Question

What is an example of a situation in which cognitive appraisal (interpreting a stressor as a negative threat or challenge to overcome) influenced your experience of a stressful situation?

Answer 1

I was always afraid of the crowd and public speaking. I used to miss all my presentation sessions. Whenever, the presentation sessions come I used to freak out and stressed out. My teacher noticed this for two months and called me for a personal talk. He told me that it’s not good that I keep running away from my presentations and that I should face it. He gave me few tips and told me that I could do two or three presentations to him, so that he could give me few feedback on eye contact, postures, gestures and other verbal delivery such as intonations, stress and pointing out important points.

He also helped me prepare some notes on the topic and organise it for the speech. The three trial presentations gave me enough confidence to present it in front of the whole class. To my surprise, I did extremely well and everyone appreciated me for doing that. I learnt to face stressful situations later in my life.