Exam 2 - Study Material Flashcards
What is anxiety?
- A diffuse apprehension that is vague in nature and associated with feelings of uncertainty and helplessness
- It is provoked by the unknown and precedes all new experiences
What are some characteristics of anxiety?
- Anxiety is an emotion without a specific object
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Anxiety is communicated interpersonally
- Anxiety can be transmitted from person to person
- Necessary for survival
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The crux of anxiety is self-preservation
- Anxiety occurs as a result of a threat to a person’s selfhood, self-esteem, or identity
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- Anxiety occurs as a result of a threat to a person’s selfhood, self-esteem, or identity
How is culture related to anxiety?
- Culture can influence the values one considers most important
- Underlying every fear is the anxiety of losing one’s own being
- A person can grow from the anxiety to the extent that the person confronts, moves through, and overcomes anxiety-creating experiences
What is fear?
- cognitive appraisal of threatening stimulus
- Fear has a specific source or object that the person can identify and describe
- Fear involves the intellectual appraisal of a threatening stimulus
- Anxiety is the emotional response to that appraisal
- Fear produces anxiety
What are the different levels of anxiety?
- Mild
- Moderate
- Severe
- Panic

Describe mild anxiety
- Associated with the tension of day-to-day living
- During this stage the person is alert and the perceptual field is increased.
- The person sees, hears, and grasps more than before.
- This kind of anxiety can motivate learning and produce growth and creativity

Describe moderate anxiety
- The person focuses only on immediate concerns, involves the narrowing of the perceptual field.
- The person sees, hears, and grasps less.
- The person blocks selected areas but can attend to more if directed to do so.

Describe severe anxiety
- Marked by a significant reduction in the perceptual field.
- The person tends to focus on a specific detail and not think about anything else.
- All behavior is aimed at relieving anxiety, and much direction is needed to focus on another area

Describe panic
- Associated with awe, dread, and terror, and the person feeling it is unable to do things even with direction.
- Involves the disorganization of the personality and can be life threatening.
- Increased motor activity, decreased ability to relate to others, distorted perceptions, and loss of rational thought. Unable to communicate or function effectively
- Prolonged period of panic would result in exhaustion and death
What is biofeedback?
The use of a machine to reduce anxiety and modify behavioral responses. Small electrodes are connected to the biofeedback equipment which are attached to the patient’s forehead to measure vital signs
What are ego defense mechanisms?
- First line of psychic defense
- Use to cope successfully with mild and moderate levels of anxiety
- Protects from feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness
- Prevents awareness of anxiety
- Extreme use distorts reality, interferes with interpersonal relationships, limits ability to work
What are some Ego defense mechanisms?
- Compensation
- Denial
- Displacement
- Dissociation
- Identification
- Intellectualization
- Introjection
- Projection
- Reaction formation
- Repression
- Sublimation
- Undoing
- Isolation
- Rationalization
- Regression
- Splitting
- Suppression
What is the “Compensation” defense mechanism? Give an example
Process by which people make up for a perceived weakness by strongly emphasizing a feature they consider more desirable
- EX: A businessman perceives his small physical stature negatively. He tries to overcome this by being aggressive, forceful, and controlling in business dealings
What is the “denial” defense mechanism? Give an example
Avoidance of disagreeable realities by ignoring or refusing to recognize them; the simplest and most primitive of all defense mechanisms
- EX: Ms. P has just been told that her breast biopsy indicates a malignancy. When her husband visits her that evening, she tells him that no one has discussed the laboratory findings with her
What is the “displacement” defense mechanism? Give an example
Shift of emotion from a person or object to another, usually neutral or less dangerous, person or object
- EX: A 4-year-old boy is angry because he has just been punished by his mother for drawing on his bedroom walls. He begins to play war with his soldier toys and has them fight with each other
What is the “dissociation” defense mechanism? Give an example
The separation of a group of mental or behavioral processes from the rest of the person’s consciousness or identity
- EX: A man is brought to the emergency room by the police and is unable to explain who he is and where he lives or works
What is the “identification” defense mechanism? Give an example
Process by which people try to become like someone they admire by taking on thoughts, mannerisms, or tastes of that person
- EX: Sally, 15 years old, has her hair styled like that of her young English teacher, whom she admires
What is the “intellectualization” defense mechanism? Give an example
Excessive reasoning or logic is used to avoid experiencing disturbed feelings
- EX: A woman avoids dealing with her anxiety in shopping malls by explaining that shopping is a frivolous waste of time and money
What is the “Introjection” defense mechanism? Give an example
Intense identification in which people incorporate qualities or values of another person or group into their own ego structure. It is one of the earliest mechanisms of the child, important in formation of conscience
- EX: Eight-year-old Jimmy tells his three-year-old sister, “Don’t scribble in your book of nursery rhymes. Just look at the pretty pictures,” thus expressing his parent’s values
What is the “Isolation” defense mechanism? Give an example
Splitting off of emotional components of a thought, which may be temporary or long term
- A medical student dissects a cadaver for her anatomy course without being disturbed by thoughts of death
What is the “projection” defense mechanism? Give an example
Attributing one’s thoughts or impulses to another person. Through this process one can attribute intolerable wishes, emotional feelings, or motivation to another person
- EX: A young woman who denies she has sexual feelings about a co-worker accuses him without basis of trying to seduce her
What is the “rationalization” defense mechanism? Give an example
Offering a socially acceptable or apparently logical explanation to justify or make acceptable otherwise unacceptable impulses, feelings, behaviors, and motives
- EX: John fails an examination and complains that the lectures were not well organized or clearly presented
What is the “reaction formation” defense mechanism? Give an example
Development of conscious attitudes and behavior patterns that are opposite to what one really feels or would like to do
- EX: A married woman who feels attracted to one of her husband’s friends treats him rudely
What is the “regression” defense mechanism? Give an example
Retreat to behavior characteristic of an earlier level of development
- EX: Four-year-old Nicole, who has been toilet trained for more than 1 year, begins to wet her pants again when her new baby brother is brought home from the hospital