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

by Brian King

Bad things happen all the time, but what ultimately makes the difference in our lives is how we deal with those situations.

The simplest description I have ever come across is that stress is our brain’s reaction to a perception of threat. That’s it, and that’s all.

Notice the mention of threat: that is the key to understanding the response. All stress is a reaction to threat, regardless of whether you are trying to make a deadline, pay a bill, navigate traffic, or fight off an alien invasion.

That traffic was not a threat to you. The cars on that road were not out to get you or attack you in any way. At no point that morning did hundreds of random strangers organize for a meeting and say, “OK, today we are going to make Judy late for work and drive her crazy at the same time!

The traffic was real, but it was your own beliefs, values, and expectations that made the situation into one that you found stressful.

However, a real unicorn will kill you! It has a horn on its head! What do you think that horn is for? That’s a weapon for stabbing! It didn’t grow that thing so little girls could play ring toss! That unicorn will stab you, stomp all over your body, and shoot rainbows out its butt just to add insult to injury.

Ultimately overcoming stress and managing its impact on our lives depends on this basic realization: most of our stress is from percieved threats, not clear and present threats.

Learn to assess your stress. Learn to tell the difference between bears and traffic. The first thing we should do when we start to feel agitated or stressed is stop and ask ourselves, “Is this situation actually threatening?” If it is, then Houston, we have a probl—uh I mean, bear!

But what if it is threatening? What if you are actually being attacked by a bear? If you answer yes than a follow-up question is in order: “Can I do anything about it?”

If you are facing a threatening situation and there is something you can do about it, then you should do that. But if there is nothing you can do about it, what is the point of allowing yourself to get stressed?

You are sitting there just marinating in your own stress. Try not to get any on the seats.

If we are facing an actual threat and we can do something about it, our stress response is there to help us out. When we are stressed, our brain and body initiate a series of physiological changes to help us take action against the threat we are facing. When the system works, stress helps increase our chances of survival or catching that flight or meeting that book deadline.

If we only felt stressed when we were truly threatened, then stress-related illnesses would be less prevalent than they currently are, and I would not be writing this book.

Regardless of how real the stress may or may not be, when our brain perceives a situation as being threatening, the process it engages is the same.

the first thing the brain has to do when we encounter a stimulus is determine if it represents a danger. This processing is called threat appraisal, and is carried out by an area of the brain called the amygdala.

should also point out that the activity of the amygdala, and most of the brain, happens outside of our conscious awareness.

Unlike our memories, instincts are not learned, they are inherited as part of our genetic makeup.

We also have a conscious part of our brain that we often use to make decisions; in fact you are using it right now to read this sentence. The prefrontal cortex, the part of our brain that sits just behind the forehead, is where most of the activity we refer to as “thinking” occurs. Using this part of our brain to make decisions is completely appropriate most of the time, but it is slow.

When the amygdala determines that the stimulus represents a potential threat, it sends a signal to an area called the hypothalamus, another part of the limbic system. The hypothalamus in turn activates the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for a whole host of physiological changes.

Speaking of behavior, our amygdala also sends its information to an area called the nucleus accumbens, located fairly close to the center of the brain.

The nucleus accumbens does not produce our behavior, but it is important for motivating it.

the accumbens assesses the relative value of our options. The value of any given option can be positive, as in it is going to improve our life by adding something, commonly pleasurable, to it (we call this “positive reinforcement” or “reward”), or negative, as in it is going to improve our life by removing something uncomfortable or painful (called “negative reinforcement” or “relief”).

Remember that conscious thought in this context would slow us down, so the options are simple well-learned behaviors. You may recognize these three options as fight, flight, or freeze, respectively.

As I mentioned, the prefrontal cortex is the part of your brain that sits behind your forehead and eye sockets. It is involved in planning, decision-making, problem-solving, attention, and short-term memory. Basically, all the activities we might refer to as “thinking.”

Your prefrontal cortex can alter or completely reverse decisions made by other areas of the brain and all you need are your own thoughts. In fact, if you have the right kind of activity in your prefrontal cortex as you enter the traffic, it will prevent your amygdala from identifying it as a threat in the first place.

Learning how to increase the right kind of prefrontal activity, or thoughts, and being able to consciously redirect choices made by other areas of the brain, is the key to living a less stressful existence.

Worrying is nothing more than internally generated stress—stress we impose on ourselves thanks to some particularly troublesome thoughts. Worrying is a behavior, although a mental one, and we often worry about life stressors, but worry itself can sometimes be the cause of additional stress.

As a form of mental behavior, worrying too much, over a lifetime, can be a major contributor to developing an emotional disorder like anxiety or even depression. It is a behavior that we can change, and doing so is probably in our best interest.

And that’s the thing about worrying, it does nothing to prevent bad things from happening. Worrying does not affect the outcome of a situation, it doesn’t make adverse events less likely to occur, it just makes our life less great.

