Stress - Strain Relationship 4

In the last byte, we looked at how being a Type A personalities influences the stress-strain that an individual faces. In today's byte, we look at Personality Hardiness aspects that influence the stress levels.

Personality Hardiness is a word used to define a personality resistant to distress and characterized by commitment, control and challenge. These people resist strain reactions when subjected to stressful events more effectively than do people who are not so hardy. Let us define the 3 terms used to characterize Personality Hardiness:

• Commitment is a curiosity and engagement with one's environment that leads to the experience of activities as interesting and enjoyable
• Control is an ability to influence the process and outcomes of an event that leads to the experience of activities as personal choices.
• Challenge is the viewing of change as a stimulus to personal development, which leads to the experience of activities with openness.

The people with hardy personalities use these components to engage in what is called - "transformational coping" when they face stressful events. Transformational coping is the way of managing stressful events by changing themselves into less subjectively stressful events. These people work towards altering the course and outcome of the event through action, and/or by achieving greater understanding of the process.

The alternative to transformational coping is called regressional coping, but this may lead to short-term stress reduction at the cost of long-terms healthy adjustments.