What is a stress model?

The cognitive psychologist stress model postulates[1],[2] that the harmful effects of stress can be reduced by making different cognitive appraisals, which evoke different states of emotional arousal, and consequently lead to different physiological responses.

This strategy may be called a Perception Intervention Strategy with the acronym of PIS.. As early as 100 AD. the stoic philosopher, Epictetus seemed to imply a similar kind of strategy in regards to establishing the beginning and completion of education.

Explain the Epictetus quote as a strategy in assisting you in reducing the impact from the stressful events which you originally listed in the Holmes-Rahe Scale or the events that you listed that caused you stress. Explain the assumptions, or inferences, that you are making, or the arguments you are posing, in your explanation. The following quote illustrates a Perception Intervention Strategy. How might it work for you? Note does how you interpret the situation change the consequences which follow? Does the stress response differ regardless of the interpretation?

What disturbs men's minds is not events but their judgments on events...And so when we are hindered or distressed, let us never lay the blame on others, but on ourselves, that is, on our own judgments. To accuse others for one's own misfortunes is sign of want of education; to accuse oneself show's that one's education has begun; to accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one's education is complete.

--Epictetus

1. Brian Luke Seaward, Managing Stress-Principles and Strategies for Health and Wellbeing,3rd ed., Boston: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2002, p. 177
2. Jerrold S. Greenberg, Comprehensive Stress Management, 6th ed., Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1999, pp. 57-59