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Staff Video #5 - Rethinking Stress

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Rethinking Stress Most of us have heard that stress is bad for us! But it matters more how you think about stress and not how much you have. Research shows that believing stress can actually be helpful for us to meet challenges in life can minimize the negative health effects we associate with stress. When you feel yourself experiencing stress this week, try to think: stress is something that is normal right, it's helping me to meet a challenge, and it is a signal I really care!

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Hi White River staff. This is Stephanie Dann again. Today I want to talk a little bit about stress. Most of you have probably heard that stress is really bad for you. I remember watching a documentary one time, called "Stress: Portrait of a Killer", and thinking, "Oh no!".  I experience a lot of stress. Right now all of you do too. This is a really stressful time. And we often think about stress as our enemy, and something to try to avoid at all cost. But, stress is not that. It actually doesn't matter how much stress we have. It's more about how we think about stress that can be harmful to us. There's been some studies about this which are really interesting. At the University of Wisconsin they looked at 30,000 adults and simply asked them the question, "How much stress have you experienced in the past year?" and then they also ask them the follow-up question, "Do you believe that stress is harmful to your health?" Then about 8 years later they looked to public health records to see out of those 30,000 people, who died. The bad news from the study is that people who said they had a lot of stress, was that a 43% likelihood that they would pass away. More than the people who said that they didn't have stress. However, the people who said they did not believe that stress was harmful to them, did not pass away at a higher rate. In fact, they were no more likely to die than somebody who said they had little stress. So how you think about stress matters. Another study looked at this a little bit deeper, at Harvard. They had adults come into their lab and do what's called the Social Stress Test, where they had people do an impromptu speech in front of other people, getting feedback. And then they had them do some complex math problems. So two very stressful situations. In one group in the study, they had people just do those things and read their stress before and after. For other participants in the study, they taught them a different way to think about their stress. For instance, they had them think about well my heart is beating faster because my body is getting energized and ready to meet a challenge. Or they taught them to think, I'm breathing faster because I need more oxygen in my brain to perform. Those people said they felt less stressed when they thought about their stress differently and they experienced less anxiety and more confidence. How we think about stress is really important. Right now, since we're all experiencing stress, instead of thinking I can't do this, I can't be having this amount of stress right now, think about how stress is something that is normal right now. It's also something that is helping you to meet a challenge, and also think about how stress is just a signal that you care. When you feel stressed it's a signal to you that you really, really care about what you're doing. Alright. Have a good week. Bye.

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Staff Video #5 - Rethinking Stress

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