The Upside of Stress

The upside of stress argues that embracing stress is a healthier approach than avoiding it and attempting to reduce it. Quoting numerous scientific studies, the book shows how stress has positive effects and can help us better cope with challenges in our lives. The book starts with some mind-blowing research about mindsets showing that how you view

Book Notes

Introduction

Stress increases chances of dying by 43%.
Stress on its own is not to blame but also the belief that stress is bad for you.
People who didn’t view stress as harmful had lower risk of stress than people who didn’t report having stress.
How you think about stress matters.
Some beliefs can influence longevity. Positive attitude about aging makes you live longer (Yale study lived average 7.8 years longer). Exercise, healthy blood pressure etc adds less than 4 years. Those who believe most people can be trusted live longer than cynical view of human nature.
Fear stigma etc don’t really help motivate people to the right behavior. This is why a lot of public policies backfire.
Stress can make you smarter stronger and more successful. Changing your mind about stress can make you healthier and happier.
Best way to manage stress is to embrace it. Get better at stressing.
Stress is a catch all word.
In the book it is defined as: Stress is what arises when something you care about is at stake.

Part 1 - Rethink stress

Chapter 1 - How to change your mind about stress

How to change your mind about stress
How you think about something can transform its effect on you.
Crumb (Columbia business school researcher).
Mindsets are beliefs that shape your reality. The effect you expect is what you get.
Crumb asked housekeepers if they exercise and most said no even though housekeeping is strenuous. She designed a poster to show housekeepers in hotels how housekeeping is physical workout. Those who were informed their jobs was working out lost weight and had better blood pressure than before. All crumb did was change their perception. Her hypothesis is that when 2 outcomes are possible (physical strain or health benefits of exercise), perceptions influence the outcome.
Shake tasting study - milkshake labeled indulgence and nutritional label showing lots of calories and fat. They also had a shake with better label sensi-shake and less calories. They measured blood levels of ghrelin (hunger hormone). Indulgence shake had bigger drop on ghrelin than the sensi shake. But it was the same shake. The only change was the beliefs. Ghrelin dropped 3x more when they thought it was indulgent than diet drink. Expectations can alter something as concrete as ghrelin.
Perceptions change body response. The same applies to stress. If you view it as beneficial or harmful.
Two stress hormones: cortisol and dhea.
Cortisol turns sugar and fat into energy. Suppresses bio functions less useful during stress, such as reproduction, digestion and growth.
DHEA is a neurosteroid. Hormone that helps brain grow stronger from stressful experiences and counters some of the effects of cortisol.
You need both. But the ratio can influence the long term consequence of stress. Higher corrisol can lead to worse outcomes. DHEA can reduce adverse impact of stress.
Growth index of stress response = dhea to cortisol ratio. High index helps people thrive (predicts academic resilience, higher gpa, greater focus in military situations, less ptsd, problem solving).
Changing people’s perception of stress changed the ratio of cortisol to dhea in Crum’s experiment. Viewing stress as enhancing and helpful made it so.
Mindset effect is different from placebo in that it lasts longer and snowballs.
Mindset is a belief that biases how you think feel and act. Its like a filter through which you view life. They are core beliefs about the way the world works, reflect a philosophy of life.
How does mindset affect growing older? One explanation is that a positive view of old age makes you more likely to take care of your health and have a will to live, go to the doctor, etc.
Mindset of stress can affect if you thrive under it or not.
Crum considered the hypothesis that people with positive mindset on stress had easier lives and didn’t find meaningful correlation. Also positive mindset helped even if person was not under a lot of stress. She also considered if optimism was to blame and though there was a small correlation two other traits were more important: mindfulness and ability to tolerate uncertainty.
A better explanation is that if you have negative view of stress, you will try to avoid it and escape it. If you have a positive view you will face it heads on and try to work out whatever is causing you stress.
Greg Walton from Stanford is a master at changing mindsets with brief interventions
One mindset intervention he did was to affect belonging of freshmen in ivy league school. His intervention showed people that everyone struggles at school at some point. He showed it to African American students. Those who received it performed better than those who didn’t and it closed the gpa gap between African American and their peers. Interestingly at the end of college they didn’t even remember the intervention - but on average the mindset changes it has positive effects even if you don’t remember it.
Changing out minds can be a catalyst for all the other things we want to change in our lives.
Placebos work even if you tell subjects they are having a placebo, but you explain that placebos can be powerful (if your mindset towards placebos is that they are real).
Open label placebo experiments show patients can some times have better improvements than if they took the real drug.
Mindset interventions, like placebos, work even if you tell the subjects that you are trying to change their minds.
Mindset intervention is less about manipulation than about choice - you choose to see things differently.
Mindset interventions work best when you learn the new point of view, are given exercises that encourages to learn and apply the new mindset, and sharing learning with others.
Practice mindset mindfulness to see how you view stress (and other beliefs). How does it make you feel? How do you react?
Instead of complaining about stress be excited about it.

