2.1 Stress and crises

What is a stress and what does it mean?

  • The stress is used about situation where a lot of pressure and new demands and challenges are targeted to the person

  • It is usually related to the situation where there are difficulties for the person to adjust and cope with overload situation

 

Reasons for the feeling of stress:

  • For asylum seekers: unstable situation at home country

  • Persecution among people

  • An unsafe trip from home country to a new country

  • Uncertainty about the asylum decision and residence permit

  • Adjustment to the new culture, language and country.

 

How people usually react in stressful situation:

  • It feels like your thoughts are circulating among difficult issues.

  • It feels bad,

  • There might be physical symptoms too, as a headache, backache, and stomachache ets.).

The symptoms are reactions to our mental and physical existence and our attempt to avoid and manage the difficult situation.

 

Crises as a reason for the stress:

  • Everyone meets difficult situation sometimes in life. This means that everyday life will change (f.ex. death of our loved one, serious accident, unstable situation as war, adjustment to a new culture and language).

  • These kind of situations are called crises.

  • Crises are a normal and usual reaction to unusual and overloaded situation

  • In order to survive from the crises there is a need to adjust to new life situation

 

Surviving from crises:

  • There are different stages in surviving the crises (See the table below).

  • Human being will proceed from stage to stage in his/her own individual time and way.

  • The crises will cause stress to the person´s life.

  • Sometimes there might be many factors causing the stress. Surviving from the crises are effected by the other factors.

The stages of crises:

The stage of shock

The meaning:

  • This stage protects person´s mind for too overload.
  •  It gives time to adjust to the difficult incidents.
  • It takes time from couple hours to several days.
  

What happens to the person:

  • The person might deny what has happened to him/her.
  • People disclose all the feelings (doesn´t feel anything).
  • The person is stagnant.
  • The person feels as unreal. It is difficult to believe what has happened.
  •  The person has different individual reactions as creaming, crying, panicking etc.

The stage of reaction

The meaning:

  • At this stage the person faces outrageous incident step by step.
  • The person has a need to discuss about what has happened
  

What happens to the person:

  • Strong feelings
  • Fear and anxiety
  • Irritation
  • Insomnia
  • Shiver, nausea, other physical symptoms
  • Incident is in his/her mind constantly
  • The feeling that there is no way out from the situation or to survive
  • Hopelessness

The stage of processing

The meaning:

  • During this stage the person starts to understand what has happened to him/her.
  • The person starts to accept what has happened.
  

What happens:

  • Memory laps and difficulties of concentrating.
  • Irritation
  • Revealing him/herself from social situations and social relations.
  • Difficult to concern the future, difficulties of having future plans.

The stage of new direction

The meaning:

  • During this stage the stressful incident begins to integrate into the person’s identity and life.
  • The person accepts that this is a part of his/her life narrative.
 

What happens:

  • The person can live with the painful incident.
  • The incident and painful feelings occurs in person´s mind only occasionally.
  • The person can get a new mental resources and find out new ways to address with difficult situations.
  • There is a feeling that life goes on after all.

The symptoms of stress and crises can be very scary. It may relieve the pain if we know what is going on. The symptoms can be for example:

 

The symptoms related to your thoughts:

  • anxiousness

  • difficulties of concentrating

  • difficulties of learning anything new regardless you try hard to learn

  • Willingness to be alone. No strength to be with other people

  • Thoughts may go circling. Difficulties of letting painful thoughts to go

  • Bad dreams, difficult thoughts during the night and sleep, difficulties of getting asleep

  • Difficulties of remembering things which are related to the painful incident

  • Thoughts as becoming “crazy”, and being a “bad person”

 

The symptoms related to your feelings:

  • being sad or depressed

  • being hopelessness

  • being irritated

  • being angry and annoyed

  • willingness to die or harm yourself

Physical symptoms during the crises:

  • stomachache

  • feeling bad

  • heart is beating

  • pain in the chest

  • headache and sleeping difficulties

If any of those symptoms are strong or last a long period, seek help from the nurse or a doctor.

 

How to recognize the stress?

Assignment 2:

Look the following pictures. Can you find some symptoms familiar to yourself?

 

Source: Picture: The symptoms of stress (Kuvat: Papunetin kuvapankki, papunet.net, Sergio Palao / ARASAAC, Elina Vanninen)

 

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A guide for pre-integration
1 Everyday life in Finland
1.1 Welfare and well-being1.2. Participating and influencing the environment1.3. Health, wellbeing and culture1.4. Activities of daily living1.6. Equality and discrimination1.7. A child and everyday living in Finland1.8. Child´s protection and child welfare
2 Coping and sustaining wellbeing
2.1 Stress and crises2.2 Managing the stressful situation2.3 Nature as a support of wellbeing2.4 Relaxation2.5 Self-destructive thoughts and self-destruction2.6 Where to seek help?
3 Work in Finland
3.1 Working culture in Finland3.2 Education3.3 Labour legislation3.4 General work life skills3.5 Job seeking3.6 Stages in a job seeking process3.7 Job application and CV
4 Professional Competence and competence development
4.1 Earning and proving your competence4.2 Assessing your own competence4.3 Professional competence4.4 Demonstrating the competence4.5 Recognition and comparing the degrees earned previously in countries of origin4.6 Developing your own competence
Digital Material
Car MechanicElectrician
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