Exercises — Chapter 12: Stress and Resilience

Part A: Understanding Stress

Exercise 1: Stress Biology in Context

A) Describe the HPA axis stress response in your own words — from perception of threat through cortisol release. Explain why each step in the sequence is adaptive.

B) The stress response was designed for acute, time-limited threats. Identify three modern stressors in your own life that are chronic or diffuse rather than acute. How does the mismatch between the response system and the stressor type manifest in your experience?

C) Cortisol impairs hippocampal function — specifically, memory formation and emotional regulation. Describe a situation in which you noticed that high stress was affecting your ability to think clearly or remember accurately. Looking back, what was the physiological explanation?

Exercise 2: The Appraisal Model

Lazarus and Folkman showed that stress is an appraisal, not just a stimulus.

A) Think of a stressor in your life that two people might appraise very differently — one as threatening, one as challenging. What are the specific elements of each appraisal? What would need to be true for you to shift from the threatening to the challenging interpretation?

B) Apply the two-appraisal process to a current stressor: - Primary appraisal: Is this relevant to my wellbeing? If yes: threat, challenge, or harm/loss? - Secondary appraisal: What coping options are available to me? Which do I have and which am I lacking? - What does this analysis reveal about the specific resource gap that is producing your stress?

C) The chapter notes that reappraisal is one of the most effective stress reduction strategies. Choose one stressor and write two appraisals of it — one that maximizes the threat, one that most accurately identifies what is genuinely at stake. What changes in your physiological response when you hold the accurate vs. threat-maximizing version?

Exercise 3: Eustress vs. Distress

A) Identify three current stressors in your life. For each, classify it as primarily eustress (manageable challenge that produces engagement) or distress (exceeding coping resources, depleting). Explain your classification.

B) For one of your eustress examples: describe what makes it motivating rather than overwhelming. What is the balance between challenge and available resources?

C) Think of a time when a stressor that was initially distress became eustress — when it shifted from overwhelming to manageable. What changed? Was it the situation, your appraisal, your available resources, or something else?

Part B: Coping

Exercise 4: Your Coping Repertoire

A) List the coping strategies you most commonly use when under significant stress. Be honest — include both adaptive and maladaptive strategies.

B) For each strategy, classify it as primarily problem-focused, emotion-focused, or meaning-based.

C) Examine the fit between your typical coping strategies and the type of stressors you most commonly face. Where is the match appropriate? Where are you applying problem-focused coping to uncontrollable stressors, or emotion-focused coping to situations that actually require action?

Exercise 5: Controllability Assessment

One of the most important stress management skills is accurately assessing what is and is not controllable.

A) Take a current significant stressor. Draw a simple two-column table: - Column A: "What I can control in this situation" - Column B: "What I cannot control in this situation"

B) Are you currently spending more time and energy on Column A or Column B? What adjustment would be most useful?

C) The chapter notes that problem-focused coping applied to uncontrollable stressors is draining and ineffective. Identify one way you have been attempting to control something uncontrollable in a current stressor. What would appropriate emotion-focused coping look like for that same situation?

Exercise 6: Meaning-Based Coping

Crystal Park and Susan Folkman's meaning-based coping describes finding or creating meaning in stressful experience.

A) Identify one significant adversity from your past (2+ years ago) that you have been able to make some meaning from. What meaning did you find? Was it found over time, or was it more immediate?

B) Is there a current stressor for which you have not yet found meaning — one that feels opaque or simply painful without apparent significance? What would it mean to approach it with a genuine (not forced) search for meaning?

C) The chapter distinguishes benefit-finding (genuine search for what might be gained or learned) from forced positivity (claiming things are fine when they are not). What is the difference, and how do you tell them apart in your own experience?

Part C: Social Support

Exercise 7: Social Support Mapping

Research consistently shows that social support is the most powerful stress buffer. But support must be cultivated before it is needed.

A) Map your social support network. Identify: - 1–3 people you can call in genuine crisis (not just vent to, but who can actually help) - 3–5 people who provide regular emotional support (listening, care, understanding) - 2–4 people who provide practical support (assistance, resources, information)

B) Where are the gaps? Are any categories empty or thin? What is the smallest possible step toward building support in the thinnest area?

C) The chapter notes that not all social interactions are supportive — some are themselves significant sources of stress. Identify one relationship that more often adds to your stress than reduces it. What is the most honest assessment of that relationship's net effect?

Exercise 8: Giving and Receiving Support

Many people are better at providing support than receiving it.

A) Describe your experience of asking for help. Is it easy, comfortable? Or difficult, shame-inducing, or avoided? Where does this pattern come from?

B) Recall a time when someone offered you genuine support and you received it fully — not deflected, not minimized. What made that possible?

C) Identify one current stressor for which you have not asked for support that is available. What prevents you from asking? What would it cost to ask? What would it gain?

Part D: Resilience

Exercise 9: Your Resilience History

Resilience is built partly through the experience of having survived previous adversity.

A) Identify three significant adversities you have navigated in your life. For each, briefly describe: - What happened - What you drew on (internal resources? External? Both?) - What you learned about yourself from surviving it

B) Looking across these three examples: what pattern of strengths do you notice? What resources have been consistently available?

C) What adversities would currently be most difficult for you — where are your resilience resources thinnest?

Exercise 10: Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory

Recall a significant adversity or life disruption from your past — ideally one that was genuinely challenging and is now far enough in the past for reflection.

