Enfrentamento religioso da mulher de cultura presbiteriana na situação de estresse

Abstract

The beginning of this new century brought lots of changes, resulting from social and technological changes, wich women are submitted. They live in a time of no absolute truths and have to deal the unpredictable. Her roler passed through transformations during the years and it can be observed even in the religious sphere. These situations require constants adaptations, and all this process triggers a stress process. The incidence of stress in Brazil estimated in 32% of the adult population, and women are the most affected. The postmodern thought also brought the possibility of perceiveing the religion and the spirituality as important aspects of human experience. The religious traditions overall, didn‟t follow the changes and didn´t offer new rituals to the transitions, such as divorce, unemployment and extended families. Disconnected from rituals people may get stuck in specific emotions. This dissertation presents a possibility of correlating the concept of religious coping with adaptation strategies of Presbyterian women facing the daily stress. The overall goal of the research is to identify the forms used by the individual to face the stressor situations and enroll the facilitators that promote its adjustment in these situations. The research subject are women who attend Presbyterian churches with a mean frequency of 24 years in the city of São Paulo. The sample consists of 52 volunteer women, whose ages oscillate between 25 and 72 years. The technical resources are the General Questionnaire , WHOQOL_BREF, the Survey of symptoms of stress and the Scale of religious-spiritual coping. The stress will still be part of the life of men and women, but the humans have ability to learn coping strategies. And that‟s why the researches in this area assume importance. One of the ways to handle the stress is through religion, and it is known by religious coping. The psychotherapy spiritually integrated is a facilitator for the stress process. For the sample of this research, the religious coping proved to be dominant as search for meaning in crisis times. The area that requires more efforts from the Presbyterian women is the family. The anxiety is the emotion/feeling most experienced by the participants. To deal with tough situations, the volunteers pray and also communicate their unpleasant feelings to some people. Furthermore the church is perceived as a facilitator of emotional health.