Just wanted to remind you guys about this video discussing the benefits of stress. This was a TED Talk we watched earlier this year.
Basically, McGonigal argues that stress can become beneficial based on how you think about it. If you believe that stress is helpful, your body will handle it better. While stress is often thought to be a sign of anxiety, it actually is your body's way of energizing you for the task at hand. By convincing yourself that this energy can help you conquer whatever is stressing you, you are keeping your body relaxed. As a result, your blood vessels would stay relaxed rather than constricted, and your heart still beats at an accelerated rate, but it is a healthier one, similar to when you feel joy.
In class we keep trying to discuss the causes of stress, and I think we've come to find it is unavoidable. What do you guys think about McGonigal's theory of embracing stress rather than trying to get rid of it?
To read the full text where she also describes oxytocin click here.
Basically, McGonigal argues that stress can become beneficial based on how you think about it. If you believe that stress is helpful, your body will handle it better. While stress is often thought to be a sign of anxiety, it actually is your body's way of energizing you for the task at hand. By convincing yourself that this energy can help you conquer whatever is stressing you, you are keeping your body relaxed. As a result, your blood vessels would stay relaxed rather than constricted, and your heart still beats at an accelerated rate, but it is a healthier one, similar to when you feel joy.
In class we keep trying to discuss the causes of stress, and I think we've come to find it is unavoidable. What do you guys think about McGonigal's theory of embracing stress rather than trying to get rid of it?
To read the full text where she also describes oxytocin click here.
Once I heard a presentation about thinking of stress and nervousness as positive thing in the context of sports. Is is a very big concept and can help athletes perform much better, and by thinking of nervousness and sweating and shaking as a response by your body to allow your to perform to maximum capabilities is thought to actually relax you and help you keep focused. Its kind of counter intuitive, but by embracing stress it leads to much better athletic performance. I just thought it would be an interesting add on to the presentation to show how stress affects people from a non academic perspective.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really interesting idea. Some of her ideas about the mental side of stress is something that is not really talked about a lot. Lots of other studies have found that if the test subjects view that stress is bad for them, they will have more adverse effects on the body just as McGonigal said. The conclusion that leaders of these studies made was that warning everybody about the dangers of stress is actually harming them much more than helping because it is creating a mind set that makes it more damaging.
ReplyDeleteThanks for summarizing the video for us, Olivia. Reading the transcript and the part about oxytocin caused me to think about the positive and negative sides of this neurohormone. While McGonigal speaks very positively about the effects of oxytocin and its benefits to social interactions, I discovered some research that contradicts McGonigal's praise. It talks about how oxytocin essentially promotes all social behaviors, allowing the release of this hormone to be embodied in negative social emotions. This can cause people, depending on the situation, to gloat and cause others to feel poorly in turn.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to read more on this, here's the article: http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/the-dark-side-of-oxytocin.html
Thanks for finding the video, Olivia. I remember doing the stress activity earlier this year am a little annoyed at myself for being so closed minded. I went into the activity with such a negative attitude that I really didn't absorb anything and rejected all attempts to control my stress. After re-watching the video and reading some of the blog comments, I can totally see where she is coming from. I completely agree with Nathan about how athletic stress leads to nerves and can help you perform better during competition. While McGonigal and the Association for Psychological Science (from Addie's comment) have valid points about what scientifically happens with stress, I would argue that it is how individuals deal with this stress effects them more. As we have seen in recent articles in class, there are healthy and unhealthy forms of stress and ways to deal with stress. Any thoughts?
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this, Olivia! When I hear about the whole "embrace your stress" thing, it makes me think about the article we read in class about good stress vs bad stress. I think embracing acute stress is good, because it's basically preparing you and energizing you for your text task, like the video says. But I also think that it's important to differentiate between the kinds of stress and how to deal with them, too. When acute stress becomes severe enough that it turns into chronic (bad) stress, is it still enough to simply try to embrace it? If stress is your body preparing you for the next task, what about when that stress lasts for days or even years? What is it preparing you for then? So yes, I agree with McGonigal that sometimes embracing stress can be a good thing, and that stress isn't always the enemy. But I also think that telling everyone to simply look at stress as a good thing is also kind of a blanket statement over a much more complex problem. Because all stress is different, and I don't know if there's any one solution that can work with all kinds of stress, especially the chronic stress.
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