25 Feb 2016 Challenging Your Beliefs About Stress
In 2012 a survey by the American Psychological Association (APA) found that 20% of Americans reported that their level of stress was extreme or high. That is over 60 million people.
The impact of this stress on our lives spans everything from negatively affecting our success in life, to diminishing our health, and even causing death.
In this post, I describe two recent studies of stress which shed new light on strategies for alleviating this potentially devastating condition.
Is Stress Harmful To Your Health?
In this study Dr. Abiola Keller and her colleagues asked 28,753 individuals two questions:
a. How much stress have you experienced in the past year?
b. Do you believe that stress is harmful to your health?
The researchers then looked at death records for the period between 1998 and 2006 to see who died.
The findings of this study were:
a. 55.5% of the respondents experienced high or moderate stress in the past year.
b. 33.7% believed that stress is harmful to health.
c. 10.3% (2,960) of the respondents died in the 8 year period.
The researchers then analyzed the data and found the most amazing correlations:
People who experienced high stress & believed it is harmful to their health had a 43% higher probability of dying prematurely.
People who experienced high stress & did not believe stress is harmful to their health were 17% less likely to die prematurely.
* Compared to people who did not experience high stress.
The researchers calculated that over the 9 years of the study over 180,000 Americans died, not from stress itself, but from believing that stress is harmful to their health.
Conclusion and Recommendation:
It seems that worrying about being stressed further perpetuates the negative effects of stress on our health and thus increases the probability of premature death.
Psychologists recommend that viewing the stressor (such as a looming deadline, or an upcoming meeting with the top boss) as a challenge and a learning opportunity will focus our attention away from the problem and onto finding a solution, thereby diminishing the negative effect of the stressor.
Does Helping Others Reduce Stress?
In this study Michael Poulin and his colleagues asked 846 participants two questions:
1. Have you experienced a major stressful event in the past year, and
2. Have you regularly spent time helping someone close to you (i.e. an ailing parent or a child)?
Then the researchers looked at death records to see who died over the following 5 years.
Again the results were insightful:
People who experienced a stressful event and did Not help someone close to them had a 30% higher probability of dying prematurely.
Conclusion and Recommendation:
It seems that helping someone close to us turns our attention away from our own stress towards that person, thereby reducing the negative impact of stress.
Helping someone close to us also releases hormones such as Oxytocin and Serotonin which make us feel good, thereby reducing the negative effects of the stress.
The researchers recommend that we should seek out opportunities to help people who are close to us and who are in need of our care, especially when we have experienced a stressful life event.
Ways To Reduce Your Stress:
Below are 5 scientifically-proven steps you could take to reduce your level of stress:
1. Avoid stressful situations. This will require realistic judgment, determination, and courage. The things you can do are simple:
a. Do not accept unrealistic tasks or deadlines;
b. Set realistic expectations of yourself and others;
c. Do not worry about the future or ruminate about the past;
d. Do not harbor negative feelings towards yourself and others.
You can cultivate these mental and expressive behaviors by taking small steps in each of these areas and focus on practicing them repeatedly. It is just like building a new skill.
2. Exercise. Scientists found that exercising helps us build resilience and counter the threatening stress signals from the alarm center of our brain (the amygdala). Any amount of regular exercise is helpful, but intensive daily exercise for at least 20 minutes is more effective in strengthening our mental resilience.
3. Practice mindfulness meditation. This is by far the most scientifically-proven effective way to reduce our level of stress. Meditating for 10 to 30 minutes a day will result in a measurable reduction in stress within 8 to 12 weeks. In the Learn More section below I have included two free online resources for guided mindfulness meditation.
4. View stressors as challenges. To reduce your overall level of stress, you should stop worrying about being stressed out. That added anxiety is compounding the negative effects of stress. Rather, you should view your stressors as challenges and learning opportunities. You should focus your mind on the solution, not on the problem. You can cultivate this quality of your mind by practicing the “focus shift” technique regularly, starting with small simple stressors, and gradually tackling larger and more complex stressors.
5. Help people and communities. To do this you will need the courage and determination to shift the priorities in your daily life, and make room for helping other people and communities that you care about – even if you think that you do not have the time. As the researchers have shown, helping others will result in shifting your mind away from focusing on your own problems. It will also generate a flow of positive emotions that will make you more resilient.
Learn More:
To learn more visit our website to read about our wellness program and about mindfulness meditation www.thewilltochange.com
Also below are two free online programs for mindfulness meditation:
http://palousemindfulness.com/index.html
http://marc.ucla.edu/
Research References:
1. Abiola Keller et. al. U of Wisconsin, Madison. Health Psychology, September 2012.
2. Michael Poulin et. al. American Journal of Public Health. September 2013.
Please feel free to email me at Uri@thewilltochange.com.
