Stress and Coping Strategies

1Knots in the stomach before a test

In 2010 Jeremy Jamieson and colleagues at Harvard University studied students preparing for the GRE, a demanding admissions test for graduate study in the United States. Before a practice test, half the students read a short note explaining that feeling anxious during a test does not harm performance and may even help, so if they noticed their heart racing, they should remind themselves that the arousal could be helping them. The other half read nothing of the kind.

The students who had been encouraged to reappraise their arousal scored higher on the mathematics section of the practice test. Months later, when they sat the real GRE, their mathematics scores were also higher. Nothing about the test, or their preparation, had changed; only the way they interpreted the pounding heart. How we appraise stress shapes what it does to us.

21. Stressors and signs of stress

Common stressors for secondary students include examinations and choosing a future path, family conflict or loss, money worries, relationships and peer pressure, bullying and online harassment, boarding-school life, and many small daily hassles that add up. Stress shows itself in several ways:

In the short term the body’s stress response, a faster heart, quicker breathing and the release of hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, prepares us to act. When it is switched on for long periods, it can harm sleep, mood, the immune system and the heart.

32. Appraisal: challenge or threat?

Figure 1. The same stressor can be appraised as a challenge or a threat.

43. Coping strategies

No single strategy is always best. When a stressor can be changed, problem-focused coping usually works better; when it cannot, such as waiting for results, emotion-focused coping helps more. This idea is called the goodness of fit between coping and situation.

54. What protects people?

• Hardiness. Suzanne Kobasa (1979) studied executives at an American telephone company during a stressful reorganisation. Those who stayed healthy scored higher on three “Cs”: commitment (involvement in life), control (believing one can influence events) and challenge (seeing change as an opportunity).
• Social support: people with others to turn to cope better with the same stressors.
• Expressive writing. James Pennebaker and Sandra Beall (1986) asked students to write about their deepest thoughts and feelings on a difficult experience for 15 minutes on four days. In the following months they visited the health centre less often than students who wrote about trivial topics.
• Healthy habits: regular exercise, enough sleep and time with friends all improve resilience (Lesson 3).

When stress becomes too much. If stress, sadness or worry goes on for weeks, stops you sleeping, eating or studying, or if you have thoughts of harming yourself, you are not weak and you are not alone: talk to a trusted adult, your school counsellor or a health worker. You can visit the nearest health centre or call the Rwanda Biomedical Centre’s free line, 114.