Name: The Upside of Stress and Anxiety
Uploaded: 2019-04-02
Duration: 8 min 55 s
Description: Nearly 80% of Americans say they’re stressed out, while close to half of us say our anxiety levels are up from a year ago. The good news? Stress and anxiety can be your friends.

I'm Lisa Damour, I'm a psychologist, and I'm here to make the case for stress and anxiety. [ LAUGH ] I know that they usually get a bad rap, and there's no question that stress and anxiety can reach pathological levels, but that can cause us to lose sight of the fact that often, if not usually Stress and anxiety are normal, healthy and actually useful parts of daily life. So let's start with stress. Here's what psychologist know about stress. It happens anytime humans operate at the edge of their abilities. Anything that makes us stretch will cause us to feel stress. Now good and bad things can cause us to feel stressed. So a bad thing like a problem at work can cause stress, but also good things like taking on a challenging project is stressful, or moving into a new house is stressful. Or any of you have ever welcomed a baby into your house for the first time know this is a wildly stressful experience. So we just accept that stress happens whenever we are changing and adapting. Now here's what's really cool about stress. When humans operate at the edge of their abilities, their abilities actually expand. So any of you who have ever welcomed a second baby into your home? Know this is true, right? It's not nearly as stressful as it was the first time because that first baby broke you in. And now you can handle two children relative relatively easily. So the way we talk about this and academic psychology is actually the inoculating function of stress And we have research that demonstrate that when we have stressful experiences occur we actually go on to be more durable. in fact studies that have followed people who rather really difficulty experiences like a scary medical illness or something and they come through it what we find is they go on to have higher than average residence when new difficulties come their way. So that expression like what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, probably overstates the case but it is definitely supported at some level by the research so here is how i want you to think about your stress, i want you to think about it like psychological weight lifting So we all know that in order to gain muscle you have to lift weights that are uncomfortably heavy. That's just what you have to do. Now psychologist also understand that in order to gain emotional or [ UNKNOWN ] strength, you actually have to go through a periods of discomfort to get there. Now one of the things that's important is that, even with weight- lifting you can't lift weights all the time. You can't lift them non- stop without getting injured. And we see stress in the same way, you can't be stressed all the time. That turns into chronic stress which we don't like. So what we're interested in the psychology, is not trying to avoid stress, stress comes with life We're actually interested in periods of recovery. Just as with weight lifting, it only works if you actually have time to just sort of recover from a hard workout. Stress is only positive and growth giving if you have systems for restoring yourself. So I would say to you, don't worry about the stress, right? If your life is interesting at all, you're going to have stress in it. And instead, focus on how you like to restore yourself. And what we know is that everybody's systems are different, it's highly individual. So, on top of getting enough sleep, you're gonna figure out what your system is. So some of you may like to exercise, some people may like to cook to restore themselves, some people might like to watch TV Hang out with the people they love, whatever works for you that's what you gonna focus on, okay. So here [ UNKNOWN ] really interesting about stress. We have research showing when the people adopt the positive [ UNKNOWN ] stress it actually improves their mode and it improves their performance. So, psychologists have done studies where we bring two groups of people into a lab, and we tell them two different stories about stress. So, to the first group, we basically say, " Look, stress can be helpful, it can be enhancing for you ." Sort of a lot of the stuff I just told you. And, to the second group, we tell them what people already usually believe, which is that stress is harmful and bad for you. We then followed up with those people a few days later. And it turns out that the people in the first group reported that their mood had improved and their work had gone up and quality. And the people in the second group, they reported no change because basically we reinforced what most people already believe. So stress can be your friend and it can do a lot for you. Now let's talk about anxiety. Psychologists have a very similar view of anxiety, we actually don't think it's also bad. In fact, we see it as a normal, healthy, and protective mechanism that is installed through evolution to keep you safe. The way to think about it is this So picture a cave person who sees a saber- toothed tiger. And they have that standard anxiety response. Their heart rate goes up, their breathing changes, maybe they're sweating, they're wildly uncomfortable. And that discomfort tells them that they have to do something. So they run for the gate. That cave person survived to pass genes down to us, okay? The cave person, who sees a saber- toothed tiger and is like, hey, that's a cool tiger, right. We don't have their genes, okay. So, this is how anxiety works. So, in modern life, anxiety alerts us to modern threats. If we are driving and someone near us is swerving, that should make us anxious, right. And that will tell us to do something, right. Get ahead of them, change lanes, something like that. Anxiety also alerts as to internal threats. So if your procrastinating and you start to feel uncomfortable because you really should get to your work. That's anxiety telling you to et going. So it's important to appreciate that anxiety is a useful part of being human. So a lot of my work is with teenagers and I'm having these conversations with them a lot time. And so I said, Look, if you show up at a party and you get really anxious when you walk in, pay attention to that feeling right maybe the party is too big or it's out of control, and I say to them, don't start drinking to make the anxiety go down right and i will say I think a lot of the heavy drinking we see in adolescence. Is that they are in situations that they know to be dicey, and yet we've given them the impression that they're not supposed to feel anxious. And it turns out, booze is great at making the anxiety go away. I also tune them into their internal anxiety. So if I'm talking to a teenager who says, I'm really freaked out about this upcoming. My first question will be, well have you studied? And if they say no, I say okay, great. You are having the exact right reaction. Right, you should be nervous right now. And as soon as you study, you will feel better. So the bottom line is, these are useful parts of life. We also have research showing that if you can see anxiety as useful it can also improve your performance. We do these studies where psychologists bring in people into situations that are invariably stressful. Something like giving a speech to a hostile audience that's crossing it's arms and furrowling it's brow. And of course, this audience is all made up of grad students who work in the psychologists' lab, right, cuz it's mildly sadistic psychology stuff. [ LAUGH ] And what we do, before we get these people up to give their speech, we tell half of them, if your heart rate goes up, your performance will improve. And we tell the other half, if something makes you nervous, try to ignore it. and what we find is the people in the first group both find the task to be less demanding and also the are hooked up to monitors they have a more efficient cardio vascular response from the people in the second group. ok so that's my ad for stress and anxiety so you may be thinking if this is so great how did it get such a bad rap And this is how it got such a bad rap I think. Stress and anxiety don't feel good, right, they're not comfortable. And so then I think people make the leap that it can't be good. But the reality is, if you have ever exercised, you know that something that doesn't feel good for you can actually be really good for you. So here's where I'm gonna end. Sometimes stress and anxiety get out of control, that can happen. Stress becomes chronic or traumatic, anxiety is an alarm system that doesn't make sense, even when that happens, we are really, really good at treating it. The way I want you to think about it, if you soon see these as helpful and useful Is that then, you don't have to feel stressed about being stressed. And you don't have to feel anxious about being anxious. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

The Upside of Stress and Anxiety

Health

Nearly 80% of Americans say they’re stressed out, while close to half of us say our anxiety levels are up from a year ago. The good news? Stress and anxiety can be your friends. 