Chapter 2 - Beyond Fight or Flight

Higher levels of stress response hormones cortisol and adrenaline after an accident where more resilient (less ptsd). This suggests stress response can be your best ally in adverse situations. Stronger stress response predicts better long term recovery.
Stress hormones can reduce ptsd and are now being used for several psychiatric treatments
Stress gets its bad reputation from the scientist that defined it Hans Selye (in 1936) who noticed rats put under certain conditions developed adverse physiological responses.
He could get rats to develop same symptoms with any uncomfortable experience. He chose the word stress to describe all the things he put the rats through.
His leap from rats to humans was theoretical not experimental.
But he define stress too broadly (response of the body to any demand made of it) and most of his studies (and many of the modern ones) are based on submitting lab rats to situations that are more extreme than what we mean by stress. For example, social isolation, putting them on a cage with bullies, throwing them in cold water out of nowhere, etc. these might be similar to prison or war but not to our daily lives.
Selye gave us the idea that stress is toxic. Most of stress research replicates those extreme conditions. They mat reflect stress of prisoners or child abuse victims but not of regular day to day jobs.
Stress during pregnancy may actually help babies be more resilient. Same with stress in newborns - there is evidence from monkeys that suggest stress in newborns can help them develop resilience.
Walter Canon coined fight or flight response in animals. It is a survival instinct.
Mismatch theory of fight or flight is that it worked for our ancestors but not for our lifestyles. But this assumes fight or flight is the only stress response, but reality is more nuanced.
Stress seems to make people more willing to trust others and cooperate. It makes us prosocial. In a study, the Stronger their heart response to stress the more altruistic they became.
The point is there are many possible responses to stress beyond fight or flight.
Challenge response is what you feel in flow mode. It increases self confidence, motivates action and helps learn from experience. Different from fight or flight because you are able to focus.
Tend and befriend response increases courage, motivates caregiving and strengthens social relationships.
Biology of stress
Stress it gives you the energy you need to rise to the challenge.
- cortisol and adrenaline help muscle and brain use energy more efficiently
- Can give you extraordinary physical ability. Brain stops mind wandering. Concentrated attention
- Motivation boost from endorphins adrenaline testosterone and dopamine (this is why some people enjoy stress) the excite and delight side of stress
- If survival is at stake you might have flight or fight response
- Challenge response gives you energy and feel good chemicals but you feel focused not fearful. Different ratio of stress hormones gives higher growth index. This is flow state. Peak performance from stress.
Stress makes you social. Encourage connection
- oxytocin motivates you to connect with others, build and strengthens social bonds
- Makes u want to connect with others and also better to notice and understand what others are feeling
- Its also chemical of courage. Dampens fear response on your brain suppressing instinct to freeze or flee
- When you are stressed oxytocin encourages you to connect with your support network and strengthen relationships - tend and befriend response
- Good for cardiovascular health -stressing out rats before inducing heart attack protected them from the heart attack (blocking oxytocin made stress not protect them anymore)
Stress helps you grow and learn
- stress hormones help your brain and body recover
- If you release more of them you bounce back faster
- Restore balance to nervous system and increase neuro-plasticity
- After stressful situation brain rewires to learn from the situation. Stress hormones increase brain activity in learning and memory areas
- Emotions that follow stress help with the process making it more memorable
- Stress inoculation - you learn from stressful situations its like a stress vaccine. This is why stress training is useful
- Going through stress makes u better at it
- Viewing stressful situations as learning opportunity supports stress inoculation and viewing it as opportunity to improve skills increases chance of challenge response
Different situations call for different responses
Response is influenced by genes but it is adaptive and changes (fatherhood changes stress tendencies)
Furthermore you can retrain your body
When you feel stress response ask yourself what side of stress you need the most - fight, escape, engage, connect, find meaning, or grow.
Stress is a built in resilience mechanism. It helps us do something about a situation we care about

