Be patient with your stress
It’s not stress, it’s how you think about stress that “stresses” you out. Does that paradoxical statement make sense? Consider this.
A study by Alia J. Crum at Stanford University followed 30,000 U.S. adults for eight years and found, as you would expect, that people who experienced a lot of stress had a 43 percent higher risk of premature death . But according to a 2013 TED Talk by Kelly McGonigal, a Stanford University health psychologist, “That was only true for the people who also believed that stress is harmful for your health. People who experienced a lot of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more likely to die prematurely. In fact, they had the lowest risk of anyone in the study, including people who had relatively little stress.”

McGonigal went on, “The researchers estimated that over the eight years they were tracking deaths, 182,000 Americans died prematurely, not from stress, but from the belief that stress is bad for you.”

This runs counter to all our ideas about stress where we have believed  it’s bad for us. Many of us can recite a litany of ways it harms the body and spirit. We have read articles offering advice on how to reduce it or manage it.

In a typical stress response, your heart rate goes up, your breathing quickens, your muscles tighten, your blood vessels constrict, and your blood pressure rises. The brain signals the adrenal glands to pump out adrenaline (also called epinephrine) and cortisol, the stress hormones. When they are released, the liver produces more glucose (blood sugar) to give you energy. You have “butterflies” in your stomach and may even suffer nausea.
All of this is healthy and useful in the short-term. It’s the body’s way of protecting you. It helps you stay focused, energetic, and alert. In an emergency it makes it possible for you to respond quickly and effectively. Stress can even save your life, giving you strength to defend yourself or causing you to slam on the brakes to avoid a car accident. It can help you meet and surmount challenges. It keeps you vigilant and sharpens your concentration.

But the body has trouble differentiating between physical and emotional stress. While a physically threatening situation might last for moments or hours, emotional stress may last much longer. You can become fearful and anxious, and therefore stressed — over work deadlines, family problems, relationship struggles, or financial troubles. In our demanding world your body may exist in a heightened state of stress much of the time.

Thus, stress becomes chronic. It can disrupt the systems of your body, suppress your immune system, upset your digestive and reproductive systems, increase the risk of heart attack and stroke, and accelerate aging. It can affect the brain and leave you more vulnerable to anxiety and depression. We know all this, and therefore, we see stress as the enemy. We believe we must do things to reduce it.
The study McGonigal references surprises us. Researchers learned that when people were told their stress response was helpful, their blood vessels did not constrict. The pounding of their heart became more like what happens in a moment of joy or in an act of courage. This one biological difference can have an effect over a lifetime of stress. So, the next time your heart is pounding from stress, remind yourself that this is your body telling you to rise to the occasion. Your body will learn to believe you and improve your stress response – making it healthier.

There is a further positive aspect of stress that is often overlooked — stress makes you social. Oxytocin, another hormone released during stress (nicknamed the “cuddle hormone” because it is also released when you hug someone) fine-tunes your brain’s social instincts and leads you to do things that strengthen relationships. You desire physical contact with family and friends. Oxytocin makes you more willing to help and support people, and helps you become more compassionate and caring. 

In addition to acting on your brain, oxytocin acts on your body to protect your cardiovascular system. It helps your blood vessels stay relaxed and less constricted during stress. Your heart has receptors for this hormone, and it helps your heart cells regenerate and heal from stress-related damage. It actually strengthens your heart. These physical benefits are triggered when you reach out to other people, which then helps you recover more quickly from the stress.

So remember to regard stress not as an enemy but as something you can learn from, something that can help you. This shift in attitude alone will help protect you against the ravages of stress. And remember to reach out to others because sharing your stress will help your heart.

The underlying reality of stress is fear — fear of physical harm, fear of loss, fear of rejection, fear of failure. Actress and singer Sandra Joseph played the role of Christine in “Phantom of the Opera” more than 1,300 times on Broadway over 10 years. Christine lived in almost constant fear until she finally removed the mask from the Phantom and kissed him. Sandra Joseph revealed in a 2018 TED Talk , that inhabiting the fear of that character helped her understand and deal with her own fear.

She said, “What if we could hold our own experience, our own suffering, with that same tenderness and compassion? What if we could look ourselves and our lives squarely in the face and kiss what we fear on the lips? … Behind the mask, we have one thing in common. We will all face fear … but if we turn toward the truth of the impermanence of everything, if we look directly at the fact of our fragility, we just might find that the things we fear the most hold within them the power to free us to live our lives full out.”

Maybe it’s a good idea to take Sandra Joseph’s suggestion when it comes to dealing with our own stress. Even if we cannot remove it or escape it, we can regard our stress with compassion, and we might find in its very reality the power to live fuller lives.