Stressor-Related Disorders
“It’s not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.”
Hans Selye
Stressor-related disorders are psychological conditions triggered by exposure to highly stressful (non-traumatic) events that affect emotional, physical, and social functioning. Unlike anxiety or mood disorders, these conditions are uniquely characterized by a precipitating stressful or traumatic event.
In this section, I want to focus on two categories of highly stressful events that I have an expertise and significant experience helping people manage via psychotherapy: Adjustment Reactions and Cancer Survivorship. Finally, because CBT is so useful for teaching people how to better manage stress, and because I use stress management as an integral tool when dealing with a variety of problems, I have also included a separate stress management section here.
Symptoms
Common symptoms across stressor-related disorders include:
- Dysphoria or general unease
- Irritability and anger
- Dissociation or disconnection from self
- Sleep disturbances and insomnia
- Substance use as a coping mechanism
- Intrusive thoughts or flashbacks
Causes and Risk Factors
These disorders arise from exposure to stressors—events that threaten, harm, or challenge an individual beyond their coping capacity. Stressors can be physical, physiological, or sociocultural. Individual responses vary based on genetics, prior experiences, and personal interpretation of the event.
Treatment typically involves changing habits. These may involve thought patterns, how one deals with stress, time management or anger. Change is always hard. CBT psychologists help people make these changes with psychotherapy, behavior modification, physiological feedback and problem solving.
Managing any highly stressful event, especially if it is chronic in nature, or living with any chronic or serious illness, can have negative effects on emotions and behavior. Problems with depression, anxiety, anger, relationships and low self-esteem are common. CBT psychologists offer treatments for these problems using a variety of therapies such as stress management, problem-solving, cognitive-behavioral, and insight-oriented.
Treatment focuses on helping people to improve their ability to cope with the stressor or illness, learn techniques to decrease anxious and depressing thought patterns, and improve their ability to enjoy life.
I may be able to help if you are experiencing stress that may or may not be causing or aggravating a physical symptom or medical problem. I would like to talk with you about your situation. Please call me at 603-448-3588. You may also use my e-mail, and my address is Karen@Psychologist-NH.com.
