Sociology 2234E Lecture Notes - Sleep Disorder, Learned Helplessness, Bors
28 Mar 2012
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Document Summary
Stress is defined as: the body"s physiological response to threatening events, regardless of the source of the threat, the degree to which people have to change and readjust their lives in response to an external event. Lazarus (1996) argues that it is subjective stress, not objective stress that causes problems: therefore, an event is stressful for people only if they interpret it as stressful. Lazarus and folkman (1984) defined stress as the negative feelings and beliefs which occur whenever people feel unable to cope with the demands of their environment. The stress response is the body"s way of protecting you. When working properly, it helps you stay focused, energetic, and alert. In emergency situations, stress can save your life giving you extra strength to defend yourself, or spurring you to slam on the brakes to avoid an accident. But beyond a certain point, stress stops being helpful and starts causing major damage to your health and your quality of life.
