Why do some people thrive under stress while others crumble? According to the latest research, it’s all in your head.
It’s 9 p.m. and you kick off your Manolos after yet another frantic day at work. Too exhausted to make dinner, you leaf through the takeout menus while mentally planning your week: client meetings, yoga classes, date nights. With your mind racing, you reach for the Pinot Grigio and the remote control.
Sound familiar? Conquering stress -- that fight-or-flight response triggered by external pressures -- continues to elude us. It’s easy to see why a diet of chocolate and cigarettes can be damaging to the body, but stress is arguably almost as dangerous: The latest studies show that it’s a powerful risk factor for disease, weight gain and premature aging. Clearly, stress reduction should be at the top of our to-do list. But stress-management experts now say that the best way to cope isn’t about tuning out; it’s about changing our response to stress in the first place.
Cause and effect
“We’re taught how to read, write and do arithmetic but not how to deal with stress,” says Beverly Beuermann-King, a stress and wellness specialist in Little Britain, Ont. “Our stress response is modelled on the people around us, so if your parents scream and shout, that’s what you learn too.” Determining who has the ability to stay Zen under strain is what Time journalist Amanda Ripley explores in her book, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes -- and Why. While it may seem outrageous to compare juggling appointments with dealing with 9/11, Ripley thinks that tragic events have a lot to teach us in our day-to-day lives. “The human fear response is the same in all situations, and there’s clear evidence that a minority of people are exceptionally well designed to cope with intense stress,” she says, citing ex-Special Forces soldiers from the U.S. military. But it doesn’t appear to be a result of their training; these men and women possess blood chemistry that’s different from the rest of us: Their blood tends to have higher levels of neuropeptide Y, a compound that helps them stay focused under stress. And a study by the Veterans Administration Medical Center in New Hampshire discovered that people who suffered from
post-traumatic stress disorder had smaller hippocampi (the part of the brain that deals with learning and memory) before the trauma occurred, suggesting that certain people are genetically predisposed to require a longer recovery from stressful events.
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'We’re taught how to read, write and do arithmetic but not how to deal with stress,' says Beverly Beuermann-King, a stress and wellness specialist
