What will I take away from psychology 1001, hmm probably everything! I took away how our mind works, how we interact, and how we perceive our world. The most interesting topic we covered I believe had to do with how humans cope with stress and how stress impacts our health. After reading this chapter, I thought I needed to meditate immediately to stop coronary heart disease from clogging up my arteries. I didn't realize the impact that stress has on our bodies and how people deal with stress in different ways. I am a good mix of optimism and pessimism. However, I didn't know that if you are pessimistic or have a Type A personality you are on average supposed to die sooner. When you are stressed out, your body naturally becomes more alert. You may sweat more, blood pressure increases, and you can't sleep as well. If you keep this up, you can put yourself at risk for the number 1 cause of death and disability in the United States. However, there are many different ways to cope with stress including many behavioral, emotional, decisional, cognitive, and informational controls. Sometimes we all need to step back and take a breather because a few years of our lives may depend on it. Besides who doesn't want to look at the glass half full!
I agree, this chapter was a big eye opener. Who would've thought that our attitude could kill us. I felt the same need to meditate after reading the chapter. The same way people might stop watching as much tv when they hear that it can make your eyesight worse. Coping with stress can be very difficult at times but the risk of death should make coping with any issue a lot easier. The picture in your post reminded me of a variation on that phrase, the glass is actually always full (half water, half air).
I know that I have a tendency to stress out a lot, especially during finals week. I have to admit reading this chapter really made me aware of how my behavior could have detrimental affects on my health and even my lifespan! I've realized the importance of relieving stress by exercising, reading, or participating in some other activity, such as breathing exercises. I agree with your summary of the chapter and this is a topic I will also remember from the Psychology 1001 class.
I completely agree with this post- stress will be relevant in our lives from now on and I will remember a lot about what I learned regarding stress from this class. I was not aware of the long term effects that stress can have on our physical health! I now try to be more stress-conscious and help my body with coping with it in more productive ways.
It is interesting to hear about how our attitudes actually affect our lifespan! But how much stress is too much stress? I consider myself a pretty laid back person and don't get too stressed out, yet when I am at work I always get stressed out when we get busy and I need to remind myself to take a deep breath!
This is something I will take away from psychology as well! I can't believe how much stress can effect our health. When I think of how fast paced our society is today, I'm amazed we all put ourselves through all this stress. I think it's very important to take some time our of your day to just relax.
I also found Chapter 12 very interesting when it talked about dealing with stress and the types of effects it has on our body. It was crazy to think about all the different things that cause stress in our lives and the little things we could do in order to prevent them from boiling up and leading to a breakdown. Usually when I'm most stressed out I tend to go workout because it gives me a lot of adrenaline and really helps me get my mind off things. It was great to know that the book also said this was a good way to cope with stress.
Chapter 12 was a very interesting chapter to me as well! Stress has always been a part of everyones life and when reading this chapter it was interesting to see which methods work for lowering stress and which ones dont. Also the chart they had in the book with the top 45 or so events in your life were interesting to look at which ones were the biggest! It was super interesting to me that not only negative, but positive life events were also stressful!
Stress is such an interesting part of life. The different effects it can have on you are mind boggling! This is a topic I will also always remember from Psy 1001.
I myself have experienced the negative effects of stress. Too many times have I come down with a cold or flu like symptoms when under stress. I have even developed a debilitating stomachache that occurs without fail every day at 4:30 pm a month before and after finals week. When a doctor was consulted no diagnosis was made. My sleep has also been negatively affected especially within 24 hours of an exam which results in numerous all-nighters. One thing I found to help me help relieve stress was with an anti-anxiety prescription. With the proper dose this medication can effectively reduce my stress level and makes my life more enjoyable.
I definitely feel that I am both optimistic and pessimistic as well. However, I believe that I might be slightly more pessimistic because whenever I am optimistic, I am never really fully optimistic, it is kind of more of a cautiously optimistic thing. My reasoning for this is that if you prepare for the worst, nothing will shock you and it won't hurt as much if you expect it. I'm sure that this probably isn't the greatest idea, but this is just the way that I can deal with things.
Chapter 12 was a pretty interesting read and i'm glad you choose to write about this for your blog post. It's a lot easier to say i'm going to stop stressing then it is to actually happen. I'm already at a high risk for heart problems with high blood pressure. I'm told to stop stressing and worrying about what's going to happen. I know that I need to but I can't. I can sit down and read a good book to relax but there's always something in the back of my mind saying I need to get this done or don't forget to call so and so. I'm not a pessimistic person but I can see the glass at face value. Overall I enjoyed reading you blog post and I agree that it's crazy how our attitudes can contribute to our health both in a good way and a bad way.