Chapter 3 - meaningful life is stressful life

Stress paradox - high levels of stress can be associated with distress but also well being
- Country stress index higher stress is correlated with higher life expectancy, gdp, higher score of happiness and life satisfaction
- More people satisfid eith health work standard of living community
- Happiest people not the ones without stress but the highly stressed without depression
- Less stress showed less happiness
- Happy lives are not stress free and no stress doesn’t mean happiness
Stress and meaning
- study showed stress level predicted people’s self reported sense of meaning in life (more stress more meaning)
- Meaningful life is associated with more stress
- Makes sense if we get stress from pursuing goals that feed our sense of purpose (stress sources are things like work, family, health and these are meaningful)
- Stress can be a barometer for how engaged you are in activities and relationships you find meaningful
- People are happier if they are busier
- Lack of meaningful stress can be bad for health (a study showed bored people are more likely to die of heart attack) and high sense of purpose helps people live longer
- Even if stressful event isn’t meaningful it can trigger us to find meaning
Finding meaning in everyday stress
- Viewing everyday stress not as a hassle but as meaningful shifts people’s relationship with stress
- writing about values has been shown to be one of the most positive interventions with short and long term effects
- You create a narrative that changes your relationship with stress
- You see yourself as strong and able to grow and overcome the adversity, more likely to face challenges rather than avoid them and see meaning in difficult circumstances
- Exercise : pick 3 values and write about them each for 10 minutes
- Reflecting on your values in the moment of stress can help cope with it
- Physical reminders of your values are also helpful. Wearing bracelets with their values helped students cope with stress better. Add physical reminder of your values.
- Defending against suffering can, paradoxically, increase burnout by reducing the source of meaning
- One of biological effects of stress is make you more open to experience. You feel more. This can be intense and people might try to shut it down (not thinking about it, getting drunk, etc). Another approach is mindfulness: accepting what you are feeling.
- Rather than reduce stress embrace it. This can transform it from something that drains you to something that nourishes you.
- How we talk about stress matters. Use it to find strength and purpose on the struggles.
- A life without stress is not a happy life. It is a life without the experiences that have helped you grow, proud accomplishments and most meaningful relationships
- Many of the negative outcomes associated with stress might actually be associated with trying to avoid it (reduced wellbeing, life satisfaction, meaning and increased isolation)
- Vicious cycle called stress generation: trying to avoid stress, you end up generating more sources of stress while depleting resources that should support you
- “Just another cold dark night on the side of Everest”. The paradox of stress. If you want to climb the Everest you need the stress to achieve it.
- If you forget context of stress you may feel like its victim. You are not the victim of stress

Part II - transform stress

Chapter 4 - Engage - How anxiety helps you rise to the challenge

Hardiness - Courage to grow under stress
Viewing anxiety as helpful report less emotional exhaustion and succeeded in goals (exams, public speaking, etc)
People trying to calm themselves down vs embracing anxiety as excitement underperform (and are unable to calm). Better to embrace than to try to change the anxiety.
- Experiment in which they told people about to speak in public to tell themselves “i’m calm” vs “i’m excited” . neither strategy makes anxiety go away, but the latter performed better
- Embracing the anxiety and telling yourself “I’m exited” makes it easier to handle pressure and deliver
Mindset is stronger for those reporting highest level of anxiety. Viewing it helpful and as a resource protects your from burnout and leads to better performance.
Don’t worry about relaxing if you are nervous and anxious. Embrace the anxiety as a source of energy. Numerous studies show that when you do this you’re able to perform better. Simply telling your self “i am excited” can reframe the stress and help you tap into its benefits.
Evidence suggests that when it comes to performing under pressure, being stressed is better than being relaxed
Students who were told the nerves before an exam are the body’s way of preparing and dealing with the challenge performed better. this is not because they calmed down (they showed higher levels of sympathetic activation from stress) but because they embraced the stress. Higher stress was correlated with better performance only if they had the mindset intervention.
viewing stress and anxiety as energy leads to less exhaustion
Avoiding anxiety is prevalent but this can make anxieties worse
Challenge and threat response - Both trigger action, but threat anticipates physical harm
People with social anxiety don’t have different physical reactions. They just perceive their anxiety differently.
Choosing to view racing heart as a resource is about more than stress management. It is about how you view yourself, your handle of life and inspire action. Its an act of self courage to view your body as a resource. It doesn’t make the problem disappear but it does let you recognize your strength and access your courage.

