I am going to tell you a story, my friends. It's about my weak circulatory system, indigo dyes used on blue jeans, AND A FREAKOUT OF EPIC PROPORTIONS.
I was ten years old, and I had a new pair of pants. I wish I could lie to you and say that they weren't dark wash skinny jeans which I would undoubtedly proceed to wear with athletic tennis shoes, but that is integral to the story, and I feel we should all be held accountable for the fashion sins of the early two thousands.
 |
| This cannot go unanswered. |
Anyway.
Here I am, just a happy, attractive kid, rocking my dark wash jeans with literal running shoes. Halfway through the day, one of my teachers looks at my hands with concern.
"Are you okay?" She asks. "Your hands look bluish." She holds my hand for a second, frowning. "And you seem really cold," She adds. She calls one of the aids over, who decides, yes, this is very concerning. The school nurse gives me the same troubled, sympathetic frown, does some hushed whispering with my teacher. Meanwhile, I am staring at my icy lifeless hands.
It's important to note that at this point I was freaking out, big time. Also, here's a fun fact about my bad circulatory system: it's worse when I'm nervous. My body is like, oh, you're giving a speech? What's that? You're in an important social interaction? Let's take the blood from your extremities and keep it near your vital organs. Just in case. Those of you who are medical professionals or just moderately sensible will have concluded already that bloodless hands are cold hands, and the more nervous I got about my cold hands, the colder my hands got, and so on, and so on, perhaps the dumbest of all vicious cycles.
It had been like an hour before anyone thought to call my mom, and I was basically in tears at this point, and long story short, it was an ordeal, and it was essentially completely avoidable. My mom fixed everything, as she usually does: the bluish tint was from my new pants, and the cold hands were, well, typical, just made much worse by all my anxiety. Thanks, mama. You're the real MVP.
This tragic anecdote brings me to my bigger point: the way we think about stress has a big impact on the way stress effects us. However, this is not something I just had an epiphany about after I was traumatized over dark wash jeans. No, this has science. And two smart ladies to back me up.
These two smart ladies are
Chelsea Shields Strayer, who is an anthropologist, an activist, and, pardon my french, an overall badass, and
Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist who gives a great
TED talk that inspired this post and also really helped me learn to think about stress in a positive way. She could have saved me from the dark wash jeans fiasco, but alas, she had not yet given this speech, and I would not have watched it, because I was too busy coming to terms with the idea that my hands would probably have to be amputated.
Kelly McGonigal's TED talk is all about how changing the way you think about stress changes the way it effects you, namely: if you think stress is bad for you, it is, far more than it would be normally. It's statistically proven with a study she cites in her speech:
People who experienced a lot of stress in the previous year had a 43 percent increased risk of dying. But that was only true for the people who also believed that stress is harmful for your health. People who experienced 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.
It's proven that the way you think about stress is, medically, just as important as how much stress you're under. This is because, as she goes on to explain, stress isn't an unhealthy response, as many of us see it. I know I personally am guilty of feeling ashamed and broken because I can barely get through a public speech without literally sweating through my shirt, or feeling just plain silly because I'm nervous and panicked during finals week.
But here's the thing: stress is a healthy response. Stress is the result of thousands of years of evolution, helping your body to reach its peak of function to meet challenges. A stress response pumps your blood faster to give you more oxygen, it fills you with adrenaline to help you meet the task at hand. "Your heart might be pounding, you might be breathing faster, maybe breaking out into a sweat. And normally, we interpret these physical changes as anxiety or signs that we aren't coping very well with the pressure," Kelly McGonigal says. "But what if you viewed them instead as signs that your body was energized, was preparing you to meet this challenge?" The answer is that your body responds far more healthily; your blood vessels, instead of contracting like in a typical stress response, allow your blood to flow quickly to oxygenate your system, which prevents the damage that comes from high blood pressure and contracted blood vessels. " It actually looks a lot like what happens in moments of joy and courage," McGonigal says. " Over a lifetime of stressful experiences, this one biological change could be the difference between a stress-induced heart attack at age 50 and living well into your 90s. And this is really what the new science of stress reveals, that how you think about stress matters."
Our bodies are evolved to meet challenges of all kinds, especially social challenges. One of the key differences between us, Homo sapiens, and early hominids, is our reliance on culture and social interaction. We respond with stress, or grief, or heartbreak, because our bodies are hardwired to recognize the importance of these interactions, and geared to help us learn and succeed. Especially in terms of social anxiety and social stress, it's important to recognize that your response is not a defect; it is proof that you have evolved to survive, and to thrive.
This is where the work of Chelsea Shields Strayer comes in. She explains beautifully in an
interview with TED why we shouldn't fear unpleasant responses, including stress, or heartbreak, or grief, and how important they are and how beneficial, especially from an evolutionary standpoint.
We are conditioned to think painful emotions and responses are bad, have no purpose, and our first reaction is to alleviate them as quickly as possible. I think we should look at them from an evolutionary perspective, as an indicator that points to how improvements could be made. What is my anxiety telling me? Or, why do we feel grief or heartbreak? Yes, it’s horrible to experience, but the reason it’s so potent and powerful is to signal to us. . . All our emotions are actually adaptive traits that helped us to function better in our social domains.
Changing the way you think about stress and social anxiety, or even a bad breakup, can help you respond in a much healthier way, and, in my experience, just plain feel better. Giving speeches for me has become more exhilarating than terrifying. Your pounding heart can make you feel alive, instead of scared that you are dying. Heartbreak hurts, but understanding that it's a healthy response, designed to help you learn and thrive, can help you to heal.
Whatever your challenges are, a rough breakup, or a big test, or a public speech, I hope this helps you to meet them with bravery and belief in yourself. I also hope you'll follow the links above and learn more! There's so much in both of my sources that I just couldn't do justice to, really interesting stuff that is definitely worth a read. If nothing else, remember that you are a finely tuned survival machine, and it doesn't matter if you sweat through a tee shirt or two, or, I don't know, have a small scale nervous breakdown because the dye from pants got on your hands.
With love,
Kate
