Key
Points
1. Stress is your mind’s interpretation of either
an internal or external stimuli
2. Stress does not function as a simple external
force causing harm
3. You have the ability to modulate your
perceptions and approach to adversity, ultimately deciding if “stress” will
cause DISTRESS or EMPOWERMENT
4. By learning to control your internal thoughts
and your reactions to external stimuli, you can create an effective and
downright feel good physiologic “stress response.”
5. Stress is simply CARING, A LOT
6. Stress can be way to create meaning in our
lives, to connect with others and to reach higher states of functioning rather
than succumbing to anxiety and fear.
If you haven’t been living under a rock for the past few years, you are
probably more than aware that stress management is often a pivotal part of any
functional approach to improving health and avoiding disease. Along with this
message, you may have also heard of the idea that chronic stress in the form a
perpetually hyperactive sympathetic nervous system, or ‘fight or flight”
response, can create a relative imbalance in our overall autonomic nervous system,
leading to significant dysfunction, morbidity and just plain poor health.
Taking this into consideration, nothing seems more worrisome to me than an
“automatic” machine that evolved to perform functions such as regulating blood
pressure, orchestrating proper digestion and maintaining metabolic energy
balance working in a less than optimal manner. I cannot stress this
enough (no pun intended)- automatic DOES NOT mean optimally functioning- it
simply means autonomously and continuously performing a given task that may or
may not actually be helpful to the system in question. Lastly and perhaps most
intriguingly, automatic DOES NOT mean out of OUR control. While we are blessed
with an autonomic nervous system that can function independently of any
conscious thought, the beauty of this system lies in the fact that we CAN
control the inputs to this system such that we can alter our physiology simply
by our thoughts! Ever heard of psyching yourself up for the big game?
Well guess what, you may have just willfully increased blood flood to your
skeletal muscles, mobilized glycogen stores to provide precious glucose for
your mitochondria to make ATP- and increased your cardiac output in order to
supply your cells with the oxygen required to maximize this energy production-
did someone just say Electronic Transport Chain?
In order to help answer the main questions at hand: what exactly is stress and
how does it affect our overall health, I have turned to the wisdom of Kelly
McGonigal, a prominent health psychologist, who has become the leading
researcher wiithn this field of stress psychology. If you have not seen her TED
Talk, I would like to say you are not alone, but the truth is, she has over 9
million views! Just perhaps she has something interesting to say.
TED Talk Link
Additionally she recently did two wonderful
podcasts with Brian Johnson, one of the most practical and productive mental
health geniuses I know, which provide further fuel to this discussion.
Podcast Link:
The Upside of Stress: https://brianjohnson.me/philosophers-notes/the-upside-of-stress/
One of Brian’s most important “Big Ideas” from his
discussions with McGonigal is that “stress” can actually be a motivating and
helpful component of our daily lives. As he point outs, rather than seeing
stress as the all or nothing “fight or flight” response or stress as chronic,
runaway anxiety with actually minimal amounts of “fighting or flighting,” we
should simply see stress as the acknowledgment that we CARE, A LOT. Taking our
positive approach to stress and applying it to a real world situation, let’s
examine the scenario of an impending thunderstorm barreling down overtop some
hikers completely exposed to the elements. If you feel like this would be a
good time to begin some quiet mindful reflection, trying to avoid overt
sympathetic arousal, maybe you should apply our new positive stress paradigm
and think instead, "I do not have to necessarily fight or flee, but
maybe I should start CARING, A LOT.”
While we commonly associate enthusiasm and passion as “positive” traits and
stress and anxiety as “negative”, McGonigal argues and I agree, why can’t
stress be positive? Why can’t we channel this physiologic energy into
passionate work? Ever been buzzing as you churned through a book, or hummed
along writing a deadline paper- you may have been in what some people call a
“Flow State.” With creativity seeming to ooze from your eyeballs, in this
perceived “Flow State” there often times is very little thinking, just doing,
feeling, and moving with the moment. Just as you can’t tickle or scare yourself
by jumping around a corner, you cannot seek to obtain or reach a “Flow State”
through purposeful action; it just simply happens. Now if I were to ask you how
you were feeling during one of these moments of clear action, of precise
expression, of being “in the zone” I can almost guarantee you would not
describe it as the sympathetic response- running away from a saber tooth tiger,
but you surely would also not describe it as a calm, collected and peaceful
parasympathetic state; so what exactly then is this “Flow State?” To answer
this last question, I turn to the work of Andrew Bernstein.
Bernstein’s most recent book: “The Myth of Stress” seeks to completely shatter
the idea that stress is some external force leading to the systematic
activation of our sympathetic nervous system. Rather, Bernstein postulates that
stress is pretty much all a mental construct, an interpretation, internally
created through our thoughts regarding our present environmental circumstances.
Bernstein discusses this idea and others further in a thought-provoking podcast
with Robb Wolf.
Podcast Link
Taking even what seems
to be the most obvious rebuttal to his theory regarding stress: a massive
grizzly bear standing 20 yards ahead of your path, he argues that while
we all just assume the presence of the bear will initiate our "fight or
flight" response, we actually have to mentally decide “hmmm, interacting
with this bear might not be the best idea, maybe I should start caring about
staying alive.” So we see that the ensuing physiologic response involving
fleeing or possibly fighting, depending on the person in question, stems not
from some switch the bear triggered, but from our internal ruminations, a conscious
decision that this situation requires a different level of attention. Going
back to our previously described “Flow State,” I suggest to you that perhaps,
the reason we do not perceive these moments of action as stressors or stressful
or conversely, describe them as soothing or calming- operating at our normal
homeostatic baseline, is because, just maybe, we aren’t thinking much at all.
Thus we return to the question: Without thinking, without an internal dialogue,
without conscious awareness of our thoughts, is stress even possible? Whether
operating in a “Flow State” or choosing to mindfully direct our energy during
situations of perceived stress, it seems that we truly have the power to
control stress, and more importantly, use stress to live more productive, happy
and fulfilled lives.
The possibilities of a
positive approach to stress are endless, but I want to end this discussion with
one last key question and idea: what if we saw stress as a positive way to
create meaning? McGonigal sites an amazing study that looked people personal
interpretations of stress and meaning in there lives and sure enough, the
people who said they were the most stressed also identified more meaningful
pursuits and relationships in their lives. So if we approach stress as the
opportunity to acknowledge our values and subsequently create meaning in our
lives, instead of just another moment to let anxiety, worry and disappointment
reign supreme, would we see stress differently? And lastly, I ask you curiously,
do we really need stress management, when we can have stress empowerment
instead? Just an idea or maybe some misdirected stressful thinking, who knows,
it’s all just in our heads anyway.
