Managing and Coping with Stress

When the body's stress response is triggered too often or too strongly, it can harm health, so psychologists have developed methods to manage and cope with it. AQA requires three named methods, and they work in very different ways.

Method	Type of approach	What it targets
Drug therapy	Biological	The body's physical response
Stress inoculation therapy	Cognitive-behavioural	Thoughts and coping skills
Biofeedback	Behavioural (learning)	Voluntary control of the body

The key contrast to hold onto is whether a method treats the symptoms of stress or the cause. Drug therapy and biofeedback act mainly on the physical symptoms, while stress inoculation therapy tackles the way a person thinks about and handles stressors in the first place. Keeping that distinction clear is what separates a top-band answer from a list of definitions.

Physiological approaches (drugs, biofeedback) treat how the body reacts. Psychological approaches (stress inoculation therapy) change how the person thinks and copes.

Drug therapy is a biological approach that reduces stress by acting directly on the body's chemistry. AQA names two types, and they work through completely different mechanisms.

Benzodiazepines (BZs) enhance the action of the neurotransmitter GABA. GABA is the body's natural form of anxiety relief: when it binds to neurons it reduces their activity, so the brain slows down. By boosting GABA's effect, BZs reduce overall neural activity and produce a calming, anti-anxiety effect.

Beta-blockers (BBs) work on the body rather than the brain. They reduce the action of adrenaline and noradrenaline on the heart and blood vessels. This lowers heart rate and blood pressure, directly reducing the physical symptoms of the stress response such as a racing heart and trembling.

Drug	Acts on	Main effect
Benzodiazepines	GABA (neurotransmitter)	Reduces anxiety; calming effect
Beta-blockers	Adrenaline / noradrenaline	Lowers heart rate and blood pressure

Both drugs are fast-acting and require little effort from the patient, but they treat the symptoms of stress, not its underlying cause.

Stress inoculation therapy (SIT), developed by Meichenbaum, is a cognitive-behavioural technique. The idea is borrowed from medicine: just as a vaccine exposes you to a weak version of a disease so your body can build defences, SIT prepares a person to cope with stress before it becomes overwhelming. It works through three phases, which must be learned in the correct order.

Phase	What happens
1. Conceptualisation	The client identifies and understands their stressors and how they respond
2. Skills acquisition	The client learns coping skills such as relaxation and positive self-talk
3. Application	The client practises the new skills in increasingly stressful real situations

Because SIT changes how a person thinks about stressors and gives them practical coping skills, it tackles the cause rather than just the symptoms. The skills learned are also transferable, so they help the person handle future stressors long after therapy ends.

The order matters: conceptualisation → skills acquisition → application. Putting these phases out of sequence is a common exam error.

Biofeedback teaches a person to bring a physiological stress response under voluntary control. The person is connected to equipment that monitors a bodily function, such as heart rate, blood pressure or muscle tension, and displays it back to them in real time as a sound or a signal on a screen.

Using this feedback, the person tries out relaxation techniques and can immediately see the effect. When they manage to slow their heart rate, the feedback confirms success, which acts as a reward. Through operant conditioning, they gradually learn which mental states reduce the response, until they can control it without the machine.

Biofeedback combines two ideas: relaxation to calm the body and operant conditioning (feedback as reward) to learn control.

Research suggests men and women tend to cope with stress in different ways, though these are general tendencies, not fixed rules — plenty of individuals do the opposite.

Women are more likely to use emotion-focused coping, which manages the feelings caused by a stressor, and to seek social support from others. This pattern is sometimes called the tend-and-befriend response and has been linked to the hormone oxytocin, which promotes nurturing and affiliative behaviour.

Men are more likely to use problem-focused coping, which tackles the stressor directly, or to rely on avoidance. This is sometimes connected to the traditional fight-or-flight framing of the stress response.

Tendency	More common in	Focus
Emotion-focused coping	Women	Managing the emotional reaction
Seeking social support	Women	Turning to others for help
Problem-focused coping	Men	Acting on the stressor itself
Avoidance	Men	Withdrawing from the stressor

Always frame gender differences as tendencies. Writing that "women use emotion-focused coping and men use problem-focused coping" as an absolute rule ignores wide individual variation and weakens an evaluation.

Social support is help and comfort provided by other people, and it buffers the effects of stress: people with strong support networks tend to cope better and suffer fewer stress-related health problems. AQA requires three specific types.

Type of support	What it provides	Example
Instrumental support	Practical help and resources	Lending money; helping with a task
Emotional support	Empathy, care and reassurance	Comforting a friend so they feel valued
Esteem support	Encouragement that boosts self-belief	Telling someone you know they can cope

The three are easy to confuse, so anchor each to its keyword: instrumental = practical, emotional = feelings, esteem = confidence. A single act can provide more than one type at once, but in the exam you should be able to define and give an example of each separately.

Social support does not remove the stressor. It changes how well the person is able to withstand it, which is why psychologists describe it as a buffer.

To reach the top band, extended-answer questions need developed evaluation. Below are four points, each stating a strength and a limitation.

Drug therapy is effective and easy to use. Research shows benzodiazepines reduce anxiety more effectively than a placebo, and because drugs require almost no effort from the patient, they suit people who are too stressed to engage with talking therapies. However, they treat the symptoms and not the underlying cause, so the stressor remains, and BZs carry a risk of tolerance and dependence as well as side effects such as drowsiness.

SIT is effective and long-lasting. Because it tackles the cause and equips people with transferable coping skills, its benefits can continue long after therapy ends, unlike drugs. However, it is time-consuming, effortful and expensive, requiring sustained commitment from the client, so it does not suit everyone, particularly those who lack the time or motivation.

Biofeedback has no side effects and gives the person control. Unlike drugs, it carries no risk of dependence and puts the person in charge of managing their own response. However, the equipment makes it expensive and less accessible, and its benefits may come largely from the relaxation it teaches rather than the biofeedback itself, which questions whether the technology is necessary.

Social support has clear buffering evidence, but the picture is complex. Gender and cultural differences affect how support is sought and used, and the wrong kind of support, or too much of it, can actually undermine a person's coping by making them feel dependent or judged. Support therefore has to match the person's needs to be effective.

1. Confusing benzodiazepines with beta-blockers

Benzodiazepines act on GABA to reduce anxiety; beta-blockers act on adrenaline and noradrenaline to lower heart rate and blood pressure. Swapping the mechanisms is one of the most common errors on this topic.

2. Getting the three phases of SIT out of order

The order is conceptualisation → skills acquisition → application. Describing application before skills acquisition, or omitting conceptualisation, loses marks even if the phases themselves are correct.

3. Treating gender differences as absolute rules

Women being more likely to seek social support and men to use problem-focused coping are tendencies, not laws. Stating them as fixed rules ignores individual variation and weakens evaluation.

4. Muddling the three types of social support

Type	Keyword	Example
Instrumental	Practical	Lending money
Emotional	Feelings	Reassurance and empathy
Esteem	Confidence	Encouraging self-belief

5. Saying biofeedback or drugs cure stress

None of these methods removes the source of stress. Drugs and biofeedback manage the physical symptoms, and social support buffers the impact. Only SIT works on the way a person appraises stressors, and even it does not eliminate them.