PURPOSE
The purpose of this activity is for you to analyze and reflect upon your psychological health in relation to the stress you experience, by applying the concepts on stress, health, and coping learned in this course.
STEP 1
Read the Waymaker chapter on Stress, Lifestyle, and Health and watch the lecture recordings on Stress, Health, and Coping. You will be applying concepts from these sources in your paper.
STEP 2
Complete the questionnaire below. This questionnaire measures the trait called locus of control, which is the extent to which persons believe they are in control of their life experiences.
Locus of Control Scale
STEP 3
After you have completed the questionnaire and reviewed the relevant material, write a cohesive paper (that means everything fits together logically and flows from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph) with the following structure:
Paragraph 1: Introduce the topic of the paper– stress and coping. Define stress, and distinguish between the concepts of stressors and stress. Define coping, and distinguish between problem-focused and emotion-focused coping, and adaptive and maladaptive coping.
Paragraph 2: Describe and categorize the three main stressors you are currently facing. Categories include cataclysmic events, conflicts, frustration, hassles, life changes, chronic stressors, and job stressors.
Paragraph 3: Describe how you are currently coping with these stressors. For each, are you using problem-focused or emotion-focused methods? Are you coping methods adaptive or maladaptive?
Paragraph 4: Discuss how your personality traits relate to your overall stress level. Do your personality traits make you more likely or less likely to experience stress? When answering this question, present your specific score on the locus of control test, identify your locus of control as internal, external, or intermediate, and describe how this trait impacts how you appraise stressors and cope with stress. In addition, discuss one additional trait, such as hostility, resilience, hardiness, etc.
Paragraph 5: How could you lessen the level of stress you are currently experiencing in your life and improve your psychological health? Describe one specific coping strategy you could try that you aren’t currently using at all, or as much as you could. Make sure to use psychological terminology when discussing this coping strategy. Also, reference the source where you learned about this strategy, whether the textbook or an online source.
Your paper should be about 2 to 3 pages in length, with double spacing, 1-inch margins, and double spacing. Make sure to carefully proofread your paper, and run both a spell check and a grammar check.
