The Art of Taking It Easy: How to Cope with Bears, Traffic, and the Rest of Life's Stressors

by Brian King

stress is not our reaction to threat, it is our reaction to the perception of threat.

Basically, I can improve my life by eating chocolate cake or by escaping a threat. The thing about the accumbens is that it doesn’t care if life improvement comes from reward or relief, it is the relative value that matters. If eating cake brings me more immediate value than doing twenty pushups, you can guess which option my brain will pick.

So now you can imagine that inactivity is an uncomfortable condition for the brain. You may not experience this condition as uncomfortable, you might just label it as boredom. Usually, the outside world provides the brain with plenty of stimulation, but sometimes it does not and the brain has to stimulate itself. Worry is one way that the brain can generate its own activity. Yes, worry relieves boredom. And I believe this is why most worrying occurs.

Ever have so much to do that you can’t seem to get out of bed?

Emotions help restrict our options so we are more likely to choose a behavior that is right for us. For example, imagine again that we are being attacked by a bear. Whenever I visualize this example, I always imagine that the bear is about thirty yards away, running toward me. In that moment, you don’t want to suddenly feel inspired to write a poem (“Ah, the duality of nature, so beautiful and yet so fierce”).

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Imagine that, for whatever reason, you have gone through life training your brain to overreact to adverse situations. Or, maybe you have taught yourself to worry unnecessarily or ruminate on negative thoughts. Maybe your brain has learned to make you lay on the horn whenever you find yourself in traffic. The nice thing about neuroplasticity research is that it shows that whatever behavior you wish to change about yourself, you have the capacity to do so. This is why therapy works.