When you are self-aware, you live your life according to your own values. You make your own choices and feel what is right for you. The Blogging Optimist Danny Jibodh, presents four benefits of increased self-awareness.
Self-care
Without self-awareness, you easily neglect yourself and take less care of yourself. Increased self-awareness has a positive impact on your mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health. You become less emotional, you are more steadfast in life and you can look at yourself with a mild look.
Improving relationships
When we don’t know what we want or need, it’s hard to form a good relationship with someone. When you get to know yourself well, the way you stand in relationships changes. You learn to set limits and you know when someone is not good for you. You gather people around you who share the same values and have a positive influence on you. At the same time, it makes you aware of your own responsibility within relationships.
Work smarter, more productive and mindful
When you are self-aware, you make better career choices and reduce work stress. You know what your strengths are, but you also know what you don’t excel at. This allows you to work smarter and you know better what you need to do to achieve your goal. Your productivity also increases. When you have trouble getting to work, it’s usually because thoughts, emotions, or habits are getting in the way. Increased self-awareness removes these obstacles.
Keeping calm in a crisis
Everyone has to deal with setbacks or stressful situations from time to time. Poor decision-making often stems from confused thinking and emotional reactions. Before you jump into action mode and do things you’ll regret later, take a step back.
There are countless ways to increase your self-awareness. This can be done, for example, through meditation, coaching or keeping a diary. The most important thing is to look critically at yourself. How do you feel? How do you react to something? And what is the impact of your actions?
This article explains the transactional stress model of Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman during a sensible method. when reading you’ll perceive the fundamentals of this powerful psychological science tool .
What is the Transactional Stress Model ?
The transactional stress model (transactional theory of stress and brick (TTSC)) could be a framework that focuses on assessment to gauge damage, threat and challenges. the merchandise or results of this analysis could be a description of the method of managing nerve-wracking events .
Stress is knowledgeable in numerous ways that. a number of these ways that ar thoughts, feelings, behaviors and emotions. These are typically caused by external stressors. the amount of stress an individual experiences depends on however the case is perceived.
The Transactional Stress Model (Lazarus & Folkman)
The Transactional Stress Model [Lazarus & Folkman]
The transactional stress model is that the results of the analysis conducted by Dr. Richard Lazarus . This analysis started in 1966. He continued his analysis and revealed many books and articles. For this he collaborated with different scientists, together with Dr. Susan Folkman .
Causes of stress within the geographic point
Work-related stress could be a major downside everywhere the planet. Not solely will it negatively have an effect on the health of workers, it conjointly affects the productivity of organizations as an entire. Work-related stress arises, among different things, once needs aren’t in balance with capacities. a lot of on this later.
Other sources of work-related stress are conflicts with colleagues and different stakeholders, constant modification or, as an example, dismissal. the foremost common issues are known as potential stressors among a company:
Conflicts Regarding Roles
Both personal and skilled relationships at work
Working surroundings
Bad management
Organizational cultures
Trauma
Absence of support
Job needs
The symptoms of work-related stress and non-work-related stress are similar. a number of the symptoms are:
Sleep issues, sleep disorder and restlessness
Headache, muscle pain and palpitations
Psychological symptoms, like depression, anxiety, discouragement, irritability, pessimism
Cognitive issues, like a reduced ability to concentrate or a capability to create effective decision-making
Loss of productivity
Reduced work performance
Disinterest and isolation
The Core of the Transactional Stress Model
The theory behind Lazarus and Folkman’s transactional stress model evaluates how important life events, as well as everyday affairs, affect emotions. The theory mainly focuses on cognitive assessment and dealing with stress (coping).
The transactional stress model in practice
Cognitive assessment consists of an initial primary assessment, a secondary assessment, and possibly a reassessment. Secondary assessment is about assessing the possibilities in a given situation and the person’s ability to deal with it.
Coping follows from the assessment described above, and can affect a change in the relationships between a person and their environment or the degree of emotional stress experienced. Factors influencing coping mechanisms as well as judgment are personality traits, symptoms of depression and social influences.
