During a community visit, volunteer nurses teach stress management to the participants. The nurses will most likely advocate which belief as a method of coping with stressful life events?
A. Avoidance of stress is an important goal for living.
B. Control over one’s response to stress is possible.
C. Most people have no control over their level of stress.
D. Significant others are important to provide care and concern.
Correct Answer: B. Control over one’s response to stress is possible.
When learning to manage stress, clients find it helpful to believe that they have the ability to control their response to it. It is impossible to avoid stress, which is a normal life experience. With practice, individuals learn to process emotions, thoughts, and sensations as they arise. Individuals learn to modify their reflexive conditioning from automatically reacting or worrying about the future to a more adaptive, measured response with greater awareness of the present moment. The literature is replete with evidence suggesting that, with practice, individuals can become more mindful, increasing their capacity to fully process emotions, thoughts, and sensations as they arise.
Option A: Stress can be positive and growth-enhancing as well as harmful. Effective techniques for stress management are varied. They typically include behaviors that improve physical health, such as nutrition and exercise, but may also incorporate strategies that improve cognitive and emotional functioning. The stress-reduction approach based on mindfulness practices has recently enjoyed an explosion of interest from a variety of healthcare and epidemiological researchers. The concept of mindfulness, which originates from practices of Buddhism, is defined as a focused awareness of one’s experience, and a purposeful and non-judgmental focus on the present moment.
Option C: The belief that one has some control is a significant factor in minimizing stress response. Paradoxically, positive changes seem especially likely to occur when one can let go of the struggle of trying to change or control the process. This perspective lies at the core of empirically validated acceptance-based intervention models. A focus on the present moment can potentially help decondition habitual reaction patterns and increase response flexibility. From a cognitive perspective, this suggests that viewing present circumstances as new and unique experiences increases one’s capacity for generating multiple alternative response options.
Option D: Novice mindfulness practitioners also engage in “informal” practice as they learn to observe their own thoughts and sensations and explore a new stance as a nonjudgmental observer of their own life. Attending one’s own experience may set up a dynamic cognitive interaction that can facilitate a capacity to respond to ongoing experiences as if they are occurring for the first time, typically referred to as “beginner’s mind.” This interrupts the automatic processes of relying on previously conditioned stress reactions.