The science of stress, coping, and recovery, in 22 minutes | Lisa Damour

0:00 If you teach people that stress is natural, that stress is helpful, that it helps you grow, that it helps you perform, when they're put in challenging situations, they feel less stressed, and they perform better. In contrast, if people walk around with this idea that stress is bad for them, they get into a challenging situation, they become stressed, they become stressed about being stressed, and their performance degrades while their stress goes up. So embracing stress is actually part of what helps us to meet that experience and bring our full capacities to it. I'm Dr. Lisa Damour. I'm a clinical psychologist. I'm an author and I'm the co-host of Ask Lisa, the psychology of raising tween and teens podcast.

0:41 Thank you for watching Big Think. If you'd like to support our work, we encourage you to join our members community. As a member, you'll receive our quarterly print magazine, a beautifully designed collection of the ideas and interviews that matter most. Bigthink is for curious people who want to take deep dives into big ideas. To support the media you want to see in the world, go to bigthink.com/membership. And now back to the interview. How to cope with stress.

1:10 So stress is a big topic these days and for good reason. We as a culture, as a generation, are dealing with some pretty stressful stuff. We have digital technology infusing every aspect of our lives. This means we are constantly exposed to a new stream of information that can be pretty upsetting. And we're also in a time where we talk about what I call sort of optimization. This sense of every minute should be put to the best possible use to make us the best possible people. This is pretty stressful. So the way that we should think about stress, it's like our personal hype squad, right? Stress shows up when we're faced with a challenge or something that's new or something that's different. And stress is our personal hype squad that shows up to get us ready to marshall our energy to focus our attention. Stress is fundamentally helpful. It lets us rise to challenges. So, one of the problems we have right now is that stress has been given a bad name.

2:06 People think you're not supposed to experience stress. That somewhere out there there is this zen state you're supposed to get to and you're supposed to live there. That's not how this works. Stress is part of life. Stress will always come up when changes occur. With this misunderstanding, this idea that stress is somehow bad, people have an unhelpful reaction to stress. They become stressed about being stressed. The hype squad shows up and they think, "Why is the hype squad here?" That is not a helpful way to think about stress. And when we get stressed about being stressed, we're more likely to avoid stress. We're more likely to become uncomfortable, unduly uncomfortable in the face of stress. we don't necessarily harness it to help us perform and manage our lives in the way that we want to. We want to be really careful with this idea, this wrong idea that stress is somehow bad. Because if we go with that idea, then we're going to move into a space of thinking, well, how can I reduce or eliminate stress in my life? The only way to reduce or eliminate stress in your life is to narrow your life tremendously. to stop taking on new experiences, to stop doing hard things. Nobody wants that. We don't grow. Life is uninteresting.

3:17 We need to accept that reasonable levels of stress are actually part of life. That anytime we're going through a change, we're going to experience stress. And stress is not only not bad, it's actually a sign that we are growing. And if we can embrace it as such, there's so much to be gained from it. So stress is good and growthgiving within reasonable limits and it's absolutely to be expected and we should welcome it into our lives as a sign that we are doing new and interesting things. But we can't be stressed all the time. So if we go back to that idea of stress being like a hype squad, you don't want the hype squad around all the time. That becomes exhausting. That becomes tedious. That becomes really wearing on us. So if we're stressed all the time, we become impatient. We become brittle. We become tired. And then of course, if we're stressed all the time, we don't even sleep all that well. So we're tired from feeling the stress of the day. And then we tend to sleep poorly at night, only compounding the problem. So while we want to accept and welcome stress as a normal part of life, we also want to make sure that it's happening within limits and that we get a chance to rest and recover. So when psychologists get concerned is when people are faced with chronic stress, which is stress without the opportunity to recovery. They're stressed all the time. The hype squad never goes away. Under conditions of chronic stress, we start to see real wear and tear both on the brain and on the body. Our brain becomes hyper sensitized and overreactive to even minor changes in the environment. our bodies are contending with an ongoing stream of cortisol and other stress hormones that elevate our blood pressure that can interfere with sleep that really start to break down essential functions in our body. So, as much as stress is good in that it can help us rise to the occasion when we need to, we do not want to have stress and all of the hormones and all of the bodily changes that come with it, we don't want to have that happening all the time. At its extreme, stress becomes trauma. Now, trauma is a word that people use a lot and they use it in different ways. The way that psychologists think about trauma is that it's any experience that overwhelms your ability to cope with it. So, what's traumatic to you might not be traumatic to me. It depends on the context, the experience, our life histories.