Chapter 5 - Connect - How caring creates resilience

Tend and befriend stress response theory says stress can make people more caring. Social connection can be as strong survival instinct as fight or flight.
Impulse to connect is a natural response to stress and a source of resilience.
Caring for others alter our biochemistry activating same systems that produce hope and courage.
Tend and befriend transforms stress
Tend and befriend is biological state to reduce fear and increase hope. It makes you social, brave and smart. It increases activity on three systems of the brain:
- Increases social caregiving system regulated by oxytocin which makes you more social, empathetic, and increases your courage
- Reward system releases dopamine which increases motivation and dampens fear, makes you optimistic, primes you for action
- Atonement system releases serotonin which enhance perception, intuition and self control
Tend and befriend response may have evolved to protect offspring, but in that state the bravery translates into any challenge you face.
Choosing to help others activates this state so you can channel your stress to increase your bravery.
Experiment with people caring for loved ones in pain. If you give them a hand you activate tend and befriend and find hope and courage. Squeezing a stress ball didn’t help at all.
Avoidance strategies to dealing with stress can actually reduce activity in reward and caregiving system. Tending to fare for others can increase our well being whereas focusing on relieving our own distress can actually make us stay in fear.
We can create biology of courage through small actions like holding a loved one’s hand if they are in pain.
If you are overwhelmed by you stress or other’s pain, connecting is a better strategy than escaping.
In any situation you feel powerless, doing something to support others can increase your optimism and motivation.
Wharton study found that people who felt stressed by time constraints felt more capable competent and useful if they helped others. If you feel time constrained, being more generous with your time can help you feel better thanks to the tend and befriend response.
Giving can boost your mood even if you are forced to do it. Experiment donated money on behalf of people and people’s reward system got activated even if they didn’t chose to donate.
Choosing to be resilient
When feel connected with bigger than self goals they tend to feel better.
People who persistently pursue self focused goals are more likely to be depressed. Bigger than self mindset shows greater well being and satisfaction - it builds strong social support networks. Helping others instead of proving themselves become more respected and liked.
Two ways of pursuing goals (prove yourself vs contribute to bigger than self) are not fixed
Altruism born of suffering (straub). Helping someone jn the middle of your distress helps fight the feeling of defeat. Helping other reduces feeling of hopelessness
Helping others helps fight defeat response (biologically hardwired response to repeated victimization that leads to loss of appetite, isolation, depression and even suicide). Makes you withdraw, it demotivates.
When you help someone in the middle of your distress you counter the downward spiral of defeat.
Helping others seems to eliminate impact of traumatic events on health and longevity
Helping others protects you from stress.
Participants who were genetically biased not to tend and befriend got the most benefit from being pro social on a study. Caring for others can jump start the oxytocin system.
Turning victims onto heroes can help them reduce the effects of stress and poverty. Helping them help others can have great effects on mental and physical health.
Caregiving can help ptsd. Army enlists soldiers with ptsd to train dogs for other soldiers. Also transformed inmates who provided end of life care to other inmates. Benefits of helping extends to everyone, not just those with easy life or saints.
Common humanity - degree to which you see your struggles as part of the human condition. Mindset of isolation vs ability to feel connected even in darkest moments. Isolated leads to depression denial giving up on goal and avoid stressful experience. Less likely to ask for help so convinces them they are alone in their struggle. Connecting is a better coping mechanism. Less likely to experience burnout.
People underestimate other people’s struggles and happiness. We judge our insight with other people’s outsides. Social media contributes to this.
How to develop mindset for humanity? Increase awareness of other people’s suffering and be more open about your own.
Make the invisible visible. Even if people don’t say it you can think about other people’s suffering. Connect to other by thinking they are suffering “just like me”.

Turn isolation into common humanity.

