Stress reappraisal is not aimed at eliminating or dampening stress. Psychology professor Jeremy Jamieson researches how experiences of and responses to stress affect decisions, emotions, and performance.
Adam Fenster. In our study of community college students taking math courses, we found that the reappraisal participants exhibited lower levels of math evaluation anxiety both immediately and on a subsequent exam. They also performed better on the exam than the control group immediately after completing our reappraisal exercise. We then assessed procrastination and goals outside the classroom. We also found that the reappraisal students reported more approach goals—that is, goals focused on achieving positive outcomes, such as winning a game or passing a test, rather than on avoiding negative outcomes, such as trying not to lose a game or not to fail a test—which predict positive performance outcomes and wellbeing.
Broadly speaking, cortisol is a catabolic stress hormone and elevations are observed when people are threatened. Alleviating the negative effects of stress in academic settings with a population of students who do not receive as much attention in the stress regulation literature was really promising.
Community colleges can be springboards to long-term success, and providing students in these institutions with tools to help them realize their goals has the potential to increase their quality of life many years down the road. Like most aspects of mental health, our stress levels and how we manage it is dependent on a mixture of factors: genetic, cultural, physical, psychological, and environmental.
Chronic exposure to seemingly small stressors can also add up to significant stress or even anxiety over time. For example, marginalized people and groups are likely to suffer greater and more disruptive stress because of regular experiences with systemic inequity and other emotionally challenging experiences encountered as a part of daily life. Some other common stressors include:. While most of us have at least one or two healthy ways to deal with stress, most of us also have a few coping strategies that are less than healthy.
These could include distracting ourselves without addressing the underlying causes of that stress, getting angry at other people, or using drugs and alcohol to try and temporarily numb the stress. Most of these coping strategies deflect or distract us from the actual underlying issue.
While this can feel helpful in the short term, they are not helpful in addressing the underlying problem and can lead to even more stress. So, while distraction is an easy go to when we are stressed, it is much healthier to disconnect instead — at least while you regroup and figure out how to cope in more healthy ways. When we purposefully disconnect, we acknowledge we need a break and are using that time to heal, think, or create space before returning to dealing more directly with the source of stress.
This only exacerbates the situation. Psychosom Med. Li G, He H. Hormesis, allostatic buffering capacity and physiological mechanism of physical activity: a new theoretic framework.
Med Hypotheses. Allostasis and allostatic load: expanding the discourse on stress and cardiovascular disease. J Clin Nurs. White JB. Fail or flourish? Cognitive appraisal moderates the effect of solo status on performance.
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