To understand the power of the transactional stress model, it is important to understand exactly what stress is and how research on stress has evolved over the years. For this reason, in the next section of this article, stress is defined in three ways: stress as a response, stress as a stimulus, and stress as a transaction.
1. Stress as a response
That stress can be a reaction was established by Hans Selye in 1956. In his stress model he describes how stress creates a physiological pattern. He recorded this pattern in the General Adaptation Syndrome model. This model describes stress as a response based on three concepts.
Stress is a defense mechanism
Stress occurs with alarm, resistance and exhaustion
Stress, if present for a long time, can lead to adaptation diseases and even death
Afterwards, Selye discovered that stress can result in both positive and negative outcomes based on its cognitive interpretation. Therefore, stress can be experienced in a positive way and in a negative way.
2. Stress as a stimulus
The theory behind the concept of stress as a stimulus was introduced by Holmes and Rahe in the 1960s. They saw stress as an important event or change that requires adjustment or response. Rahe and Holmes then created the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) . This scale consists of 42 life events that are ranked based on the estimated degree of influence these events require from a person.
Examples of these events include marriages, divorces, relocations, or the loss or change of a job or loved one. Holmes and Rahe assumed that stress was a variable in the comparison between stress and health. Although some correlations emerged, the extent to which stress affects health was not clearly definable.
The theory about stress as a stimulus can be summarized in the following points:
Change is stressful
The degree to which life events require adjustment is the same for everyone
There is a threshold of adjustment and stress beyond which illness is a consequence
3. Stress as a transaction
As established, several studies on stress had been conducted before Lazarus and Folkman developed their transactional stress model. They did so mainly in an attempt to explain stress as a dynamic process.
The theory explains stress as a product of interactions between a person and his or her environment. When it comes to the person, it is about multiple systems within a person: the cognitive system, physiological state, affective system, psychological system and neurological system.
Winter hardiness
Attention to the Lazarus and Folkman theory was heightened when Suzanne Kobassa used the concept of hardiness in 1979. Hardiness, also called cognitive or psychological hardiness, is a personality style.
Kobassa described a pattern of personality traits that distinguished managers and executives who remained healthy under stress and those who developed health problems.
Level 1: Primary appraisal
According to the transactional stress model, situations are assessed in different ways. A situation can be judged as positive, irrelevant or potentially dangerous. In the case of the latter option, stress arises more often than with other forms of stress. If a situation is considered stressful, assessment takes place at different levels. As:
Challenge in manageable situations
Threats of foreseeable loss
Damage or loss when the damage has already occurred
Level 2: Secondary assessment
The second level of assessment is called secondary assessment. The purpose of the secondary assessment is to determine whether the specific situation can be managed with available resources.
When insufficient resources are available to deal with the situation, a stress response is triggered by the human brain. A coping strategy is designed on this. This strategy depends on the situation and the person’s characteristics. This way of dealing with stress and the threats that arise from this is called coping.
Known behaviors in response to this are: fleeing, fighting, denying, changing or behavioral alternatives. When individuals use post-situation feedback to evaluate success or failure, they learn to selectively apply different strategies.
Level 3: Reassessment (re-assessment)
At the third level of assessment, the success of the deployed coping strategy is assessed to ensure adaptation for a new situation.
Learning to deal with a stress situation is always a challenge. A challenge can even become a threat if not addressed properly. Lazarus describes the possibility of revising the initial assessment as a reassessment.
Deal with stress
In his studies, Lazarus wrote about three types of stress management. It concerns dealing with stress in a problem-oriented way, dealing with stress in an emotion-oriented way and dealing with stress in an assessment-based manner. The different ways of dealing with stress are briefly explained below.
Dealing with stress in a problem-oriented way
Problem-focused coping refers to a person who tries to control or adapt problem situations by seeking information, taking action, or not acting.
Dealing with stress emotionally
Emotion-focused coping is also referred to as intrapsychic coping. Its main purpose is to reduce emotional arousal.
Dealing with stress in an assessment-oriented way
The term reassessment is used by Lazarus in two contexts. On the one hand, it relates to the evaluation process, and at the same time reassessment is a coping strategy. Coping can affect stress and emotion simply by reassessing the situation.
