Stress and health: A positive direction

The relationship of gender expression, sexual identity, distress, appearance, and clothing choices for queer women

“…Minority stress is excess stress, 'which individuals from stigmatised social categories are exposed [to] as a result of their social, often a minority, position' (Meyer, 2003, p. 675), and its socially based meaning often 'stems from social processes, institutions, and structures beyond the individual rather than individual events or conditions that characterise general stressors' (p. 676). Nelson and Cooper (2005) discuss stress in a holistic picture differentiating positive responses to stress, or eustress, from negative responses to stress, or distress. Gillow and Davis (1987) and Woodman (1989) investigated sources of stress in lesbians' lives using qualitative data-collection methods.…”

“…While the LGBTIQ community has been studied extensively, an in-depth study of the negotiations of queer women's appearances in relation to negative stress or 'distress' (Nelson & Cooper, 2005) is absent in the literature. The purpose of this research was to understand queer women's experiences when managing their appearance in the current cultural climate, whether influenced by femininity, masculinity, androgyny, or another mixture of style, and to determine if they feel negative stress during this process.…”

Positive emotions, negative emotions, or utility of discrete emotions?

“…Likewise, some workers find fear invigorating (e.g., reactions of emergency services workers) or outright paralyzing. This phenomenon has been recognized in the stress literature with the development of a stream of research on Eustress, which concerns stress that motivates individuals (Nelson & Cooper, ). These differences in individual reactions again can be traced to appraisal theory (Lazarus, ).…”

I do…do you? Dependence and biological sex moderate daters' cortisol responses when accommodating a partner's thoughts about marriage

“…The bulk of research on health and stress has focused on distress (Loving & Wright, 2012; Nelson & Cooper, 2005), but eustress has received increasing attention in recent years, particularly among those studying early-stage passionate love. The process of falling passionately in love triggers a wide range of physiological responses, including elevated levels of circulating cortisol (Marazziti & Canale, 2004), heightened levels of the neurotrophin nerve growth factor (Emanuele, 2011; Emanuele et al, 2005), and activation of the anteromedial caudate and ventral tegmental regions of the brain, which are typically associated with the reward-motivation system (Aron et al, 2005; Fisher et al, 2005).…”