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!