"You're stressed, I'm stressed!" Few Hongkongers would be unfamiliar with that wildly popular catchphrase from a TV ad. Hong Kong has long been famous for its high-pressure way of life, and stress levels here have only climbed in recent years — students, the working crowd and the older generation alike post stress levels that top the charts across Asia and even the world [1]. To tackle the pressures we face in everyday life, it helps to first understand "stress" as a phenomenon through the lens of psychology — and one of the classic accounts is the transactional theory of stress and coping, put forward by Lazarus and Folkman in 1984 [2].
Defining Stress — The Bad and the Good
Stress is the natural physiological and psychological response we have to the challenges, big and small, that life throws at us. Headaches, a racing heartbeat and anxiety are all common signs. Research has shown that working long-term in a high-pressure environment can do irreversible harm to a person's physical and mental health. If you find that stress is causing major changes in your emotions or behaviour, it is worth considering seeking professional support.
In reality, though, a moderate amount of stress can become the driving force behind our work — it can even unlock our potential and help us perform better. Readers who are students will surely relate: when a deadline looms, we often get things done at our fastest and sharpest.
What Is Coping?
Lazarus and Folkman argued that whether stress appears is closely tied to how we appraise the challenge in front of us — and especially to whether we judge that we lack the ability to cope with it. They proposed that people generally adopt two broad categories of coping: problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping.
As the name suggests, problem-focused coping is mainly about trying to tackle the source of the stress directly. When a company's management is trying to boost staff productivity, for example, its problem-focused coping might involve drawing on its own training know-how, or hiring an organisation that can deliver the relevant training. Or, for a student currently sitting the DSE, putting in the hours of revision is a problem-focused coping strategy.
Emotion-focused coping, on the other hand, mainly involves ways of managing one's feelings. Going travelling, confiding in friends and taking part in mindfulness activities are all good examples of emotion-focused coping. At the end of the day, these are really ways of "coaxing yourself into a better mood".
Next, let's take a quick look at what the transactional theory of stress and coping actually says.
Where Stress Comes From — The Transactional Theory of Stress and Coping
The transactional theory of stress and coping holds that when we face an event or situation that might trigger stress, we go through two levels of appraisal: primary appraisal and secondary appraisal.
During primary appraisal, our main concern is weighing up the more surface-level stakes. For instance, we might think about questions like "Will this event harm my interests?" or "Does the current situation pose a threat to me?" If we judge that the challenge before us is harmless, or does no damage to our interests, we won't be moved to act, nor will we feel any stress as a result. There is something to this idea — isn't it exactly how the freeriders in a group project are made? They show not a shred of stress over what grade the course ends up earning, or even over their teammates' criticism — as if none of it concerns them in the least.
On the flip side, if our appraisal finds that the matter at hand does bear on our interests, we go on to make a secondary appraisal. The focus of secondary appraisal is whether we have enough effective coping strategies. In other words, we assess whether we actually have sufficient resources to meet the challenge in front of us. If we judge that we have enough ability to handle the challenge, we won't feel stressed. Conversely, if we judge that we lack the coping strategies to overcome the challenge, psychological stress arises as a matter of course.
Figure 1: The transactional theory of stress and coping
Which Way of Managing Stress Is Better?
In truth, problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping each have their strengths, and both play an important part in dealing with stress. As the saying goes, "better a short, sharp pain than a long, drawn-out one" — problem-focused coping responds directly to what the situation demands, resolving the source of the stress more quickly. Emotion-focused coping, on the other hand, can deal with negative feelings in the moment, and can also help us pick ourselves back up and face the stress more positively. That said, over the long run, research has found that adopting problem-focused coping is better at managing stress, and is relatively more effective at improving our own health [3]. TreeholeHK also offers a stress management programme that uses simple, grounding mindfulness exercises, paired with explanations grounded in psychology, to teach effective ways of relieving stress.
Want to understand yourself more deeply? MindForest — the self-discovery app that brings together psychology and AI, helping you explore your inner world and manage your emotions anytime, anywhere.
References
[1] "Hong Kong records highest stress levels globally amid pandemic" https://www.humanresourcesonline.net/hong-kong-records-highest-stress-levels-globally-amid-pandemic-chi
[2] Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress,appraisal, and coping. New York: Springer.
[3] Penley, J. A., Tomaka, J., & Wiebe, J. S. (2002). The association of coping to physical and psychological health outcomes: A meta-analytic review. Journal of behavioral medicine, 25(6), 551-603.
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