Can Your Belief About Stress Shorten Your Lifespan?
One of my favourite sayings, and one that you will hear me refer to time and time again, is, ‘if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change’. Sounds like one of those inspirational quotes on Instagram? Maybe, but its message gets quite profound in the context of managing stress.
In a 2012 longitudinal US study, researchers tracked 30,000 adults for 8 years, asking them each year how much stress they had experienced and whether they believed that stress was harmful for them. Then, after the study ended, they checked who from the whole cohort… died. I know — grim.
But the findings were even grimmer!
Overall, the American researchers found that those who reported experiencing a lot of stress had a 43% higher chance of dying prematurely.
But — and there is a big ‘but’ — this only held true for those who also reported believing in the harmfulness of stress. Surprisingly, those who reported experiencing a lot of stress, but did not view stress as harmful, were no more likely to die. In fact, they had the lowest risk of dying of anyone in the study, including people who had relatively little stress!
The researchers estimated that over the eight years they were tracking deaths, 182,000 Americans died prematurely, not from stress, but from the belief that stress was bad for them. That accounted for over 20,000 deaths per year, which places ‘stress belief’ on the 15th place among the most common causes of premature death in the USA — before skin cancer, AIDS and HIV, and homicide.
Sounds unbelievable?
Here’s another one; a Harvard study showed that simply teaching people that stress actually helps them perform better in a high-pressure situation, not only makes them feel more relaxed than people put in the same situation without any input from the trainers, but also changes their physiological response to stress.
Those who believed that stress had an important role in boosting their high performance showed a cardiovascular profile characteristic of someone experiencing moments of relaxation, joy… or courage. The veins of the so-called ‘control group’, on the other hand, got narrower and contracted like in those suffering from cardiovascular disease (leading to heart attack) or chronic stress.
This suggests that just changing your belief about harmfulness of stress could be a real game-changer, allowing you to avoid a stress-induced heart attack at age 50, and live well into your 90’s!
So what can you do to change the way you think about stressful situations?
Think of the worst case scenario.
This might sound counter-intuitive, but believe me, it can work wonders. It will either make you realise that the worst case scenario isn’t that bad at all, or will help you think of resources to reach out for and prepare appropriately in case it actually happens.
My friend, for instance, spent her university years, worrying that at any point her professors would realise she was an imposter and “kick her out” of uni, colloquially speaking. Doing the ‘worst case scenario’ exercise made her imagination go as far as to envision that, should that ever happen, she’d move to Bali, become a yoga teacher, pick up some freelancing on-line work, and live on a paradise beach. Whilst not exactly in line with her academic aspirations, that scenario wasn’t that bad at all and helped her relax and gain a healthy degree of distance from her irrational worries.
Remind yourself moments in the past when you have handled a similar situation well.
For example, no matter how old you are and how many times you’ve gone through them, job interviews can still feel stressful and unpleasant. Remind yourself of a time when you’ve nailed an interview, a demanding presentation, or a difficult conversation.
If you cannot come up with a recent example, go as far in your past as primary school times. The point is to realise that you’ve got the capacity and resources to succeed and do well!
Every time you feel symptoms of stress — increased heart beat, sweat, clenched jaw and so forth — realise that this is your body preparing you to act better in the situation at hand.
Even though it might feel unpleasant, and sometimes even like a heart attack, keep calm! Breathe into it, thank your body for this short-term motivational boost, and get ready to strike back.
Some of these practices might seem effortful at first, but with time and practice they will become your second nature. These tools will enable you to look at stress not as your enemy, but rather a powerful state, and that change in perspectives — as research shows — can work to your advantage not only now, but in the long run as well.
Want to read more on the topic? Here are some publications that will satisfy your curiosity:
a) Abiola Keller et al., “Does the perception that stress affects health matter? The association with health and mortality”, Health Psychology, September 2012
b) Jeremy P. Jamieson et al., “Mind over matter: Reappraising arousal improves cardiovascular and cognitive responses to stress”, Journal of Experimental Psychology, August 2012
c) The article is inspired by Kelly McGongial’s brillian TED Talk ‘How to make stress your friend’ (2013), which you can watch here.
How to deal with stress is a publication packed with tips and techniques for dealing with stress and anxiety in everyday settings — brought to you by Agnieszka (Aggie) Zbieranska & Leon Taylor.
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