5:42 But trauma is something we absolutely want to avoid at all costs. There's no benefit to becoming psychologically or physiologically overwhelmed. And one of the things we know from the research is that when people are traumatized, especially if they're traumatized repeatedly, it rewires the nervous system. They stay on high alert all the time. A door shuts loudly and they are reacting as though it's a gunshot. So trauma is enormously hard on the nervous system. It's hard on the person with that nervous system and it can be hard on the people around the traumatized person. Luckily, we're great at treating trauma if the reaction lasts over time. But trauma is something to be avoided at all costs. So, one of the ways that I love to think about psychological stress is that it's a lot like physical stress, namely strength training. Anytime you want to build muscle in the gym, you take yourself there and you pick up literally stressful weights. You know full well that if you pick up easy weights, you're just wasting your time. You're not going to get anything out of it. You have to pick up weights that are actually uncomfortable in order to grow. Psychological stress is the exact same way. When we are going through emotionally or mentally taxing experiences, it does not feel good in the same way that strength training when you're doing it right does not feel good. But that is how we grow. If we're comfortable all the time, nothing is changing. We are not expanding our capacities as humans.

7:11 So thinking about stress that way, recognizing that discomfort, the strain of change is actually how we develop ourselves as people is not only accurate, it actually makes us less stressed when we feel stressed. Some of the coolest research out there has found that understanding the benefits of stress can actually improve your performance. So studies have been done that show that if you teach people that stress is natural, that stress is helpful, that it helps you grow, that it helps you perform, when they're put in challenging situations, they feel less stressed, and they perform better. In contrast, if people walk around with this idea that stress is bad for them, they get into a challenging situation, they become stressed, they become stressed about being stressed, and their performance degrades while their stress goes up. So, embracing stress, recognizing that that sensation of, "Wow, this is a lot. I'm up against something hard and new and difficult." Embracing that experience is actually part of what helps us to meet that experience and bring our full capacities to it. So, there's also a line of research that falls into the category of what I would call social science proving common sense, which is basically what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Now, that probably overstates it, but it's not all wrong. Many of us know from personal experience that going through really hard things is unpleasant at the time, but actually makes us better able to manage new difficulties when they come up. So, we have a line of research showing that people who have gone through hard things and found their way through actually build capacity and feel more resilient in the face of new difficulties.

8:54 So anytime we're going through something hard, as long as we have the resources around us, the support we need, we can recognize that that is something that we are going to have a payoff from. We don't necessarily enjoy difficult periods of our life, but if we find our way through, what the research shows is that we tend to feel more capable, less frightened, more able in the face of new difficulties when they inevitably arise. One of the things I really like about being a clinical psychologist is that I get to help people and I get to help people through very, very difficult times of their life. And it means that I'm often up against incredibly painful experiences that people are going through. You know, the death of a loved one, the loss of a child. I mean, terrible, terrible things. These are emotionally taxing for me given that I'm trying to help somebody through them. But I've also found that the net effect is that it's changed my overall stress levels. Being up against very challenging situations, helping people work their way through very challenging situations has made me much more relaxed about the day-to-day things I deal with. I will often say to my own kids, you know what? I know what constitutes a crisis. This is not a crisis. So the mindset we adopt under stressful conditions changes everything. So, back to the gym. If we think about somebody who's decided they're going to build their muscles and they've taken themselves to the gym and they're lifting really heavy weights and they're doing lots of reps and they're coming to the end of their workout because their muscles are so tired, they're feeling two things. First, they're really uncomfortable because this is hard. The other is there's a sense of achievement. There's a sense of I got myself to the place where growth and change happen.

10:44 There can be a pride in that moment even as one is feeling like and I'm going to be pretty sore tomorrow. If we take that mindset to other types of stress in our life, really hard intellectual work, taking on a project at work that's way bigger than anything you've ever done before, we can have that double experience. Both this sense of like this is a lot, this is uncomfortable, this is hard. And on top of that, the sense of I am going to be so much more capable once I get myself through this. I am gaining as I go. This will be hard. I will be tired. And once I've recovered, I'm going to have more capacity than I've ever had before. Recognizing that stress is actually a natural reaction and even a helpful reaction not only changes our mindset, it actually changes how our body reacts to stressful circumstances. So one thing we know is that when people have the sort of stress is healthy and good for you view of things, they are less physiologically reactive to stressful circumstances. Their heart rate doesn't go up as high as somebody who's frightened of stress. They actually have a better stress hormone response, a more moderated stress hormone response compared to somebody who is frightened of stress or is trying to avoid stress.

