The Chess Stress Response
Another aspect of chess as a sport is the intense psychological and physiological exertion involved in a competitive chess game, and the crisis after the game. What sports science calls the "stress response process" is at least as powerful in chess as it is in more physical sports. When I say exertion, I am not referring only to the mental gymnastics of moving the pieces in our minds, but also the huge nervous tension that fills you before and during the game, tension that rises and falls wit...
1 Creating a Safe Environment for Teaching
To decrease stress for students
Set clear classroom rules with predetermined consequences.
Keep students' sensitive information, such as grades and personal issues, confidential.
Speak respectfully to students, address them by name, get to know them as individuals, and make each person feel special.
Use rubrics for assignments so students know the exact expectations for earning specific grades.
Smile, have fun teaching, and show a sense of humor.
To increase stress for students
Delegate pun...
notesTeachers can take actions to make the school environment less stressful on students or more stressful.
Stress is Healthy
Your heart might be pounding, you might be breathing faster, maybe breaking out into a sweat. And normally, we interpret these physical changes as anxiety or signs that we aren't coping very well with the pressure.
But what if you viewed them instead as signs that your body was energized, was preparing you to meet this challenge? Now that is exactly what participants were told in a study conducted at Harvard University. Before they went through the social stress test, they were taught to ret...
2 At least it can be, if we don't think of it as being detrimental. If we don't stress about stress, but rather think of it as healthy reaction and seek social connections as a coping mechanism for it, then stress is good for us.
Additional Note: Could this be why parents have longer lifespans? The oxytocin response tempers the detrimental effects of stress, leaving only the beneficial?
Science Can Comfort in Times of Stress
Science and religion are often taken to offer competing explanations of the world (Preston & Epley, 2009). That science can be a source of meaning, similar to religion, is not a completely new idea; it has been raised by philosophers (Ziman, 1978/1991) and scientists (Dawkins, 2006) alike. While many have attempted to understand the emotional or social underpinnings of religious belief, the possibility that science might serve similar psychological functions has received less attention. E...Scientific evidence that secular individuals can turn to their belief in science when faced with stressful situations just as the religious turn to their faith.
The Four Reasons Parents Fight
• sleep loss
• social isolation
• unequal workload
• depression
notesThree things to keep an eye on for new parents as their stress levels and social dynamics change.
Reconcile in Front of Your Children
Even in an emotionally stable home, one without regular marital hostility, there will be fights. Fortunately, research shows that the amount of fighting couples do in front of their children is less damaging than the lack of reconciliation the kids observe. Many couples will fight in front of their children but reconcile in private. This skews a child’s perceptions, even at early ages, for the child always sees the wounding but never the bandaging. Parents who practice bandaging each other ... notesFighting in front of your children isn't as bad as not making up in front of them
Most Marriages Degrade After a Child is Born
A bracingly cold glass of water was thrown on this Eisenhoweresque perception by famed sociologist E.E. LeMasters. In 1957, he published a research paper showing that 83 percent of new parents experienced a moderate to severe crisis in the marriage during the transition to parenthood. These parents became increasingly hostile toward each other in the first year of the baby’s life. The majority were having a hard time.
[...]
There is hope. We know four of the most important sources of mari... notesBut recognizing the characteristics that cause stress in the relationship can help things.
How the Adverse Affects of Stress Were Discovered
Lots of research has gone into trying to understand how maternal stress affects brain development. And we have begun to answer this question at the most intimate level possible: the level of cell and molecule. For this progress we mostly can thank the klutzy researcher Hans Selye. He is the founder of the modern concept of stress. As a young scientist, Selye would grind up “endocrine extracts”, which presumably contained active stress hormones, and inject them into rats to see what the ra... notesA clumsy researcher stressed out his lab rats, causing infections and loss of sleep.
Three Characteristics of Stress to Avoid in Pregnancy
Researchers have isolated three toxic types. Their common characteristic: that you feel out of control over the bad stuff coming at you. As stress moves from moderate to severe, and from acute to chronic, this loss of control turns catastrophic and begins to affect baby. Here are the bad types of stress:
• Too frequent. Chronic, unrelenting stress during pregnancy hurts baby brain development. The stress doesn’t necessarily have to be severe. The poison is sustained, long-term exposu... notesFrequency, severity, and individual temperaments determine how much stress a person can experience while pregnant and have it affect the health of their baby.
The Importance of Touch on Infants
Touch plays a very special role in the life of young babies. Because it is so well developed at birth, it provides these brand-new arrivals more detailed access to their fascinating new world than any other sense. Touch is obviously essential to babies' sensory-motor development, but it also has a surprisingly potent influence over their physical growth, emotional well-being, cognitive potential, and even their overall health, because of some fascinating effects on their immune function.
[.... notesThere is a crucial period where an infant should be touched by its mother to reduce its stress level and the stress hormones that would otherwise damage its organs.
