What is Stress?
Everybody has this negative connotation of stress. I’m stressed out. I need to run errands. I have exams to cram for. I’m pulling my hair out!! Can you relate? This is the negative build up of stress in your life, chronic stress. We have this mindset where we have too many things to do, care about doing, and certainly not enough time to do them. But what if I told you that’s not the only kind of stress there is? That is only one type; chronic stress and a consistent increased level of cortisol.
What we just described is the chronic build-up of ‘stress’ that doesn’t help anyone. Would you keep reading if I told you there is an easy solution? Ready? It’s to just be happy about it and experience it more often… wild right? Keep reading. I have errands to run? Good. That will force me out of the house to get some sunshine. I have exams to cram for? Hell ya. I can’t wait to recover some of the material from the semester. A great study from PubMed called ‘Rethinking Stress’ aligned our mindset with the outcome of ‘stress.’ If we approach things in a positive manner, the benefit on our health is positive. If approached negatively, you guessed it, negative outcome. Pretty simple right? But what if we went deeper? There are multiple kinds of stress and putting all these human encounters under a singluar term really doesn’t do the word justice. Let me explain.
We’ve all heard of the fight or flight (or freeze) response within our sympathetic nervous system. The main stress response everyone talks about. But that’s only one part. If I get stressed out at the grocery store on Christmas Eve as we’re all buying the cranberry sauce we were supposed to get a week ago, and my stress response is ‘fight,’ do you think I should just start hitting people? Of course not. This built in evolution came from literal fight or flight from threats as we roamed the prehistoric lands of the world. But not crowded grocery stores.
We also have the stress response of tend and befriend. Where a hug could give us the necessary oxytocin to be happy and move on from the pesky troubles. This is fantastic response to have. This type of caring creates resilience in us. The same resilience that can be built from approaching stress with a positive outlook.
If you purposely induce yourself to good stress, eustress, you not only combat those pesky chronic levels, but increase your tolerance of stressful encounters. You can literally build resilience by changing your mindset and giving a few hugs..
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