Coping with Stress: Life Events, Chronic Difficulties, and Daily Hassles

Although most people do not experience traumatic events, they do go through many eventful changes and encounter persistent difficulties in the course of their lives. Such events and difficulties can pose considerable   challenge or even hazard to an individual, Changes that disrupt or threaten to disrupt people's usual activities are called life events. These include normal   and even happy life-stage transitions such as graduation, marriage, birth of a first child and retirement. They also include more unexpected life changes such as divorce, illness or injury, job promotion or demotion and change in career. Life events both positive and negative, require substantial   readjustments in behavior and these readjustments can be quite stressful (Holmes & Rahe, 1967). Think, for example, of the myriad adjustments   new parents must make to take care of their first baby. Career plans and work schedules are disrupted, sleeping patterns are altered schedules and responsibilities must be rearranged, and social activities typically decrease.

Even more readjustment is required by such negative events as the loss of a job or the death of a spouse. Major life events can produce chronic difficulties as well, although events and difficulties can exist independently. Chronic difficulties are problems that cause individuals to make adjustments more or less continually   in the course of daily life. Poverty, marital troubles crowded living conditions, urban noise job and academic pressures! continuous ill health-all of these and many other situations pose problems requiring daily adaptation. The wear and tear on individuals experiencing such   demands can be considerable especially when they have no control over those conditions.

Recently, psychologist have used the term daily hassles to describe conditions of everyday life that are perceived by people as harmful or threatening to their well-being (Kanner, Coyne, Schaefer, & Iazarus, 1981). This term encompasses a wide range of common experiences such as exposure to an inconsiderate smoker or having unexpected company, worries about the rising costs of food and housing, concerns about one's future, and feelings of loneliness or fear of rejection by others. Daily hassles   are transitory, minor experiences that nonetheless are viewed by the individual as memorable and distressing. They, too, can produce demands that tax a person's abilities to cope.