Student Lifestyle | Amy Gan
Recently, I’ve
realized the importance of TED talks: in just around 10 minutes, people present
new and innovative ideas. There are great talks in all fields, such as the
environment, the ability to make good conversation, and the education system.
But here’s something that is probably one of the most relevant to you: stress.
Instead of
telling you to “stop stressing,” and ensuing the enemy status of stress, let me
instead advise you on how to make stress your friend, as the TED speaker Kelly
McGonial has brilliantly advocated.
Stress, which
triggers body reactions including a pounding heart, a quickening breath, and a
forehead sweat, has been transformed into a public enemy.
Listen up!
Recent studies
have demonstrated that actually, it is the attitude
with which we think about stress that affects how we feel. In other words, the
more we believe stress to be a negative force in our lives, the more it
negatively affects our life. This is a similar concept as the placebo effect:
according to Medicine Net, it is a phenomenon in which the more someone believes
one will benefit from a treatment, the more likely it is that one will actually
experience a benefit.
These mentioned studies
had asked two questions: how much stress have you experienced in the last year?
And do you believe that stress is harmful for your heath? Eight years later,
the conductors of this study checked the civil records… to see who died (to put
it quite bluntly). It turns out that those who had a higher level of stress and believed that stress was harmful had
a much higher risk to die sooner.
And remarkably,
those who had a high stress level but did not categorize stress as harmful did not have this risk; they had an even
lower risk of dying prematurely than those who had low stress levels.
This means that
people are literally dying from the belief that stress is bad
for them!
Instead of
spending so much energy trying to get rid of stress like one would perform an
exorcism, you can realize that it’s more about getting better at stress than getting rid of it.
Stress can be
seen as an encouragement from our body to help us perform better. Times of
stress are when we experience a pounding heart, some formed sweat and a
quickened breathing: these are signs that your body is being energized,
becoming ready to overcome a task.
Stress creates community
Something that
most people don’t think about is this: stress makes you social. Oxytocin, aka the “cuddle hormone,” is released as part of
your stress response. This hormone motivates you to make closer bonds with
people, crave the physical contact of friends and family, and experience more
empathy. Surprisingly, this actually is
a stress hormone, as much as adrenaline, which makes your heart pound.
Oxytocin is
pumped out by your body as a drive for you to seek out someone for moral
support, to create your desire for social contact and to help you be surrounded
by people who care about you. By reaching out to others who are stressed, you
can support each other. On top of creating more bonds and satisfaction in
relationships, oxytocin actually heals the damage that stress causes on your
heart and lowers blood pressure (which I can only hope is not something worrisome
so far in your life).
When you seek
out social contact while stressed, either for moral support or to help someone
else, more of this hormone is released, promoting trust and optimism. Thus, this
hormone is actually creating a resilience
against the negative effects of stress.
All in all
By prodding you to
approach others in times of difficulty, you get a push to conquer your
challenges. Empathy, optimism and caring help you get over the damage of
stress and strengthen your response to it. How you think and how you act shape how damaging stress is to your
body. If you believe in its power to help you, that’s exactly what it will do.
By realizing the
truth of this science, I see a whole new side of stress; instead of fearing it,
we just need to get better at it.
Accepting stress means that you trust yourself to rise to the challenge, but
also knowing that you do not need to face it alone.
Link to the
inspiring TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcGyVTAoXEU
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