When you feel isolated connect to the truth of common humanity:1) let yourself connect to thought and emotions in your situation and acknowledge the underlying sensation. 2) consider that this is part of the human experience, others know what its like to feel like this (bring examples to mind), let yourself feel empathy for them, 3) may we all know our own strength, find peace, be supported through suffering, know were not alone.
View yourself as source of whatever support you want to experience. Shifting focus to supporting others you end up recipient of more support. If you show gratitude you end up more appreciated by others. Courageous vulnerability - use your suffering as source of connection.
Knowing you are not alone in your stress and helping others can increase resilience.

Chapter 6 - Grow - How adversity makes you stronger

Adversity makes us grow. This is the paradox of stress. Growth comes from stressful moments.
U shape between adversity and depression. Moderate adversity led to more happiness than too little or too much adversity. People with no adversity or trauma in their life were less satisfied with their lives than people with moderate adversity. Adversity in the past increases resilience with new adversity. Adversity is protective, makes you stronger.
Catastrophic thinking - feeling you can’t stand, how much something hurts, etc. makes experience more stressful and more likely to give up.
Adversity has been shown to help cope with physical pain as well.
There is no breaking point at which you are miserable. The point is adversity can have a positive effect
Setbacks are not signals for giving up.
Shift and persist strategy to cope with stress. Shift perception of stress. Persist optimism to find meaning even in adversity and persisting to grow. This approach makes you healthier to stress. You can cultivate it by choosing to appreciate how you’ve grown from adversity.
ExercisE for mindset reset - bring to mind stressful experience you persevered and learned something Important. Write about it for 15 mins. (732 page)
Post traumatic growth - growing from traumatic experience. Greater sense of closeness and compassion, sense of strength, value for life, etc. it is prevalent. Seeing positive change doesn’t mean you are left untouched and unharmed.
Severity from post traumatic distress and growth are related. Some argue the distress is the engine for growth.
Is there a benefit of believing that adversity helps you grow in the midst of adversity? Answer seems to be yes. Seeing something positive about suffering and upside of challenges can help lead to positive outcome. Benefit finding can help with health.
Ability to notice both the good and the bad with things that are difficult are better with long term outcomes than focusing purely in upside. So its about looking at the bright side without ignoring the hardship.
Mindset interventions to write or talk about upside and benefits of a challenging stressful situation helps balance the distress with hope and can help better deal with situation rather than stress management.
Its not about purely positive thinking but about the ability to hold opposing views on your mind (both the pain and the benefits or growth that may arise).
Having said that not every trauma has an upside so you shouldn’t force a positive interpretation that is not authentic.
Restorative narratives - tell stories to growth and healing vs just focusing on negatives. Focus on process of recovery.
Images and voices of hope is org that fosters restorative journalism.
Focus on news is one of major sources of stress. Stress caused by news triggers sense of hopelessness. Watching it after terrorist attack or natural disaster can foster hopelessness, ptsd and depressing.
One study found that people watching 6+ hours news after Boston bombing were more likely to develop ptsd than people at the marathon!
Single best predictor of fear and anxiety is how much time you spend watching tv and talkshows.
Vicarious resilience and vicarious growth- We can experience post traumatic growth in other people’s stories, resilience and recovery.
How do you catch resilience and growth from other people’s problems? You need empathy and be able to see their strength. Pitying others blocks capacity for vicarious resilience. You need capacity to feel their suffering AND strength.
Bringing attention to concept of vicarious resilience increases chance to experience it. Be a witness to other people’s pain and resources. Be touched by their experience and awed by their resilience.
Being exposed to stories of resilience increases chances to grow from struggles. Make room to tell stories of strength courage compassion and resilience in yourself and your community.
Adopting a more accepting attitude to past struggles can lead to better wellbeing according to studies

Chapter 7 - Final thoughts

A better question to ask rather than if stress is good or bad is if “do i have the ability to turn stress into something good?”
Stress is more likely to be harmful when: 1) you feel inadequate to it, 2) it isolates you, 3) feels meaningless and against your will.
When you view stress as something to avoid you are more likely to feel all the above. Accepting and embracing stress can transform these into confidence, courage, connection and meaning - without getting rid of the stress.
Reframe fatigue as a sign of giving it your all.
Annual stress goals instead of new year resolution. How do you want to grow next year. What do you expect to grow, what will be challenging and what strength fo you want to develop.
Any new beginning is opportunity to ask how you want to challenge yourself. Any moment can become a turning point to how you experience stress if you choose to make it one.

January 10, 2021 · stress, personal productivity, growth, psychology