Psychologically, stress is a state of emotional or physical tension that we feel in a difficult or disturbing situation in our daily life, which has physical, psychological and behavioral effects. The factors that cause stress, called stressors, are the stimuli arising from the internal or external environment that change the adaptive capacity of the person and cause stress. According to Hobfoll, the factors that cause stress are the pressure or demands coming from the environment or the person himself.
Coping is the cognitive, emotional or behavioral efforts we make to control, reduce or try to tolerate stressful life events. Our aim with coping strategies is to return our lives to normal after perceived danger and stress. For this reason, each individual's way of coping with stress differs.
According to Folkman and Lazarus (1988), there are 2 types of coping styles:
1. Emotion-focused coping: It emerges as a result of evaluations that nothing can be done about challenging or threatening external events and focuses on reducing the negative emotions created by stress. It may cause denial of the truth or pretending that what happened is insignificant and ineffective. As a result, it includes behaviors such as self-blame, blaming others, and running away.
2. Problem-focused coping: It is the product of the assessment that challenging or threatening situations can change and is activity-oriented. It includes defining the problem, generating alternative solutions, listing the pros and cons of the solutions and acting in line with them. It includes behaviors aimed at completely eliminating stressors or reducing their damaging effects.
As the ways we perceive and evaluate events are different, each of us differs in coping with stress. While we use the problem-focused coping strategy in situations where it is easy to reach a result, we use the emotion-focused coping strategy because we need to reduce negative emotions in the events where we experience the emotional dimension more intensely. Choosing the right coping strategies In cases where it is not done, our psychological functions may be damaged.
The person makes sense of coping behaviors by passing them through the subjective information process. For this reason, how we make sense of stressful events and the results we reach with our evaluations are the key points in reducing or increasing stress. According to Cüceloğlu (1991), while some people in the same environment and conditions are tense and stressed, others may be peaceful and calm.
Individual Coping with Stress
The DKRG model is a four-stage process developed by Braham (1998) to support individuals to control the level of stress they are exposed to in daily life.
It is known that the techniques applied in areas such as sports, relaxation and breathing exercises, meditation, yoga, sleep and eating patterns, participating in social activities, humor and time management increase one's ability to cope with stress.
In order to protect our psychological and physical health, and to maximize the efficiency we get from life, we need to manage stressful situations and moments when we are faced with stress. This is where methods of coping with stress come into play. Stress management at the individual level includes elements that can help reduce the physical, emotional and cognitive effects of stressful situations on the person. For this reason, each person's way of coping with stress may differ.
Physical exercise, breathing exercises, relaxation techniques, nutrition and sleep order, providing time management, meditation, yoga, art activities, social activities, sense of humor and many other energy sources are some of the activities that help the person in stress management. However, it is known that coping methods that are incompatible with the stressor encountered affect the psychological health of the individual. This is why it is important to choose the appropriate methods for ourselves when necessary.
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