Health psychologist and Stanford University professor, Kelly McGonigal, PhD, tells us how to turn our response to stress into one that supports us and helps resist the bad effects of stress that we’ve heard about for many years. New research has changed her mind and she shares how you can turn stress into your friend by changing how you think about it. Dr. McGonigal explains in this 15 minute Ted Talk.
Here’s the main point I got from her talk: When you think of your stress response as your body and mind getting in gear to help you rise to the occasion, your body will indeed help you out in that stressful situation. Your body follows your thoughts about stress and will change itself accordingly. Yes, you heard it right.
Dr. McGonical points out that this works both ways. If you think the stress you feel will harm you, it does. If you think your stress response helps you be more prepared and capable to handle the stress, it will.
Case in point, normally when our heart pounds and the rate increases, our blood vessels constrict (as in stress-induced heart attacks). A Harvard study found that people who thought about their increased heart rate as preparing them for action and their increased breath rate as helping them get more oxygen to their brain, made their blood vessels relax and stay open rather than constrict. The vessels looked like they do when someone is experiencing joy or courage.
What does this mean to you? Thinking about your perceived stress experience in positive terms, ones that imply these reactions are preparing you to meet the challenge, to do better at handling the stressors, improves your performance by energizing you, aiding your focus and feelings of confidence.
People tend to get sick if they are under constant stress for a period of time and after major stressors occur. Dr. McGonigal also talks about how you build up your resilience to stress when you think of stress in this way. And the reverse of this would also be true.
So watch your thoughts when you’re under stress and see if you can make them your friend instead of foe. Over time, thanks to the plasticity of our brains, repeated thoughts become the preferred thoughts. So don’t give up on changing your mind about stress; as difficult as it might seem at first to view stress in a positive way, repeated thought connections become hardwired and become your automatic response to common stress reactions in your body.
Courtesy of Ted Talks
Kimberly Wulfert, PhD, Licensed Psychologist & Coach in Ventura & Ojai California, virtually
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