In the Ted talk video, Kelly McGonigal: How to make stress your friend, she talks about the topic of stress and how the body of an individual can make stress their friend not an enemy. KellyMcGonigal is a health psychologist who has experimented with stress and advising people how to prevent stress but she learnt that stress can also be good.Kelly  talks about the hormone oxytocin that is released in the body when experiencing stress and how this hormone interacts with social interaction in the real world.I was shocked with the number of deaths of people dying because of the belief of stress. The numbers of people dying from the belief of stress was 182,000 that 43% of the USA population and is ranked 15 in the top causes of death in the United States. Kelly researchers have researched stress over the past 8 years which leaves me questioning how reliable and accurate are the results and statistics of the test.

Kelly McGonigal informs the audience that believing in stress is what causes negative performances in life but if you change your thought of stress then it will let your body change the response to stress. Stress can be help with a person’s social life by seeking help or helping a person out, be more outgoing, and it can help a person with giving them the energy to finish work before a deadline.I would use stress in a positive way by giving me the determination to finish my work before a deadline and to do better with my school work.

In her TedTalk, health psychologist Kelly McGonigal says she wants to make you “better” at stress, as she claims stress makes you social. She discusses 3 studies in the talk. The first study was what caused her to change her mind about the way she viewed stress. The study involved tracking the stress levels of 30,000 adults in the U.S. for 8 years. The results showed people who were stressed while finding stress to be harmful had a 43% greater chance of dying. Those who were stressed but did not find stress to be harmful had the lowest risk of dying, even compared to those who experienced little stress. Basically, the study revealed one becomes more vulnerable to premature death by being stressed about stress. Although the study revealed interesting results and had a large sample, it may not be completely trustworthy. The way the researchers operationalized their variables in terms of how they actually measured stress and risk of death was not mentioned. I was surprised at how she made it appear that this one study alone caused her to change the way she looked at stress for herself and for others. This lack of triangulation does not add credibility to her ideas. In addition, the large sample used in the study took place on people in the U.S., which shows the results are not completely generalizable. I think she should have searched for/mentioned other studies which could have supported the idea. Claiming that being stressed about being stressed increases the risk of premature death is a big thing to say and I think multiple supporting sources are needed before you can just preach something like that.

The second study she mentioned was a social stress test done at Harvard. Results showed that when participants viewed stress responses as helpful,  their blood vessels stayed relaxed and refrained from constricting. Again the way the researchers defined their variable was not mentioned. I think this study is more easily supported by scientific methods. I also liked this study because it indirectly showed how each and every one of us has self-control over our stress. I believe you only succumb to stress when you allow yourself to. The study showed that by not allowing yourself to view stress in such a negative way, you can in fact control the effects of stress on your body.

She discussed the way in which Oxytocin promotes a stress response which makes you feel the need to be surrounded by people who care about you. I do not completely agree with this. Based on personal experience and the experiences of others in my life, being stressed may make you purposely try to isolate yourself, especially if the stress comes from school. The final study she mentioned concluded that caring creates resilience, which ties in to the prior discussion about Oxytocin. Finally, when being interviewed after the talk, she stressed the importance of meaning in life decisions. She basically stated that meaning facilitates your trust in thinking you can handle stress. I agree with this because meaning plays a strong role in many psychological aspects, such as memory.

Before watching the TED Talk video “Making Stress Your Friend”, I read the title thinking that having the ability to change our relationship with stress in a way that helps us is a little too good to be true. I agree with the statement that stress is not all that bad. For me personally, I have found that stress is a way to motivate me and remind me of an approaching deadline. If I didn’t have any stress or if I just pushed my stress aside and went along with my life in denial or suppression of the approaching exams, my exam scores would be very, very poor if we’re going to be honest.

Kelly McGonigal, the speaker, describes that stress does not  have to lead to harmful effects. Instead, how we view stress and how we act towards it, can lead to a positive or negative experience. If we choose to think about our bodily responses to stresses as natural processes, a way for our body to energize and prepare us in meeting our challenges, then Kelly claims that we should have more confidence and better performance. As we hear our heart pounding, we are told to think of this as we are breathing faster to get more oxygen to our brains. I could believe the part about participants of this study feeling less anxious and stressed, but the part about the blood vessels being less constricting as a result, was hard for me to believe. This could be true, but she did not mention the statistics of this as random assignment to conditions and how many people had this relaxed vessel.

The statistics that she had made me a little skeptical. For example, “ researchers estimated that over the eight years they were tracking deaths, 182,000 Americans died prematurely, not from stress, but from the belief that stress is bad for you” I would like to see the study they did, and if there were others to back this one up. Another claim she made was another study, I presume, “tracked about 1,000 adults in the United States, and they ranged in age from 34 to 93″ and “for every major stressful life experience, like financial difficulties or family crisis, that increased the risk of dying by 30 percent” but for those “who spent time caring for others showed absolutely no stress-related increase in dying.” To me, it sounds more like people who took care of others had no increase in dying because they were spending time with others and helping them, not asking people around for help and support. I think she would have to clarify and explain that more.

Also, I understand that Kelly is a health psychologist, but how did she just recently find out about these findings, and how much evidence did it take for her to fully believe all of these stats and interpret in ways that make it seem like the solution to not dying early from stress, is to think of stress as helpful? It all seems a little counter intuitive to me. If you don’t think of stress and anxiety to be negative, would you even consider being stressed anymore? To me, stress indicates a feeling of high pressure and resulting panic, not something that gives me courage. I believe that preparing myself mentally for a performance of some sort such as swimming, singing, or playing violin, and having enough practice to back me up is the only way to help calm my nerves. Tests are a whole other monster for me, because I am very much affected by my old test scores and performance, and have my goals and aspirations in the back of my mind. So, telling myself during a test that my sweaty palms and aching back is actually there to help me is very hard to do, especially if it gives me pain.

Another point mentioned in the video, was the idea that we seek others in times of stress and need. This was interesting, as I do this all the time. I feel as if this is very much dependent on personality type however, so it varies person to person. There are some people who just do not want to get help or choose to deal with their stress on their own in their own way and it works for them. I wish it worked that way for me. Kelly goes on to saying that stress makes us more compassionate and seeking to connect with others. But, what if the people you are trying to seek help from do not want to give it, or what if they are too busy and stressed out themselves? That’s a problem I often run into.

However, it still feels pretty good as the speaker ends by saying that if we do think of stress as a not-so-negative thing, “You’re saying that you can trust yourself to handle life’s challenges. And you’re remembering that you don’t have to face them alone.” Maybe I can try to apply this in my own life and tell myself the next time my heart races a million times a second that my body is doing this to help me in this endeavor and that it will help me instead of harm me when taking this test. We will see!