Stress Management Techniques

There are many ways of coping with stress. Their effectiveness depends on the type of stressor, the particular individual, and the circumstances.

For example, if you think about the way your friends deal with stressors like exams, you will see a range of different coping responses. Some people will pace around or tell you how worried they are, and others will revise or pester their teachers for clues.

Lazarus and Folkman (1984) suggested there are two types of coping responses emotion focused and problem focused :

Emotion-focused Coping

Emotion-focused coping is stress management that attempts to reduce negative emotional responses associated with stress.

Negative emotions such as embarrassment, fear, anxiety, depression, excitement, and frustration are reduced or removed by the individual through various methods of coping.

Emotion-focused techniques might be the only realistic option when the source of stress is outside the person’s control.

Drug therapy can be seen as emotion-focused coping as it focuses on the arousal caused by stress, not the problem. Other emotion-focused coping techniques include:

• Distraction, e.g., keeping yourself busy to take your mind off the issue.
• Emotional disclosure. This involves expressing strong emotions by talking or writing about negative events which precipitated those emotions (Pennebaker, 1995)
• This is an important part of psychotherapy.
• Praying for guidance and strength.
• Meditation, e.g., mindfulness.
• Eating more, e.g., comfort food.
• Drinking alcohol.
• Using drugs.
• Journaling, e.g., writing a gratitude diary (Cheng, Tsui, & Lam, 2015).
• Cognitive reappraisal. This is a form of cognitive change that involves construing a potentially emotion-eliciting situation in a way that changes its emotional impact (Lazarus & Alfert, 1964).
• Suppressing (stopping or inhibiting) negative thoughts or emotions over an extended period compromises immune competence and leads to poorer physical health (Petrie, Booth, & Pennebaker, 1998).

Evaluating Emotion-Focused Coping

A meta-analysis revealed that emotion-focused strategies are often less effective than problem-focused methods for health outcomes (Penley, Tomaka, & Wiebe, 2002).

People who cope with stress by eating, drinking, or taking drugs tend to report poorer health outcomes overall. These strategies ignore the root cause of the stress. That is the problem.

The strength of this pattern depends on the type of stressor, and on whether the outcome measured is physical or psychological health.

Epping-Jordan et al. (1994) studied cancer patients who used avoidance strategies, such as denying how ill they were. These patients deteriorated more quickly than those who faced their diagnosis directly. The same pattern appears in dental health and financial problems.

Emotion-focused coping rarely solves a problem long-term. It can delay a person from dealing with the actual issue. Still, it is often the better choice when the stressor is outside a person’s control, such as an unavoidable dental procedure.

Gender differences also appear here: women report using emotion-focused strategies more often than men (Billings & Moos, 1981).

Problem-focused Coping

Problem-focused coping targets the causes of stress in practical ways, which tackles the problem or stressful situation that is causing stress, consequently directly reducing the stress.

Problem-focused strategies aim to remove or reduce the cause of the stressor, including:

• Problem-solving.
• Time-management.
• Obtaining instrumental social support.

Evaluating Problem-Focused Coping

In general, problem-focused coping is best, as it removes the stressor and deals with the root cause of the problem, providing a long-term solution.

Problem-focused strategies are successful in dealing with stressors such as discrimination (Pascoe & Smart Richman, 2009), HIV infections (Moskowitz, Hult, Bussolari, & Acree, 2009), and diabetes (Duangdao & Roesch, 2008).

However, it is not always possible to use problem-focused strategies. For example, when someone dies, problem-focused strategies may not be very helpful for the bereaved.

Dealing with the feeling of loss requires emotion-focused coping instead.

Problem-focused coping only works when the person can actually control the source of stress. It fails in any situation where that is not possible. Exams and work-based stressors are typical situations where it succeeds.

It is not a productive method for everyone. Not everyone can take control of a situation, or even perceive it as controllable.

Optimists, who hold positive expectations about the future, are more likely to use problem-focused strategies. Pessimists lean toward emotion-focused strategies instead (Nes & Segerstrom, 2006).

Stress Inoculation Training (SIT)

Stress Inoculation Training (SIT) is a structured, cognitive-behavioural programme developed by the psychologist Donald Meichenbaum. It works like a vaccine: a small, manageable dose of simulated stress trains resistance to a much bigger stressor later.

How SIT Works

SIT unfolds across three phases, always delivered before a crisis rather than improvised during one.

• Conceptualisation: the client learns what is actually happening, physically and mentally, when they feel overwhelmed, then reframes the problem as workable rather than threatening.
• Skills acquisition: the client practises coping skills, such as relaxation and calming self-talk, under low-stakes conditions.
• Application: the client applies these skills under graduated, increasingly realistic simulated stress, such as role play, before ever facing the real stressor.

A trainee paramedic anxious about her first cardiac-arrest call illustrates this well. She might first rehearse a calming self-talk script on a mannequin. Later she faces a simulated call with added pressure. Only then does she attend a real one, having already coped with a graded version of the demand.

Evidence for SIT

Meichenbaum (1972) — cognitive modification of test-anxious students.

• Aim: to test whether training students to replace anxious self-talk with coping self-instructions could reduce test anxiety.
• Method: test-anxious college students were taught coping self-instructions, or assigned to a desensitisation or waitlist comparison group.
• Results: trained students showed significantly greater drops in test anxiety, plus improved academic performance and better coping in a new, untrained anxiety-provoking situation.
• Conclusion: restructuring a person’s own anxiety-generating self-talk produces broader benefit than simple desensitisation. This finding became the seed of the full three-phase SIT model.

