It may be time to rethink your view about stress.
It isn’t always a bad thing.
Stress, we’re now learning, is part of our body’s survival system,
a motivational force that helps us grow and accomplish tasks. Some researchers,
in fact, maintain that it strengthens our immune system and boosts memory.
So let’s pause, for a moment, to distinguish good stress (known as
“eustress”) from bad, and who better to teach us than Stanford professor Kelly
McGonigal, author of “The Upside of Stress” who holds degrees in psychology and
humanistic medicine. Said McGonigal in
an interview with goop.com:
“The
most basic [notion] that’s faulty is the premise that there’s only one stress
response, and that every time you experience stress you’re in a toxic state.
That’s fundamentally not true. The body has a whole repertoire of stress
responses. Sometimes when we experience stress we’re experiencing a state that
is healthy, that makes us resilient, that makes us more caring and connected,
that makes us more courageous. The experience might be physically similar in
some ways to stress states that we would describe as debilitating anxiety or
other negative stress states, but they are not toxic. There are a lot of
different ways to experience stress.”
Stress, of course, is a neutral term (much like the word “diet”
which now is associated solely with losing
weight), defined by Hans Selye in 1936 as a “non-specific response of the body
to any demand for change.” But over the years, McGonigal points out, it has
come to be associated with “almost everything that defines what it means to be
human.” Adds the Institute of Stress (yes, there is one, in Fort Worth, Texas):
“Stress is not a useful term for scientists because it is such a highly
subjective phenomenon.”
Harnessing
Eustress
Villanova University’s Division of Student Life offers a series of
solid tips for managing stress. They define stress as “the body's way of rising
to a challenge and preparing to meet a tough situation with focus, strength,
stamina, and heightened alertness.”
Their seven tips (which, though geared to students, might help all of us)
are:
1. “Avoid overscheduling;
2. Be realistic – don’t try to be
perfect, no one is;
3. Get a good night’s sleep;
4. Learn to relax;
5. Treat your body well;
6. Watch what you’re thinking; and
7. Solve the little problems –
learning to solve everyday problems can give you a sense of control.”
Kimberly Snyder adds five additional tips, four common ones and
one that’s somewhat unique – her five:
acceptance, breathe, meditate, exercise and volunteer (apparently,
there’s strong research to support the notion that volunteering counteracts negative
stress).
Stress and
Decision Making
And how does stress affect your decision-making process? A research study published by the National
Institutes of Health* reports two major findings:
1. Positive vs.
Negative Outcomes – When we’re feeling stressed (probably the bad kind), we
tend to overemphasize the positive outcomes and minimize the negative outcomes
(the authors maintain that this is “possibly due to stress-induced changes in
dopamine in reward-processing brain regions”); and
2. Risky Decisions,
Male vs. Female – Explained the authors: “Stress alters decision strategies –
but in opposite ways for men versus women. . . Stress amplifies gender
differences in strategies during risky decisions, with males taking more risk
and females less risk under stress.”
* “Both
Risk and Reward are Processed Differently in Decisions Made Under Stress”,
authored by Mara Mather and Nicole Lighthall
