Stress management

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Stress management (synonyms: coping , coping with stress ) is a collective term for methods and coping strategies in order to reduce mentally and physically stressful stress or to completely reduce it. Stress management methods can be helpful when people's resilience and self-healing abilities are insufficient to maintain performance or health due to internal and external stress .

Coping strategies deal with the preservation and promotion of resources and the management of mental , emotional and physical aspects of stress. The psychologist Gert Kaluza divides the coping strategies into three groups: Instrumental stress management (influencing the stressors), mental stress management (changing thoughts that exacerbate stress), palliative-regenerative stress management (which influence stress reactions).

There are steps in stress management

  • Analysis of stressors ,
  • Removal of taboos from psychological stress,
  • Promotion of individual coping skills.

Stress management strategies are taught by psychologists , psychotherapists and coaches , among others . In addition to exercise and a healthy diet , relaxation techniques and mindfulness exercises as well as time management are often recommended for self-help .

Well-known stress models

The coping models are based on different stress models and theories:

Stress management and stress coping methods

Various forms or components of psychotherapy and various training methods are used for stress management . For example, are used

Relaxation through vacation can help to reduce stress in the short term, but does not specifically influence the underlying problem.

In the context of coping with stress in children and adolescents, for example, the stress caused by a higher workload in the eight-year high school G8 is criticized (“Turbo Abitur”). According to current studies, stress symptoms such as stomach pain or fear of exams occur in every fifth child, often accompanied by poor concentration and performance disorders. Conversations with the child and a good balance between school and leisure are ideal for coping with stress.

Relaxation and mindfulness exercises

From a neurobiological point of view, the essential component of sensible stress management is the reduction in internal, especially vegetative "activity". Appropriate procedures to be exercises Mindfulness ( MBSR ), passive bath treatments , and almost any type of massage or actively any form of physical, such as "sports" easing, still known relaxation techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation , autogenic training , meditation , yoga , breathing relaxation and heart coherence and also techniques of biofeedback .

Stress management with biofeedback training

The direct biofeedback measurement of the respiratory sinus arrhythmia (coordination of breathing and heartbeat) provides information about the heart rate variability (HRV), which is a measurable, biological reference value for stress tolerance and functionality and provides information about the quality of the flow state .

Endurance sports

Moderate endurance training serves to reduce stress and also promotes neuronal restructuring in the direction of a neurotransmitter release, which brings about balance and relaxation. Suitable forms of endurance sports are, for example, jogging , walking , swimming or cycling .

Critical consideration

Denomination formulated negatively

The term stress management or stress coping is formulated with the focus on the state (stress) from which one has to move away. It is therefore formulated negatively when the orientation towards the goal is assumed. If people move away from stress, they approach their own resources, the state of flow or the sense of wellbeing , which would then represent a positive definition of goals . A positive definition in this sense would be, for example, the term “resource management”, which has become a common term alongside stress management ( see also the theory of resource conservation ).

If a person follows a training instruction with a negative formulation of goals, he will keep the negative in view, focus on it, continue to be oriented on it. As an undesirable effect, people may remain fixated on the negative, at least the term makes it more difficult to focus on the positive, the actually intended goal.

Standardization and individuality

Both the individuality of the people and the differences in the stresses people are exposed to require different coping strategies. It is possible that studies on the effectiveness of various stress management methods do not (yet) sufficiently take this aspect into account; Gert Kaluza notes that it is not possible to make cross-person and cross-situation statements about the effectiveness of certain stress management skills. He therefore suggests teaching a wide range of stress management methods in order to counteract the hardening of one-sided coping habits and thus promote a flexible handling of the various stresses.

See also

literature

  • David Servan-Schreiber: The New Medicine of Emotions. Stress, anxiety, depression: getting well without medication . Goldmann, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-442-15353-0 (Translator: Inge Leipold, Ursel Schäfer).
  • Angelika Wagner-Link: Behavioral training for coping with stress. Workbook for therapists and trainers . 4th, revised, expanded edition. Klett-Cotta, 2005, ISBN 3-608-89013-0 .
  • Jon Kabat-Zinn : Coping with Stress through the Practice of Mindfulness [Audiobook] . revised, expanded edition. Arbor-Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-924195-57-9 .
  • Gert Kaluza: Coping with stress - training manual for psychological health promotion . 3. Edition. Springer, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-540-00868-3 (reprint).
  • Paul M. Lehrer, Robert L. Woolfolk, Wesley E. Sime (Eds.): Principles and Practice of Stress Management . 3. Edition. Guilford Publications, 2007, ISBN 978-1-59385-000-5 (English).
  • George S. Everly, Jeffrey T. Mitchell: Critical Incident Stress Management - Stress management after critical events. Facultas-Univ.-Verlag, Vienna 2002, ISBN 3-85076-560-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Senf, Michael Broda, Bettina Wilms: Techniques of Psychotherapy: A Compendium of Cross-Methods . Georg Thieme Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-13-163171-8 , p. 60 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. ^ Eva Bamberg, Christine Busch, Antje Ducki: Stress and Resource Management. Strategies and methods for the new world of work . 1st edition. Huber, Bern 2003, ISBN 3-456-83969-3 .
  3. ↑ Walter B. Cannon: Anger, hunger, fear and pain - a physiology of emotions. From d. Engl. Transl. by Helmut Junker. Edited by Thure von Uexküll. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Munich / Berlin / Vienna 1975. (First English edition 1915)
  4. ^ Hans Selye: The Physiology and Pathology of Exposure to STRESS. ACTA. INC. Medical Publishers, 1950.
  5. ^ Hans Selye: Introduction to the theory of adaptation syndrome . 1953.
  6. ^ JP Henry: Biological basis of stress response . In: Integrative physiological and behavioral science: the official journal of the Pavlovian Society . tape 27 , no. 1 , 1992, p. 66-83 .
  7. ↑ Hermann Faller, Herrmann Lang: Medical Psychology and Sociology. Springer, Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 3-540-29995-5 .
  8. ^ RS Lazarus: Emotion and Adaptation. Oxford University Press, London 1991.
  9. ↑ Stevan Hobfoll, Petra Buchwald: The theory of resource conservation and the multiaxial coping model - an innovative stress theory. In: P. Buchwald, C. Schwarzer, SE Hobfoll (ed.): Coping with stress together - resource management and multi-axial coping. Hogrefe, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-8017-1679-1 , pp. 11-26.
  10. ↑ Focusing achieved desensitization as effectively as the use of behavior therapy and Focusing was equivalent to RET in successful stress management. From: MN Hendricks: Research Basis of Focusing-Oriented / Experiential Psychotherapy. In: David Cain, Jules Seeman (Eds.): Humanistic Psychotherapy: Handbook of Research and Practice. American Psychological Association, 2001.
  11. ^ SE Weld: Stress Management Outcome: Prediction of Differential Outcome by Personality Characteristics. Dissertation . Abstracts International, 1992.
  12. ↑ J. Klagsbrun, Susan L. Lennox, L. Summer: Effect of "Clearing a Space" on Quality of Life in Women with Breast Cancer. In: USABPJ. Volume 9, No. 2, 2010.
  13. ↑ Weg-mit-stress.de: Coping with stress in children
  14. ↑ Herbert Mück, Michael Mück-Weymann: Heart rate variability. Relationship between flow and heart rate variability
  15. ↑ a b Gert Kaluza: Coping with stress: training manual for psychological health promotion . Springer-Verlag, 2018, ISBN 978-3-662-55638-2 , pp. 72 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed June 22, 2019]).