The Upside of Stress: Why Stress Is Good for You and How to Get Good at It

by Kelly McGonigal

participants who went out of their way to help others showed absolutely no stress-related increased risk of death.

Programs based on caregiving have even become first-line treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder.

common humanity—the degree to which you see your own struggles as part of the human condition.

I’ve found that to feel less alone in your stress, two things help: The first is to increase your awareness of other people’s suffering. The second is to be more open about yours.

When you feel isolated or alone in your suffering, try connecting to the truth of common humanity.

“May we all know our own strength.”

One of the most helpful mindset shifts you can make is to view yourself as the source of whatever support you want to experience.

People who allow themselves to have a courageous vulnerability—to look first for how to support others, and to use their own suffering as the point of connection—end up receiving more social support themselves.

The good that comes from difficult experiences isn’t from the stressful or traumatic event itself; it comes from you—from

In fact, people with no trauma in their past are significantly less satisfied with their lives than people who have experienced the average number of traumatic events.

I kept wishing that it would be over. I thought that the pain might overwhelm me. I felt that I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much it hurt. This kind of thinking—what psychologists call catastrophizing—not only makes a difficult experience more distressing, but it also makes you more likely to give up.

coping style called shift-and-persist that seems to protect people

they argue that post-traumatic distress is the engine of post-traumatic growth. It ignites a psychological process that gives rise to positive changes.

“It’s not that my mom’s death was good. I’ve found some good in it.” This is a critical distinction, and one of the most important things to understand about how adversity can make you stronger.

When any good comes from suffering, the source of that growth resides in you—your strengths, your values, and how you choose to respond to adversity. It does not belong to the trauma.

Men who find an upside to their first heart attack—a change in their priorities, a greater appreciation for life, a better relationship with their family—are less likely to have another heart attack and more likely to be alive eight years later.

HIV-positive women who recognize a positive outcome of their diagnosis—such as deciding to take better care of their health or to quit using drugs—have better immune function and are less likely to die of AIDS over a five-year follow-up.

In fact, being able to see both the good and the bad is associated with better long-term outcomes than focusing purely on the upside.

Even therapists trained in benefit-finding are encouraged to simply listen for any benefits a client mentions and not to try to convince a client to see the upside of their suffering.

a new type of journalism: restorative narratives. Restorative narratives reject the usual approach to reporting traumas and tragedies. Instead of sharing only the most horrific details of the immediate aftermath, they tell stories of growth and healing.

One shocking study found that people who watched six or more hours of news about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing were more likely to develop post-traumatic stress symptoms than people who were actually at the bombing and personally affected by it.

This is one of the great lessons of restorative journalism: There is power in the stories we tell and in the stories we pay attention to.

Psychologists call this “vicarious resilience” and “vicarious growth.” It was first observed in psychotherapists and other mental health care providers, who often reported being inspired by their clients’ resilience and recovery.

How do you catch resilience and growth from another person’s suffering, instead of only sympathetic distress? The most important factor seems to be a genuine empathy.

The process of learning and growing from another person’s suffering seems to require being affected by that suffering.38 It is not about passively witnessing resilience in another. It is about allowing yourself to be touched by their suffering and their strength.

One of the best ways to notice, value, and express your own growth is to reflect on a difficult time in your life as if you were a journalist writing a restorative narrative.

FOR MOST OF its history, the science of stress focused on one question: Is stress bad for you? (Eventually, it graduated to the question, Just how bad is stress for you?)

there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that any moment can become a turning point in how you experience stress,