The dynamics of 21st century life have created a social environment full of stressful situations. A Journal of The American Psychological Association noted that stress in the workplace has reached a critical point, and studies suggest that the most common aspects of our lives, such as relationships and daily activities, often cause the greatest degrees of stress. This book provides a comprehensive look at what professionals know about coping with stress, drawing upon research to assert which methods of coping seem to be effective and which do not. The book begins with a discussion of the nature of stress, looking at the effects of stress in daily life, considering some of the ways researchers study stress, and examining how the human body reacts to stressful events. The book then turns to the ways psychologists conceptualize, measure and study coping mechanisms, and to specific techniques, beginning with those that appear to be ineffective in reducing stress such as obsessing and ruminating about the problem and proceeding to those that appear effective such as seeking social support, exercise and improving interpersonal skills. For individuals considering professional help, the final chapters present some basic information about medications, psychotherapy and alternative medicine approaches.

Dr. Gmelch follows a sensible, pragmatic sequence of presentation in this book. . . . This book would be a definite asset for all academic libraries. In fact, I would urge departmental chairs and deans to issue it to each graduate student completing their program and entering higher education and each new assistant professor joining the faculty. --Academic Library Book Review Anxiety, frustration, and strain leading to stress and burnout. Who hasn′t felt these pressures to some degree? Stress is a common feature of academic life--and not always a bad thing--according to education professor Walter H. Gmelch, who has studied faculty stress for 15 years. "Positive" stress can actually help make you a more productive scholar. But, how do we manage those little (and not so little) annoying moments and patterns of behavior that build up to the boiling point by the end of the week? Based on his extensive research, Gmelch outlines the chief forms of faculty stress and its major causes. He then provides concrete advice on what you can do about the negative stressors in your job and in other areas of your life. Replete with exercises to help understand how stress affects you and forms to help you build a plan to cope with this stress, this book will be welcome relief for any faculty member.

Stress doesn't just happen. It is a dynamic process involving you, a potential stressor, and a specific environment and set of circumstances. Coping with Stress in a Changing World will teach you how to manage all three elements of this process. The book uses the very practical, easy-to-learn Five Rs of Coping Model to help you become more stress resistant. The Five Rs--Rethink, Reduce, Relax, Release, and Reorganize--will empower you with a variety of strategies across five different levels of coping. Manage stressors with each strategy or in combination. These strategies alert you to potential stressors before they become full-blown stressors.

Drawing from groundbreaking research, psychologist and award-winning teacher Kelly McGonigal, PhD, offers a surprising new view of stress—one that reveals the upside of stress, and shows us exactly how to capitalize on its benefits. You hear it all the time: stress causes heart disease; stress causes insomnia; stress is bad for you! But what if changing how you think about stress could make you happier, healthier, and better able to reach your goals? Combining exciting new research on resilience and mindset, Kelly McGonigal, PhD, proves that undergoing stress is not bad for you; it is undergoing stress while believing that stress is bad for you that makes it harmful. In fact, stress has many benefits, from giving us greater focus and energy, to strengthening our personal relationships. McGonigal shows readers how to cultivate a mindset that embraces stress, and activate the brain's natural ability to learn from challenging experiences. Both practical and life-changing, The Upside of Stress is not a guide to getting rid of stress, but a toolkit for getting better at it—by understanding, accepting, and leveraging it to your advantage.

Mind the Gap: Coping with Stress in the Modern World explores the stress of modern life and how thoughts and feelings can both create and bridge the gap between what we have and what we want. Unlike standard textbooks in the field that tend to take a theoretical approach to stress, this conversational, accessible book focuses on helping readers identify and understand the sources of stress in their life from a practical perspective. The text explores how stress is generated in the brain and body, and provides realistic suggestions for learning to manage these responses. Topics include: Technology and Stress The Media and Stress Time as a Source of Stress Diet, Exercise, and Stress Stress, Health, and Aging Social Support and Stress The Four Corners of Stress Each chapter begins with an outline of key points and end with a set of "What Do You Think?" questions designed to give readers the opportunity to reflect on what they have learned and to develop a personal stress management strategy. Mind the Gap can be used in courses dealing with stress management, health psychology, and personal growth, or simply as a means for individuals to understand and manage their own stress.