When we start to worry to the point that we start to experience stress, we need to take a moment and ask ourselves, “Can I do anything about this?” If the answer is yes, then do it or make a plan to do it. In fact, if we can do something about a situation and we choose not to for whatever reason, then we are to blame for our own stress.

think it is helpful to ask ourselves, “If there is nothing I can do about it, then why am I worrying about it?” It is a rhetorical question really, but by thinking that to ourselves, we reduce the likelihood that we will continue thinking about whatever it is that is causing us stress.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a breakthrough! I almost never catch that level of self-awareness in people, but he was telling the truth. Some of us enjoy worrying. If it isn’t those kids, or the exam, or the potential traffic on our commute, we’ll find something else to worry about. If nothing worry-worthy is going on in our immediate lives, we can turn on the news or worry about the things that show up on our Facebook feed.

In other words, it does not appear to be a behavior initiated by the conscious mind, or the prefrontal cortex. Therefore, it is probably selected unconsciously by the nucleus accumbens in its basic decision-making.

As you now know, decisions made by the accumbens are the result of comparing the relative benefit of whatever options are currently being presented.

That also means that worrying apparently has value to the brain.

And if worry isn’t providing the brain with some reward, then it must provide relief. But relief from what? That is a hard question for most people to answer, so here is where the doctorate in psychology comes in handy. As it turns out, worry provides relief to the brain for a very uncomfortable condition it sometimes experiences called “inactivity.” The brain is a vast electrical circuit comprised of individual cells called “neurons” making connections to one another. Neurons are specialized cells that conduct electricity, and they are regularly transmitting electrical impulses to each other via their connections.

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.

You worry to relieve boredom, which should be no surprise, as boredom already motivates a lot of behavior that people would prefer to change. People eat when they are bored. People drink when they are bored.

So now that you (hopefully) understand why you worry, what can you do about it? In the simplest terms, changing a behavior usually involves understanding why you do it and finding a suitable alternative. Because worrying relieves inactivity by giving the brain something to do, if you want to worry less you should find something else for your brain to do. But then what could possibly be a suitable alternative to worrying? How about literally anything else! When you feel the onset of worrisome thoughts, understand that your brain needs some of that sweet, sweet activity and give it some. Read a book. Take a walk. Do the dishes. Clean the living room. Watch a good TV show. Start a conversation with someone (just don’t talk about the thing you are worried about). Anything, literally anything! To overcome worry you have to redirect your train of thoughts. Change the channel in your brain.

Redirecting your brain may sound easy to do, and relatively speaking it is, but it requires awareness. The problem many of us have is that once we start worrying, those thoughts consume us and we just keep fueling the fire with more. But, if we have enough awareness to realize that we are heading down that path, we can consciously interrupt the flow by introducing an alternate route.

I should also note that not everyone worries when their brain needs something to do. People also have positive responses to boredom as well. Some people exercise. Some people, myself included, daydream or do something creative.

Realizing that the stress was affecting her health, Sarah put in her notice immediately. To help survive her remaining time, she started practicing breathing exercises and power poses at the start of her shift, and made a point to leave the building to take a walk at lunch. After work hours, she danced tango a lot more than she had been. At home, she spent more time outside on her porch, writing, and working in her garden. Finally, after her last day on the job, she starting working a job much closer to home—literally two minutes from home—and also started her own business. Her symptoms went away.

Similarly, I don’t remember exactly when my left eye started twitching, it just appeared and gradually got worse and worse. Like Sarah’s health issues, it happened during a particularly tough time in my life. I was working at a job I hated and living in an apartment I could barely afford.

Also, just as Sarah had experienced, my symptom went away after I experienced some changes in my life. Unlike Sarah, my relief came from being laid off. I didn’t realize it then, but getting fired from that position was just what the doctor ordered.

Prolonged exposure to stress can have a negative impact on our physical health and general well-being. Also, stress can affect individuals differently. Sarah suffered bodily pain and headaches from stress; I experienced involuntary muscle spasms in my eyelids (and probably some additional symptoms I was too stressed to notice). But why? As I described earlier, stress is our brain’s reaction to a percieved threat.

Our eyes dilate, our heart rate increases. Stress can cause us to perspire or cease digestion, and can inhibit erections in males. It makes us sweaty, bloated, and limp.

The sympathetic nervous system also triggers the adrenal glands to start producing adrenaline, that sweet hormone sought by bungee jumpers and extreme sports enthusiasts. Basically, anyone who owns a GoPro.

Adrenaline is also released during stress, but we generally don’t think of it as a stress hormone. That honorable distinction goes to cortisol.

When the hypothalamus receives the stress signal from the amygdala, it activates the sympathetic nervous system as I have just described, and also stimulates the release of a hormone called ACTH into the bloodstream.23 This hormone travels through the arteries down to the adrenal glands and tells them to start cranking out cortisol because something nasty is about to hit the fan.

Most people are familiar with the standard “fight or flight” dichotomy, and really that is probably all we need to understand, but I like to throw in “freeze” because it is a common behavioral reaction. Think about how many times you may have been so overwhelmed with stress that you became incredibly inactive.