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

by Brian King

Adrenaline surges through our body and energizes us. It increases blood flow to the muscles, blood sugar,

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

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

Like adrenaline, cortisol also increases our blood sugar and has a lot of additional effects on the body. The adrenaline and cortisol, now surging through our body, are delivered to our organs faster thanks to the increased heart rate. Whether mediated by the sympathetic nervous system or circulating hormones, all of these changes that take place in our body are supposed to be beneficial. They serve to increase our energy and make our body more efficient,

Elevating our blood sugar or heart rate temporarily so that we can increase our chances of survival is not a bad thing; in fact, stress works toward our advantage during these moments. However, you can imagine that maintaining a high level of blood sugar for an extended period of time can have a negative impact on our health. Similarly, long-term elevation of our heart rate can also cause complications. Unfortunately, most of the stress we experience is not due to actual danger, but perceived threats that have a tendency to linger around.

There are other downsides to long-term exposure, not from what stress increases but from what it suppresses.

Our body has a limited amount of resources, whether it is water, sugar for energy, or different proteins, neurotransmitters, and hormones. Having finite resources means our body has to give consideration to how it distributes them,

For example, our immune system is not necessary.

Our digestive system can definitely be sacrificed.

Healing from wounds or injuries and repairing the cells of our body are not priorities either. Sure, it is important for our long-term health, but if we don’t survive this current situation there may not be a long term. For that matter, growing and developing our body isn’t important either. Sex drive is definitely not important.

Prolonged exposure to stress can contribute to a wide variety of physical illnesses.

Stress contributes to a whole lot of physical conditions that we suffer, not just high blood pressure and diabetes. This is why long-term exposure to stress can make people take longer to recover from illness or heal from wounds. This is why we sometimes have stomach cramps or get nauseous. And this is why we may sometimes experience migraine headaches, bodily pain, or twitchy eyes.

Emotions influence behavior, specifically by helping us react in a manner that is appropriate for the moment. Think about all the diverse behaviors that a human brain is capable of producing. From playing a piano and dribbling a basketball, to computing mathematics and writing a book, each one of us is capable of a tremendous variety of potential behaviors (albeit, not to the same level of proficiency). Not all of those behaviors are appropriate for the situation we find ourselves in. Emotions help restrict our options so we are more likely to choose a behavior that is right for us.

Fear is a negative emotion, and given this perspective, we can see how fear is an emotional response to stress. However, it is not our only possible response. The context of the moment also includes our own thoughts, and depending on what we are thinking we may react differently.

Emotions help restrict the range of potential behaviors our brain will consider.

Negative emotions may have an even stronger impact on our behavior. Have you ever known someone with depression? One of the most difficult symptoms of depression isn’t feeling sad, it is feeling unmotivated. Anxiety has a similar impact on our behavior.

there are three basic categories of behavioral reactions to threat: fight, flight, or freeze. If we interpret our physiology as the emotion of fear, we increase the likelihood we will attempt to flee or escape. If we interpret our physiology as anger, we increase our chances of attempting to fight. Finally, if we interpret our physiology as sadness, we may be more likely to freeze or do nothing.

Stress influences our emotions, and in turn our response to stress is influenced by our emotions.

Some people like to differentiate types of stress, stating that so-called good stress helps energize us to get the job done, meet a challenge, or overcome an obstacle. On the other hand, bad stress causes us pain and misfortune. However, remember that the function of all stress, good or bad, is to help us overcome or escape threat.

all stress has the same effect on the body. It increases our energy, elevates our heart rate, and pumps the hormones adrenaline and cortisol through our veins.

Consider that whenever we activate our stress response, functional or not, we are inhibiting our immune system and preventing our body from being able to heal.

stress, good or bad, has the same impact on the body regardless of how it is used. If our stress causes our heart rate to elevate, and in turn increases our risk for stress-related health problems, we should make it count. Don’t get stressed over the piddly, inconsequential events that seem to plague us on a regular basis.

Our stress response should be engaged only when it can help us.

stress has a tendency to bring out our so-called “bad habits”? Whatever behavior you are actively trying to suppress or change, your inclination to do so seems to materialize immediately during a period of stress.

Whatever behavior your nucleus accumbens thinks is the best option in a given situation has an increased likelihood of being expressed.

Every moment of our lives our brain is analyzing and deciding which behaviors are in our best interest. We aren’t aware of any of this activity because it occurs outside of our prefrontal cortex, but it helps motivate our behavior, and influences our consciously chosen behavior as well.

Not only can stress negatively affect our health, it can also lead to unhealthy behaviors.

It is never too late to change how we cope with stress.

one thing that interferes with our brain’s ability to change is stress. Stress decreases the production of a hormone called brain-derived neurotrophic factor, or BDNF, which is needed for neuroplasticity.

Psychological resilience is very strongly associated with happiness. If you are happy, you are managing your stress well, and if you are stressed you are probably not happy. It is hard to imagine being stressed and happy at the same time. Both experiences are functions of activity in the prefrontal cortex. However, it isn’t activity in the entire prefrontal cortex that relates to these experiences, but rather when there is more activity on the left side than the right side. When there is more left activity than right activity, people report feeling happy and appear calm. When there is more activity on the right than left, people report feeling stressed, anxious, and worried.

the thoughts that help you cope with stress are the same thoughts that make you happy. Conversely, thoughts that make you happy help suppress stress.

Psychological resilience is our ability to overcome a challenge, to bounce back after an adverse event, or to cope with stress. Resilience is highly related to happiness, and both are functions of how we think about the events we experience.

Having something to look forward to can really help us endure a lot.

I had a goal that I was working toward.

I have since learned in researching happiness and resilience, having a sense of purpose goes a very long way.

I was resourceful.

I had a plan

I had a safety net.

these components—goal pursuit, problem-solving, and planning for contingencies—are functions of reasoning. Resilient people approach life by thinking and planning; they see their problems or adverse events as temporary and/or solvable.

negative emotion can interfere with our ability to think by restricting the range of options that we will consider. Sometimes being able to come up with a good plan requires creative thought, and is better accomplished when we are calm and thinking clearly.

Resilience is a state of mind, an attitude. Just to be clear, resilient people are not in denial. When the problem feels out of control, they get stressed. It just might take a bit longer and a much greater threat to push them over the edge.

nobody is suddenly comforted when told to just relax or take it easy in the midst of a full-on episode. Telling someone who is enraged, anxious, or hopeless to just relax could be perceived as dismissive at best, and at worst could stress them even further. Depending on the situation, I usually try to validate the person’s feelings instead.

nothing happening is our biggest stressor. Think about all the times you have gotten stressed or angry or upset and it turned out there was no good reason for this. The misunderstandings, the overreactions, and all the worrying over nothing. Nothing is our most common stressor, and it is neither traffic nor bears. It is literally nothing.

In many cases, we become enraged over incidents where nothing serious has actually happened to us (e.g., we may have been cut off in traffic, but there was no car crash). Learn to react to what has happened, not what almost happened or what could have happened.

if you don’t like the way you feel, change your thoughts.

Sometimes a change in environment or activity is precisely what we need to kick-start different activity in our prefrontal cortex.

feeling in control is key to remaining calm and reducing the overall impact of stress in our lives.

being resilient means having the right kind of activity in the prefrontal cortex so that your amygdala doesn’t react to everything in our world as a potential danger.

being resilient means having the right kinds of thoughts in your head, and those thoughts relate to how well you feel you can handle whatever situation you are facing.

if we have well-developed problem-solving skills, we are more likely to respond to a stressful event with the confidence that we can influence the outcome. In other words, we will respond as if we feel some level of control.