How to make stress your friend by Kelly McGonigal
Ted Summary How
to make stress your friend by Kelly McGonigal
Kelly
has been treating stress as a disease that makes people sick, but has now
changed her tune. A study assessed people’s feelings of stress, their attitude
towards stress, and correlated against public death records. The people most
likely to die were more stressed, but they also believed that stress was
harmful to their health. People who were highly stressed but didn’t believe it
was harmful were the least likely group to die. The study shows it isn’t stress
that kills people, it’s the belief that stress is harmful. By reshaping how you
think about stress, you can retool your body’s response.
When
stressed, your heart beats faster, you breathe faster, and you’ll break out
into a sweat. Normally we’d view these as signs that you’re not coping well,
but people could also be taught that your body is preparing for
action. By pumping more blood and breathing more you are preparing for
something difficult, and ready to take on any challenge.
The
harmful part of stress is a restriction of blood vessels, which is associated
with cardiovascular disease. When people learn to see stress as a positive, the
blood vessels do not constrict. The body response looks more like it is full of
joy.
The next
time you are stressed, think about it as your body preparing you for the
challenge.
Stress
makes you social. Octytocin is a neural hormone that primes you to strengthen
relationships, and help your friends. It is also known as ‘the cuddle hormone’.
But Oxytocin is also released as a stress response – to make you want to
tell someone you are struggling. Oxytocin is also received in the heart, to
strengthen, heal and protect it from the effects of stress. As you release
more of this hormone by being stressed or helping others, you increase your
stress resilience.
Another
study looked at how stressed people were, how much time they had spent helping
family / friends / their community, and correlated with public death records.
For the general respondents, each major stressful crisis increased the risk of
dying by 30%. However, people who spent time caring for others had no increase
in risk of death due to stress.
The
results of stress are changed by your mindset. When you think of stress as a
benefit it acts that way. When you help others, you build resilience to stress.
When
given a choice between a stressful job and one that is less stressful, Kelly
recommends that you follow the one that gives you the most meaning, and trust
yourself to handle the stress that results.
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