Stress Theory:
I’ve had this draft here lying around for too long so I thought I’d share it. I believe these are not my own words, but I think being aware of several current theories about stress is interesting in light of one of my other posts.
Hans Selye , one of the foremost stress scientists, found that stress uses «adaptation energy» that depletes us of our resources. He also found that, in general, stress is good but that it turns against us when it is uninterrupted.Alvin Toffler , a sociologist, found that in our present society many suffer from over-stimulation, too many changes, cognitive overload and decision overload, while our classical means of coping are not adequate for these conditions.
Rosenmann & Friedman , MD’s, studied their patients personality and the incidence of their heart attacks and found that an ambitious (type A) personality had seven times the chance to have a heart attack than the more easygoing (type B). (The only problem with the B’s is that they may be disaster prone). It can be said that stress is caused by poor timing of external changes in combination with an exaggerated internal perception.
Holmes, a psychologist, related illnesses to changes that took place in his patients before the illness. From this he developed his «Stress scale», which lists changes in order of resulting stress. Then he concluded that change is not random, but a combination of fate and choice; therefore, change mangement is possible.
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