A meta-analysis by Saunders, Driskell, Johnston and Salas (1996) pooled 37 studies and 1,837 participants. It found SIT reliably reduced anxiety and improved performance under stress, with the strongest effects in programmes that delivered all three phases faithfully.

Novaco (1977) later extended the same logic to police officers managing hostile encounters. Sixty-two officers trained through graduated role-played provocations. Their self-control improved. The logic clearly extends beyond test anxiety, into real occupational stress.

Because SIT trains coping skills before a crisis rather than during one, it remains one of the best-evidenced stress-management techniques available.

Relaxation and Physiological Techniques

Some stress-management techniques target the physiological symptoms of stress directly, rather than the thoughts that generate it. Biofeedback, progressive muscle relaxation, and yoga all work this way, training the body’s stress response rather than a person’s appraisal of the stressor.

Biofeedback

Biofeedback uses electronic sensors to show a person real-time information about a normally involuntary body state, such as heart rate or muscle tension. Watching this feedback, the person experiments with strategies like breathing or imagery. Over time, they learn voluntary control.

The technique works through operant reinforcement. Whatever the sensor shows improving gets repeated. Common variants target muscle tension (EMG), skin temperature, and heart-rate variability.

One trial illustrates this well. Lemaire et al. (2011) gave 40 hospital physicians a portable heart-rate-variability (HRV) sensor that tracks heart rate with each breath. Physicians who used it for 28 days, combining slow breathing with real-time feedback, reported substantially less stress than a control group.

The trial suggests a cheap, self-directed biofeedback tool is a realistic workplace stress-reduction option.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR)

Edmund Jacobson (1938), a physician, developed progressive muscle relaxation. It rests on a simple observation: muscular tension and psychological anxiety tend to occur together. The technique involves deliberately tensing, then releasing, each muscle group in turn, usually working up from the feet.

Repeated practice sharpens a person’s ability to notice tension building in daily life. It can then be released before escalating.

A candidate preparing for an important interview might work through this sequence lying down: clenching then releasing the fists, then the forearms, shoulders, neck and jaw. Each step feels heavier and looser once released.

By the final muscle group, his breathing runs slower and steadier, and his reported anxiety has dropped noticeably. A full step-by-step PMR script can help with this practice.

Yoga

Yoga is a family of physical and mental disciplines. The form most used for stress management is hatha yoga, combining physical postures, breath control, and meditative attention. Unlike biofeedback’s narrow physiological focus, yoga is deliberately holistic, targeting physical, cognitive, and social aspects of stress together.

Hartfiel, Havenhand, Khalsa, Clarke and Krayer (2010) — workplace yoga trial.

• Aim: to test whether a brief workplace yoga programme improves employee wellbeing and resilience to stress.
• Method: 48 UK employees were assigned to a six-week weekly yoga class or a wait-list control, with mood and resilience measured before and after.
• Results: the yoga group showed significant gains in clear-mindedness, composure, energy and confidence, and reported greater life purpose and satisfaction, relative to controls.
• Conclusion: even a small, workplace-compatible dose of yoga produces measurable psychological benefit.

Pascoe and Bauer (2015), reviewing 25 randomised controlled trials, found yoga consistently improved regulation of the body’s two main stress-response systems, plus reduced anxiety and depression.

This gives yoga’s reputation as a stress-reliever a plausible physiological explanation, not just a subjective one.

Key Takeaways

References

Billings, A. G., & Moos, R. H. (1981). The role of coping responses and social resources in attenuating the stress of life events. Journal of behavioral Medicine, 4, 139-157.

Cheng, S. T., Tsui, P. K., & Lam, J. H. (2015). Improving mental health in health care practitioners: Randomized controlled trial of a gratitude intervention. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 83(1), 177.

Duangdao, K. M., & Roesch, S. C. (2008). Coping with diabetes in adulthood: a meta-analysis. Journal of behavioral Medicine, 31(4), 291-300.

Epping-Jordan, J. A., Compas, B. E., & Howell, D. C. (1994). Predictors of cancer progression in young adult men and women: Avoidance, intrusive thoughts, and psychological symptoms. Health Psychology, 13: 539-547.

Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Progress on a cognitive-motivational-relational theory of emotion. American psychologist, 46(8), 819.

Lazarus, R. S., & Alfert, E. (1964). Short-circuiting of threat by experimentally altering cognitive appraisal. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 69(2), 195.

Lazarus, R. S., & Folkman, S. (1984). Stress, appraisal, and coping. Springer.

Moskowitz, J. T., Hult, J. R., Bussolari, C., & Acree, M. (2009). What works in coping with HIV? A meta-analysis with implications for coping with serious illness. Psychological Bulletin, 135(1), 121.

Nes, L. S., & Segerstrom, S. C. (2006). Dispositional optimism and coping: A meta-analytic review. Personality and social psychology review, 10(3), 235-251.

Pascoe, E. A., & Smart Richman, L. (2009). Perceived discrimination and health: a meta-analytic review. Psychological bulletin, 135(4), 531.

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.

Pennebaker, J. W. (1995). Emotion, disclosure, & health. American Psychological Association .

Petrie, K. J., Booth, R. J., & Pennebaker, J. W. (1998). The immunological effects of thought suppression. Journal of personality and social psychology, 75(5), 1264.

Sarafino, E. P. (2012). Health Psychology: Biopsychosocial Interactions. 7th Ed . Asia: Wiley.