11:59 So accepting that stress is natural and not only natural but healthy and growth giving helps us to meet it more effectively to be less frightened of it and to even let our bodies react to it in a more effective way. So the longer I have worked on stress thought about stress lived with stress myself the more my attention has moved away from stress to the questions of recovery. Stress is a done deal. Let's just start there. it's better that we accept it and in fact embrace it. What really matters is how we recover after a period of stress. Another way to think about it is back to the gym, right? Anyone who's serious about strength training works out hard at the gym and then protects time for recovery because they know that that's what's going to help them grow over time. So my main interest these days is not so much in do people have hard times or experience imp painful feelings. They definitely do. It's what do they do next? And for me, there's a great divide. Some people use healthy coping, which is coping that brings relief and does no harm.

13:04 And some people or sometimes people use unhealthy coping, which is coping that brings relief. We're always going to find relief but comes with a cost attached. So, what makes for unhealthy coping? What's the kind of coping that we want to be sure to avoid? To me, it's in four categories. Number one, turning to substances for relief. The problem with substances is that they work. If you get high, get drunk, you will feel better, but they're a short-term solution that almost always sets up long-term problems, especially if they become a habit. The second thing we want to watch out for is taking it out on oneself. Talking badly about oneself, being unkind to oneself, beating oneself up, it gives a sense of control. It gives a sense of I'm doing something about this. But again, short-term solution that leads to long-term problems. The third category we want to steer clear of is taking it out on other people, right? You have a bad day at the office and you come home and everybody in the home gets punished for this one way or another. There's some relief to be had.

14:06 Needless to say, this is really going to do damage to our relationships. And the fourth category that I'm always looking out for is using avoidance to manage anxiety. Anxiety is uncomfortable. it like stress is part of life and our instinct is to avoid it. But what we know is that when you avoid the things that make you anxious, they actually get more scary because whatever you imagine remains true in your mind. And what we know instead is that if you're anxious about something and it's something you should be able to do, try to take moves towards it even if they're very small steps. Moving towards the things we fear is always better than defaulting to avoidance.

14:46 The key about unhealthy coping is that it is coping, right? We're trying to feel better. Humans don't work against their own interests. We're trying to get some relief. So, if you notice that you're using unhealthy coping or someone you love is using unhealthy coping, start from the understanding that it's doing something for you, it's serving a purpose. And figure out what purpose it's serving. Do you need a better way to relax? Are you trying not to think about something? Are you too scared of something? and don't know what to do. Once you recognize that you're trying to solve a problem, then you can turn to the question of what's a better way to solve this problem that both brings me relief but doesn't come with a huge price tag attached. While the list of unhealthy coping is basically the four things I mentioned, the list of healthy coping is as long as you want it to be. The only thing that matters is that what you're doing brings relief and does no harm. So, healthy coping looks like so many things and is incredibly personal. I like to cook. That's a way that I enjoy healthy coping. I also love to exercise. I especially love taking walks with my friends. But what works for you is what works for you. All that matters is that there's no downsides for you or anybody else. That said, there are a couple things I want us all to know about about what looks like healthy coping, but actually isn't working as well as we think. So, one example would be like multitasking. Sometimes we think like, "Oh, I'll cope by getting all of these things done and I'll get them all done at once." Multitasking can seem like it's working. But here's the problem with multitasking. It actually stresses us out. The way to think about multitasking is actually to think about it as self-interruption. You know how it's so annoying when somebody interrupts you because you have your train of thought and then they move you off your train of thought? Well, we only really do have one train of thought. And so when we multitask, we're actually self-interrupting constantly. and the frustration of being interrupted by somebody else, we're actually doing to ourselves. So, one thing you could do if you're wanting to slow things down, recover, just do one thing at a time. You'll do it better and you'll feel better while doing it. Another thing I see all the time, especially in people who are really hardworking and really driven, is that they get to the place where they finally let themselves recover after a period of stress. They turn to their forms of healthy coping, whether they're just enjoying a TV show or spending time with friends, but while they're recovering, they feel kind of guilty about doing it, that they have this nagging sense of like, well, I could be getting this other thing done or maybe I should be using this time differently.

