Here's an exerpt from "Comic Relief" http://blog.exuberantanimal.com/?p=341The point I’m trying to make here is that our experience of stress is tightly coupled to our interpretation of events. That is, we now know that events are toxic or beneficial in large measure because of how we frame them.
To understand how this works, we need to understand how stress affects the body. Unfortunately, stress medicine can be a torturous, stressful study in its own right. There’s all that biochemistry to learn and then there’s the adrenal glands and the hypothalamus and the glucocorticoids (is it adrenaline or epinephrine?) and neurotoxicity and stress-related brain damage and so on. There are thousands of studies and hundreds of books that will either keep us awake at night or put us to sleep in the middle of the day. We could spend years on the subject.
Fortunately, Robert Sapolsky, the rock star of stress science, has boiled the whole complex field down into a simple list that we can read, or if necessary, share with the IRS. In Scientific American, December 2005, Sapolsky writes:
“individuals are more likely to activate a stress response and are more at risk for a stress sensitive disease if they…
feel as if they have minimal control
feel as if they have no predictive information
have few outlets for their frustration
interpret the stressor as evidence of worsening circumstances
lack social support
That’s it, the entire field in a nutshell. Of course, there are hundreds of animal studies behind each of these statements and miles of supporting evidence to back them up. We can trust Sapolsky. (Anyone who goes to Africa to sit in the bushes and dart baboons with a blow gun to measure their stress hormones is, by my definition, trustworthy. And even better, Sapolsky is a comedian in his own right.) But no worries. This is a list we can live with.
So our experience of stress has to with our perception of control, predictability, outlets, trends and social support. But few of these are absolutes; most are variable and open to interpretation. As they say, “One man’s crisis is another man’s play date” and “My best vacation is your worst nightmare.” The way we frame an event or relationship can have profound consequences for our stress response. In this way, our personal philosophy, psychology and explanatory style can ultimately shape the tissue in our bodies. Mind and body are in a constant conversation of reciprocal influence.
Of course, some stress predicaments are straightforward. If a lion chases you up a tree, this is pretty much a compulsory stress event. It’s acute and non-negotiable. No matter how you spin it, your body is still going to interpret it as a major stress event. You can tweak the narrative all you want, but your body is still going to squeeze itself for every hormone and neurotransmitter it can. Carnivores are life-or-death animals and humans are prey.
But this is an extreme case and, in the course of a typical human life, an unusual one. In fact, most of our predicaments are open to interpretation. That pain in your knee could be a huge stressor if you see it as a threat to your essential running program. Or, it might only be a minor glitch if you decide that it’s really an opportunity to go swimming. In this sense, changing your mind might ultimately be one of the keys to changing your body and preserving your health.