Stress in College Athletics: Causes, Consequences, Coping addresses the causes and consequences of stress in college sports and offers effective coping mechanisms that will help individuals understand and control stressors and emotions in their environment. Athletic administrators, coaches, student athletes, parents of athletes, educators, and social and behavioral science researchers will benefit from this examination of what stress is, the different types of stress, and what factors can contribute to anxiety. Containing insight from hundreds of student athletes, coaches, and administrators, this vital book offers you proven research, clear explanations, and recommended suggestions that will enable you to cope with stress and not let it affect your job or your game. Examining how both males and females perceive stress, Stress in College Athletics explores developmental differences between the genders to explain the ways in which the two groups react to and deal with stress. Discussing the challenges that you deal with every day, this valuable book offers you several proven suggestions and methods to help reduce stress, including: Using coping techniques, such as physical exercise (other than the sport you play), recreational activities, muscle relaxation, biofeedback, and meditation Doing things for others and looking to your own spirituality in order to alleviate anxiety Eliminating factors such as fatigue and inferior health in order to avoid the negative emotions of jealousy, fear, and anger that can lead to tension and anxiety Learning how to relieve stress in your immediate environment (on the sidelines, in the audience, or during a test) through simple, effective, and inconspicuous exercises Adapting procedures for self-modification of behavior, such as identifying a behavior you want to change, thinking about the result of that behavior and how often it occurs, and reforming that conduct Through practical research, theories about stress and its causes and effects, and insight from peers, this excellent resource offers suggestions for further inquiry in the field of college athletics and stress. Complete and thorough, Stress in College Athletics will provide you with the necessary tools to help you create a personal stress management system that will improve your well-being in and out of the athletic forum.

This collection of articles on stress and coping covers stress and its effects, stress and the environment, the concept of coping, coping with the stresses of living and dying, and stress management.

This is the first comprehensive Handbook to examine the various models of stress, coping, and health and their relevance to nursing and related health fields. No other volume provides a compendium of key issues in stress and coping for the nursing and allied health professions. In this new edition, the authors assembles a team of expert practitioners and scholars in the field to present the broad range of issues that relate to stress and health such as response-oriented stress, stimulus-oriented stress, stress, coping, .

Here is a monumental work that continues in the tradition pioneered by co-author Richard Lazarus in his classic book Psychological Stress and the Coping Process. Dr. Lazarus and his collaborator, Dr. Susan Folkman, present here a detailed theory of psychological stress, building on the concepts of cognitive appraisal and coping which have become major themes of theory and investigation.As an integrative theoretical analysis, this volume pulls together two decades of research and thought on issues in behavioral medicine, emotion, stress management, treatment, and life span development. A selective review of the most pertinent literature is included in each chapter. The total reference listing for the book extends to 60 pages.This work is necessarily multidisciplinary, reflecting the many dimensions of stress-related problems and their situation within a complex social context. While the emphasis is on psychological aspects of stress, the book is oriented towards professionals in various disciplines, as well as advanced students and educated laypersons. The intended audience ranges from psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, nurses, and social workers to sociologists, anthropologists, medical researchers, and physiologists.

Much of what we know about the subject of coping is based on human behavior and cognition during times of crisis and transition. Yet the alarms and m~or upheavals of life comprise only a portion of those experiences that call for adaptive efforts. There remains a vast array of life situations and conditions that pose continuing hardship and threat and do not promise resolution. These chronic stressors issue in part from persistently difficult life circumstances, roles, and burdens, and in part from the conversion of traumatic events into persisting adjustment challenges. Indeed, there is growing recognition of the fact that many traumatic experiences leave a long-lasting emotional residue. Whether or not coping with chronic problems differs in form, emphasis, or func tion from the ways people handle acute life events and transitions is one of the central issues taken up in these pages. This volume explores the varied circumstances and experiences that give rise to chronic stress, as well as the ways in which individuals adapt to and accommodate them. It addresses a number of substantive and methodological questions that have been largely overlooked or sidelined in previous inquiries on the stress and coping process.