What Is Stress Inoculation And How Can It Help Us?
Stress. We have all heard of him. Maybe we don’t really know what exactly it is, but we are clear that it is not good for us … Or is it? Does stress also have a good part? Next I will explain to you how stress helps us, which does not mean that it stops harming us if we manage it badly. This is what we call stress inoculation.
Therefore, it is important to acquire adequate strategies for coping, don’t you think? In this way we can benefit from the extra help without danger of hurting us with its edge. How can we do this? For this there is a psychological technique, stress inoculation … Keep reading and discover how it helps us to manage it!
What is stress?
Stress is a psychophysiological process. It starts when a lawsuit appears that puts our resources to the test. When we perceive it as such, a series of mechanisms are activated in our body that allow us to collect more and better information. But not only that, it will also make us process and interpret it faster and more efficiently.
Thus, we can find the appropriate response to the demand that had been raised. What does this tell us? That, first of all, stress helps us overcome the setbacks that arise around us.
So when do the problems we’ve all heard about stress appear? When stress is maintained over time. In fact, the general response to stress is made up of three phases.
The first is the alarm: our body that is activated to a large extent when conditions appear to which it does not know how to respond. The second would be that of resistance. This happens when the situations that generate stress are maintained over time. So our body maintains a high activation, but not as great as that of the alarm phase, since it is not possible.
If these stressful conditions continue, we reach the last phase, which is exhaustion. Here are the problems. The body is exhausted by the lack of reserves to maintain these levels of activation.
To understand it better, let’s look at the following example. If someone asked us to hold a glass of water at arm’s length, we could all do it, right? But if this dragged on in time, what would happen? That our arm would be exhausted … Thus, with a stressful stimulus that is maintained over time, the same thing happens.
What is stress inoculation?
Now that we have a better understanding of what stress is and how it works, let’s see what we can do to manage it properly. Stress inoculation is a psychological technique that will help us with this. The crux of the matter is to get the benefits of stress without maintaining it for a long time, since that is when the most negative effects appear for us.
What is stress inoculation? It is a training that is carried out in about 10 sessions in which we are going to learn to develop a plan of action in the face of stress. The first thing we have to do is identify the causes that generate stress for us. Then we will plan what we are going to do to deactivate it.
In this step we will have to take into account what complications may arise in order to find alternatives to the flight response. Once we have carried it out, we will have to reinforce ourselves if we have done it well or re-evaluate the situation in case the stress persists. It is advisable that the evaluation is not done immediately. Once the evaluation is done, we will train again and we will expose ourselves to the situation again.
How is this achieved? For this, stress inoculation is made up of a series of phases. The first is educational, which explains what stress is and what it entails. In the second, coping strategies are exposed and developed in the face of stress, such as relaxation. It is going to be the longest phase, but it is very important that it be done well. Finally, we have the step of transferring everything we have learned to real life.
Stress inoculation is a widely accepted technique. Its effectiveness has been proven over the years in numerous studies. Therefore, it is an interesting psychological tool to take into account in times of great stress.
