Our last two posts focused on research showing that there are two variants of a gene that result in your having either a “worrier brain” or a “warrior brain”. However, the research also shows that a “worrier” can function like a “warrior” with the right kind of training. Extensively exposing worriers to simulations of the stressors they need to face enabled many of them to deal with stress as effectively as warriors.
This “exposure training” has been used widely by psychotherapists, and its efficacy is well established.
A second approach that improves performance under stress is “reappraisal”. An excellent example of reappraisal is teaching people about the helpful effects of our bodily stress responses. For example, blood glucose can be increased due to stress, and that can help when facing challenges like taking tests. Again, this is not new to psychotherapists; commonly they point out that what a person is experiencing as fear or anxiety can also be seen as “excitement”. This kind of shift in perspective has been shown to work.
In this post we want to point out some other things that both of us feel are particularly useful in dealing with stress.
Debbie and I agreed to identify which methods we would add to the two described in the previous two posts. Debbie’s list was the best, so here is a summary of it.
- Exercise: Just about everyone these days knows about the body’s natural opiates that counter stress and even reduce pain. Exercise also produces other, less well known, chemical changes that are calming. Debbie also points out that exercise helps to shift our thoughts toward the positive.
- Challenging negative thoughts, which commonly do you no good, and finding more useful, positive thoughts.
- Practice being in the present moment rather than always anticipating and maybe even overthinking about possible bad things in the future.
- Shift to a more positive frame by keeping a daily log of things that went well, and try to notice for a particular time period (e.g. a day), the things you like about other people.
- One of the weaknesses of self-help is that most of us find it hard to do what we know is in our best interests. Debbie suggests “Mental Contrasting”, which has been shown to help people follow through on their good intentions. Mentally contrasting a future you want with present reality energizes us and encourages us to commit to the actions that will get us to our goal.
The only thing I want to add to that list is controlled regulation of breathing. Details of how to do that are in this post and this one.