Rate the extent to which each of the following positive changes occurred as a result of that experience (0 = not at all, 3 = moderately, 5 = very much):

  1. I changed my priorities about what is important in life.
  2. I have a greater appreciation for the value of my own life.
  3. I developed new interests.
  4. I have a greater feeling of self-reliance.
  5. I have a better understanding of spiritual matters.
  6. I more clearly see that I can count on people in times of trouble.
  7. I established a new path for my life.
  8. I have a greater sense of closeness with others.
  9. I am more willing to express my emotions.
  10. I know better that I can handle difficulties.

Reflect: What domains of PTG were most evident? Which were absent? What does the pattern reveal about what the adversity specifically disrupted and what it specifically revealed?

Exercise 11: The Bonanno Trajectories

Bonanno identified four trajectories after major adversity: chronic dysfunction, recovery, delayed response, and resilience.

A) For an adversity you have experienced, which trajectory did you follow? Be honest — the resilient trajectory is the most common, but it is not the only valid one.

B) The chapter notes that the absence of dramatic symptoms after loss is not evidence of pathology. Have you ever judged yourself (or someone else) for recovering "too quickly" from adversity — as if not suffering enough was a sign of not caring enough? Reflect on this.

C) What factors most influenced which trajectory you followed? Which were internal, which external?

Part E: Building Resilience

Exercise 12: The Physiological Foundation

The chapter identifies three physiological practices with robust evidence for stress reduction: exercise, sleep, and breathing.

A) Rate your current engagement with each (1 = very inadequate, 5 = excellent): - Regular aerobic exercise - Sleep quality and quantity - Use of breathing practices for stress regulation

B) For your lowest-rated item: design a specific, realistic upgrade. Not an ideal — a realistic minimum effective dose. What would you actually do, when, and how?

C) The chapter explains the physiology of extended exhalation (longer exhale than inhale activates the vagus nerve). Practice this for three minutes now. Describe what you notice.

Exercise 13: Cognitive Reappraisal Practice

A) Identify a current stressor. Write your current appraisal of it.

B) Generate three alternative appraisals — different but honest ways of framing the same situation. Focus on: - Challenge framing: What is the opportunity or learning available in this situation? - Resource framing: What do I actually have available to deal with this? - Temporal framing: How significant will this be in five years?

C) Which alternative appraisal is most resonant — feels accurate rather than forced? What changes in your felt experience when you hold that framing?

Exercise 14: Rumination vs. Problem-Solving

The chapter distinguishes productive problem-solving thought from unproductive rumination.

A) Describe a situation in which you have been ruminating — returning to the same thoughts about a stressor without making progress.

B) Apply the following distinction: Is this thought directed toward action? Does it generate options? Does it have a natural stopping point? If the answers are no, it is probably rumination, not problem-solving.

C) Design an interruption strategy for rumination: a specific behavioral activity you can use to disrupt the cycle and redirect attention. This should be something absorbing enough to occupy working memory (exercise, a challenging task, conversation with someone). Test it this week.

Exercise 15: Acceptance Practice

Acceptance — genuine acknowledgment of an uncontrollable reality without secondary suffering about the fact of the suffering — is distinct from resignation or approval.

A) Identify one significant uncontrollable aspect of your current situation that you continue to fight against rather than accept.

B) Describe the secondary suffering this non-acceptance is producing. How much of your distress is from the thing itself, and how much is from the ongoing resistance to the fact of the thing?

C) Write a two-paragraph acceptance statement — not "this is fine" or "I am grateful for this" — but an honest acknowledgment: "This is how it is. It cannot be changed. I accept that this is the situation I am living in." Practice reading it once a day for one week and note any change in your experience of the stressor.

Part F: Synthesis

Exercise 16: Your Personal Stress Profile

Compile a summary of your relationship to stress based on the exercises in this chapter:

  1. My most significant chronic stressors currently: (list 3)
  2. My typical appraisal pattern: (do you tend toward threat or challenge appraisal?)
  3. My most-used coping strategies: (problem-focused, emotion-focused, meaning-based?)
  4. My strongest resilience resources: (internal and external)
  5. My thinnest resilience resources: (where are the gaps?)
  6. The single most high-leverage change I could make to my stress management: (one specific action)

Exercise 17: Synthesis Essay

Write a 400-word essay in response to:

"The chapter argues that resilience is a process, not a trait — and that it is supported by specific resources and practices rather than being an innate quality some people have. Based on what you've learned, what would it mean for you specifically to cultivate resilience — not in general terms, but given your actual personality, values, relationships, and current situation?"

Your essay should draw on at least five concepts from the chapter and refer to your own self-assessment from this chapter's exercises.

Discussion Questions

Discussion 1: The chapter distinguishes genuine acceptance from forced positivity. Where is the line? How do you tell the difference between productive acceptance and unhealthy resignation?

Discussion 2: Social support is described as the most powerful stress buffer — with effects comparable to not smoking. But social support requires investment. In a culture that valorizes self-sufficiency, what barriers prevent people from building and accessing support?

Discussion 3: Post-traumatic growth is documented but not universal. Should PTG be held as an expectation for people who survive adversity — or does that expectation create additional burden? How should this concept be communicated?

Discussion 4: Bonanno found that the resilience trajectory (stable functioning throughout) is the most common after major adversity. Does this finding have implications for how we treat people who are struggling after loss? Might the expectation of significant distress be partially self-fulfilling?