overeating, drinking and smoking are all oral activities and, if we put aside the physiological changes they create, it could be argued that these activities are linked to Freud’s Oral Stage of development. The oral phase begins at birth and lasts eight months. It is characterized by the infant's concern for his mouth and gratification he feels from oral stimuli such as eating, sucking and biting. As a person feels more and more stress it could be stated that a desire for regression is stimulated, a need to return to a point where there was little responsibility and as such little pressure.
Other ways in which people attempt to cope with stress is to go into denial or to procrastinate in an attempt to avoid the problem which is causing stress. Escapism is where a person will move from one situation to another in an attempt to make a fresh start and to leave unsolved problems behind. Projecting or displacing the blame for problems arising in the first place is another coping strategy when people refuse to take ownership for issues which cause stress. Sometimes people will falsely rationalise their behaviour blaming it on other issues rather than accepting the real reason for their bad temper or excessive smoking or drinking. All of these ways of coping with the negative feelings brought about by stress fail to deal with the causes and focus on denial of the facts or transference of feelings. Clearly these are negative and potentially unhealthy ways of coping with stress.