Thursday, January 2, 2014

Some Basics Of Stress Resilience

By Eugenia Dickerson


Stress resilience is a term that describes the capability of a person to cope with tension or anxiety. This attribute is very important as it helps people to resume with their normal lives after experiencing some form of demoralizing event in their lives. Rather than sinking into hopelessness, some people have been reported to have improved functionality a feature commonly termed post-traumatic growth. Resilience is a process and not the trait of individual persons.

Through this process, people exhibit positive adaptations in behaviour. Naturally, most human beings react negatively to adversity, trauma or threats. Through various psychological therapies such as positive reinforcement negative reactions can be gradually reduced and better behaviours adopted. Affected individuals are usually encouraged to maintain a positive perception of things and to continually have a high self-esteem. For this to happen, proper social support structures must be in place.

Several factors have been shown to make it easy for people to develop this ability. Persons that have close relationships with families and friends find it easier than those who do not. Those who are always optimistic are also more likely to recover from events that could potentially cause depression. Other important factors include willingness to seek help, good communication skills and a winning mentality.

Religion has been established to important factor in dealing with life challenges and raising the self-esteem of affected persons. Research shows that youths that join the church tend to have an improvement in their academic performance. This improvement is attributable to the mere attendance of church and the interaction with the religious community rather than doctrine. The church is believed to have a great influence on emotional, social and physical health.

The objective measure of resilience is known as the resiliency quotient or SRQ. This takes into account a number of things that reflect all the aspects of life. The areas that are highlighted include type of diet and regularity of eating. Quality of sleep is assessed based on the number of hours spent asleep and the sleeping environment. Other areas that have to be looked at include social relations and nature of social support, physical exercise and income among others.

The resiliency quotient helps the healthcare provider determine the amount of psychological stress that the affected individual is experiencing. The individual is advised depending on whether they score well, poorly or their results are on the borderline. Those that score well or just slightly below the 90th percentile require just a little bit of moral support. Those who score poorly will require treatment in most cases.

Stressful situations affect diverse systems in the body and often lead to serious dysfunction. One of the areas that are commonly affected is the musculoskeletal system. In this system, the main symptoms that are experienced include muscle and joint pains. The effects on the parasympathetic system are manifested in the gut and the genitourinary system. Other areas that are affected include the sympathetic, emotional, cognitive, endocrine and the immune system.

Stress resilience requires that one plays an active role in overcoming difficulties. One needs to challenge themselves to look at this from a positive perspective regardless of how difficult the situation is. This has to be something that is done on a daily basis. The importance of family support in this process cannot be overemphasised.




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