Archive for the ‘biological stress’ Category

Stress and aging…

Posted in biological stress on 04/09/2012 10:35 am by david

In the July/August 2011 Scientific American Mind magazine.

General Adaptation Syndrome

A diagram of the General Adaptation Syndrome model.

Physiologists define stress as how the body reacts to a stressor, real or imagined, a stimulus that causes stress. Acute stressors affect an organism in the short term; chronic stressors over the longer term.

Selye researched the effects of stress on our bodies.

Alarm is the first stage. When the threat or stressor is identified or realized, the body’s stress response is a state of alarm. During this stage adrenaline will be produced in order to bring about the fight-or-flight response. There is also some activation of the HPA axis, producing cortisol.

 

Can we learn to respond to stress in a new way?

Posted in biological stress on 03/16/2009 03:29 am by david
by David Delaney, MA, CAR, LPC

Scotty, beam me up fast; I’m tanking…

Jim (not his real name), an ad agency executive, is making a campaign presentation to clients and begins to panic. He is aware of how important landing this client is for his agency, which makes him feel even more tense. He can not stop the negative spiral of stress and he now is loosing his natural, relaxed ability to present this ad campaign of which he has great natural passion for and knowledge of. No matter how hard he is trying, it makes things worse.