6 lessons for handling stress

NO. 6
THERE'S MORE THAN ONE WAY TO RELIEVE STRESS

THIS IS PROBABLY THE TOUGHEST LESSON TO INTERNALIZE BECAUSE when stress
overwhelms the system, your choices often seem more limited than they are. Behavioral scientists have a name for this psychological reaction. They call it learned helplessness, and they have studied the phenomenon closely in laboratory rodents, whose nervous system bears striking similarities to that of humans.

Here's how the experiment works: if you provide mice with an escape route, they
typically learn very quickly how to avoid a mild electrical shock that occurs a
few seconds after they hear a tone. But if the escape route is blocked whenever
the tone is sounded, and new shocks occur, the mice will eventually stop trying
to run away. Later, even after the escape route is cleared, the animals simply freeze at the sound of the tone--despite the fact that they once knew how to
avoid the associated shock.

Obviously, humans have more intellectual resources at their disposal than mice
do, but the underlying principle remains. When too many of the rules change,
when what used to work doesn't anymore, your ability to reason takes a hit. Just
being aware of your nervous system's built-in bias toward learned helplessness
in the face of unrelieved stress can help you identify and develop healthy
habits that will buffer at least some of the load (see box).

But the one thing you should not do is ignore the risks. Animal research has
shown that there is a relatively small window for reversing the physiological
effects of chronic stress. Studies of people are starting to produce similar
results. Once a person's cortisol level gets completely blunted, it seems to
stay that way for years. You owe it to yourself and your loved ones not to let
that happen.

So let's be a smart people and starting to manage our stress for a better life, cheers