AFROTC Leadership Studies I Midterm

Military managers and their personnel deal with life-and-death decisions when they’re on missions; fly multimillion dollar airplanes paid for by demanding taxpayers; and work with heavy machinery that can be dangerous if mishandled. It’s crucial, therefore, for Air Force managers and their subordinates to learn to handle stress.

The best way to manage stress is to eliminate or minimize stressors with enactive strategies. These strategies help you create, or enact, a new environment that doesn't contain the stressors.

The second most effective approach, proactive strategies, is to increase your personal resiliency.

reactive strategies, which are shortterm techniques for coping with stressors.

Although eliminating stressors (an enactive strategy) would be the ideal way to cope, it’s not always possible. Most people don’t have complete control over their circumstances. Too many factors are at play—from work to family to financial constraints. Therefore, developing resiliency (a proactive strategy) is the next-best strategy for eliminating the stressors. Resiliency helps your body return to normal levels of activity more quickly or directs your revved-up engine in a productive direction.

You can also turn to temporary, short-term fixes (a reactive strategy), which include relaxation techniques such as deep breathing and mind control. Unfortunately, most people use this strategy first. You might rely on reactive methods to cope with stress because they’re handy. But you have to repeat these methods whenever you encounter stressors because their effects are short-lived. In addition, some common reactive strategies, such as drinking alcohol, taking sleeping pills, or letting off steam through anger, can be habit forming and harmful.

The next major strategy for managing stress is to develop resiliency. When stressors are long lasting or impossible to remove, coping requires personal resiliency, which is the ability to withstand or manage the negative effects of stress. A person who is resilient can bounce back from adversity and endure difficult situations.

Acute increases in anxiety or fear if the stressor is a threat, or increases in sorrow or depression if the stressor is a loss. A feeling of shock or confusion can develop if the stressor is particularly acute. Physiologically, your energy jumps and the heart rate, blood pressure, and alertness increase. These reactions are largely self-correcting when the stressor doesn’t last long.

Which defense mechanisms predominate, and the body begins to store up excess energy

Involves directly attacking the stressor, regardless of whether it is yourself, another person, or anobject (e.g., whacking the computer).

acting in a childish way.

Invovles denial

May take both psychological and physical forms, such as failing to pay attention or even escaping from the situation.

Persistent engagement in pointless activities, such as repeatedly redialing a telephone number when it’s busy.

When stressors overpower your resiliency, chronic stress follows. Such stress has negative consequences on your personal and professional lives. The pathological outcomes may be physiological (such as disease), psychological (severe depression), or interpersonal (broken relationships). These changes result from having no form of defense (psychotic reactions among prisoners of war), from an inability to maintain your defenses (exhaustion), from overreaction (ulcers produced by excessive secretion of body chemicals), or from lack of self-awareness in which you don’t acknowledge the stress at all.