17:17 This is not helpful. The way I think about it is that guilt soaked recovery isn't really recovery. Okay, back to the gym. Someone who's serious about strength training doesn't feel bad about the days that they let their muscles recover. They know that's a key part of building capacity and muscle growth. Same goes for you. You have worked hard. You have earned your rest. Take the rest. Savor the rest. I actually think savoring our favorite ways of coping is exactly the thing that gets us up and ready to go back and to keep growing. And in fact, we have research showing that if you feel like leisure is a waste of time, you don't enjoy it as much and it's actually associated with higher rates of depression and anxiety. On the other hand, if you welcome leisure, if you accept that recovery is not only something you should have, that you get to have, you have every right to have, that's associated with feeling better overall. Sometimes when we're going through something difficult, we can start to turn inward and beat ourselves up. And this tends not to help us feel better. One thing though I've noticed over years of clinical practice is that it happens almost sort of automatically for some people that they can't stop themselves. That as soon as something goes wrong, they think, "Oh, what's the matter with me?" I realize in retrospect, I've wasted a lot of people's time trying to get them to stop doing that. It's actually very hard to stop doing that. So, what I say to people now is, okay, that's your first reaction. It's out of the gate before you even realize it's going to happen. Let's treat it as your first reaction. And then let's sit here for a minute and think, might there be a second reaction? Is there another way that you could see this? If my client is still struggling at that point, I will say, what would you say to a friend? If a friend were in this exact same position, what would you say to them?

19:12 invariably people are so much kinder, so much more compassionate and can come up with great guidance that they would offer this theoretical friend and then usually they can turn that back around and use it for themselves. So, one of the things that is really wonderful about being 30 years into practicing as a psychologist is that my sense of what matters has gotten more and more clear and to me it's relationships. We have so much research showing, but also so much common sense telling us that the quality of your life is going to be measured in the quality of your relationships. So, especially when we're stressed, but even when we're not, taking time to prioritize those relationships, protect those relationships, seek them out, cultivate them, is really what this is all about. The other thing I've really learned about keeping stress at healthy levels is that two things we know are important actually really do matter. The first is exercise. Exercise is probably the best drug on the market when it comes to managing stress. When we're exercising, we actually tend to feel better while we're doing it. It can be an important form of leisure. It's also a time when we let our mind sometimes run and solve problems or clean up mental clutter.

20:27 And often if we do a period of exercise without listening to a podcast or watching a TV show, we come to the end of it actually feeling more clear-headed in addition to having gotten our workout. We also know that exercise is tied to the other thing that really matters, which is sleep. Sleep is the glue that holds human beings together. If you're not getting the sleep you need, you're going to be stressed. You're going to feel pretty uncomfortable. When we are exercising, we sleep better. We fall asleep faster and we actually sleep more soundly. So, we should be getting all the sleep our bodies need, no matter what. But if you're having any trouble with it, exercise is going to help make it happen. Here's what I can promise you. Our lives are better when we're smart about stress. And being smart about stress comes down to three things. Number one, don't be afraid of it. It's part of life. We're supposed to have it. It helps us grow. So long as it's within normal limits, it's good for us. Number two, protect recovery. Stress without recovery is a problem. Stress plus adequate recovery equals growth. And number three, enjoy your recovery. When you are coping in healthy ways, when you have an opportunity for leisure, don't ruin it with guilt. Lean into it. Enjoy it all the way. You've earned it. You deserve it.

21:45 And savoring it is going to help you get back in there and do even more. As much as I'm the PR team for distress and all of the value that it brings to our lives, there are lines that we don't want to cross. So, if the definition of being mentally healthy is having feelings to fit what's happening and managing them well, we know it's when to worry if we're struggling to manage feelings well. So, for example, in depression, people feel low or blank or irritable and they can't get their hands around it. or in anxiety disorders, they are having a fear response that doesn't fit what's happening and that they cannot get under control. So, we can actually lean into and value uncomfortable emotions so long as we know that they're healthy. And part of how we know they're healthy is that we know what's over the line. And what's over the line is if you are struggling to manage feelings well or if you're turning to unhealthy coping to try to get them under control.

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