Personal Reflection Journal Entry Essay

During times of our lives we deal with stress. For instance, we stress about things from home, financial situations, and jobs as well. I know in dealt with stress in the past and also dealing with it right now. I try to find many ways with coping with my stress by exercising or doing other things to reduce the excessive tension. The term stress is the response of individuals to stressors. Stressors are events that threaten individuals and tax their coping abilities. I was in situations where my coping abilities where threaten. For Instance, last year I was going through a time I had major damages to my vehicle where I couldn’t drive for almost 2 months. I didn’t cope with it very well because I needed transportation to get back and forth to work; I was briefly going to school as well. During the 2 months all I wondered was, how I was going to get my car fixed and how was I going to come up with money. By doing that made things worst. Another stressor I’ve dealt with was, dealing with being unemployed for 6 months. It was times I coped with and other times I didn’t do so well with it. I didn’t worry about being unemployed at the beginning because I was fine financially and if I couldn’t find anything I could always reapply to my previous employer in 2 months. Things got worst when I found out we were moving once again and my mom didn’t have the money she needed to prepare to move again and started to worry me. The reason why I because, don’t like to see my mom struggle and as I embrace being the man of house I start worry about getting a job and coming up with the money to help my mom out. I attempted to try to get my old job back which I felt optimistic about the interview, but as I was waiting patiently for a phone call I never received one. So I decided to call them and they decided to go with another person for the job. I was very disappointed and lost focus on other things I had to deal with in my life. When I was faced with stressors, my body readies itself to handle the assault through a number of physiological changes. The term General adaptation syndrome (GAS) is the common effects on the body when stressors persist. The GAS of three stages: alarm, resistance, and exhaustion. My stress in my life caused me to loss my appetite at times, stayed to myself; and didn’t want to talk about my issues. The stress on my Immune System  didn’t cope very well. On the job dealing with being critique and major task changes lead to having migraine headaches and a more sinus infections. Environmental Factors whether its big or small produces stress. Life events and daily hassles are things we deal with regularly. One of them is the lack of study-time I had when I first started college a couple of years ago. That came about by me working crazy hours at work and I couldn’t my full effect into my school work which led to me not doing so well. Another daily hassle I’ve dealt with was not getting enough credit on my job for my hard work. I stressed over this because I felt like I was being overlooked for certain job positions and barely got any appreciation for what I do at my job. Another everyday experience that is stressful for me is conflict. Approach/approach conflict is conflict in which the individual must choose between two attractive stimuli or circumstances. My conflict was choosing between keeping my current car and getting a brand new one. I couldn’t go wrong with either decision I would of made because I liked both of the vehicles, my current was finally back in good condition, I don’t have to make payments and its my first car. The new car I looked at was a car I really wanted for quite sometime but at the end I decided to keep my old car and wasn’t disappointed with the decision and didn’t any regrets. Avoidance/avoidance conflict is when the individual must choose between two unattractive stimuli. I dealt with this when I had an oral presentation in high school. I was very nervous about presenting in front of class so I wanted to go last but I didn’t want grade to neither and their were times I didn’t want to show up but I decided my grade was important with through with doing the presentation and got A. That moment was very stressful for me. The approach/avoidance conflict for me was me deciding to eat Chinese food or not. Although it’s delicious but it was something I couldn’t eat because I was trying to lose weight. I handled giving up on well and lost the weight since I gave up on Chinese food. The daily hassles produce me into an overload and started to burnout. This term is a state of physical and emotional exhaustion that includes a hopeless feeling, chronic fatigue, and low energy. Burnout came about in my life when I was working full-time and going to school full-time for two years straight. My body was breaking down and I fatigue on a daily. So I decided to make adjustments in life and  made an unpopular decision by quitting my job and focus on school. That took less pressure off me. In conclusion, in the past, I didn’t cope very well with stress. I took two self-assessments based on I’m vulnerable am I to stress and Stressful events in my life. Based off the two assessments, it showed how stressed I was and couldn’t handle it. The things I do now to adjust stress in my life are that I start to think about the positive/negative effects of stress. I think over major decisions before doing it so. I made a lot of adjustments so I can have less stress in my life. If something major happens, I try not worry about it so much because I’ve realized things happen its apart of life. I managed to make adjustments at home, work, and school by getting things done early, stop worrying over certain situations and most importantly I started to enjoy life more and stressed less.