压力大，怎么办?压力会让你心跳加速、呼吸加快、额头冒汗!当压力成为全民健康公敌时，有研究显示只有当你与压力为敌时，它才会危害你的健康。心理学家kellymcgonigal 从积极的一面分析压力，教你如何使压力变成你的朋友!
stress. it makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your foreheadsweat. but while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new researchsuggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case.psychologist kelly mcgonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, andintroduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out toothers.
kelly mcgonigal translates academic research into practical strategies forhealth, happiness and personal success.
why you should listen to her：
stanford university psychologist kelly mcgonigal is a leader in the growingfield of “science-help.” through books, articles, courses and workshops,mcgonigal works to help us understand and implement the latest scientificfindings in psychology, neuroscience and medicine.
straddling the worlds of research and practice, mcgonigal holds positionsin both the stanford graduate school of business and the school of medicine. hermost recent book, the willpower instinct, e_plores the latest research onmotivation, temptation and procrastination, as well as what it takes totransform habits, persevere at challenges and make a successful change.
she is now researching a new book about the "upside of stress," which willlook at both why stress is good for us, and what makes us good at stress. in herwords: "the old understanding of stress as a unhelpful relic of our animalinstincts is being replaced by the understanding that stress actually makes ussocially smart -- it's what allows us to be fully human."
i have a confession to make, but first, i want you to make a littleconfession to me. in the past year, i want you to just raise your hand
if you've e_perienced relatively little stress. anyone?
how about a moderate amount of stress?
who has e_perienced a lot of stress? yeah. me too.
but that is not my confession. my confession is this: i am a healthpsychologist, and my mission is to help people be happier and healthier. but ifear that something i've been teaching for the last 10 years is doing more harmthan good, and it has to do with stress. for years i've been telling people,stress makes you sick. it increases the risk of everything from the common coldto cardiovascular disease. basically, i've turned stress into the enemy. but ihave changed my mind about stress, and today, i want to change yours.
let me start with the study that made me rethink my whole approach tostress. this study tracked 30,000 adults in the united states for eight years,and they started by asking people, "how much stress have you e_perienced in thelast year?" they also asked, "do you believe that stress is harmful for yourhealth?" and then they used public death records to find out who died.
(laughter)
okay. some bad news first. people who e_perienced a lot of stress in theprevious year had a 43 percent increased risk of dying. but that was only truefor the people who also believed that stress is harmful for your health.(laughter) people who e_perienced a lot of stress but did not view stress asharmful were no more likely to die. in fact, they had the lowest risk of dyingof anyone in the study, including people who had relatively little stress.
now the researchers estimated that over the eight years they were trackingdeaths, 182,000 americans died prematurely, not from stress, but from the beliefthat stress is bad for you. (laughter) that is over 20,000 deaths a year. now,if that estimate is correct, that would make believing stress is bad for you the15th largest cause of death in the united states last year, killing more peoplethan skin cancer, hiv/aids and homicide.
(laughter)
you can see why this study freaked me out. here i've been spending so muchenergy telling people stress is bad for your health.
so this study got me wondering: can changing how you think about stressmake you healthier? and here the science says yes. when you change your mindabout stress, you can change your body's response to stress.
now to e_plain how this works, i want you all to pretend that you areparticipants in a study designed to stress you out. it's called the socialstress test. you come into the laboratory, and you're told you have to give afive-minute impromptu speech on your personal weaknesses to a panel of e_pertevaluators sitting right in front of you, and to make sure you feel thepressure, there are bright lights and a camera in your face, kind of like this.and the evaluators have been trained to give you discouraging, non-verbalfeedback like this.
(laughter)
now that you're sufficiently demoralized, time for part two: a math test.and unbeknownst to you, the e_perimenter has been trained to harass you duringit. now we're going to all do this together. it's going to be fun. for me.
okay. i want you all to count backwards from 996 in increments of seven.you're going to do this out loud as fast as you can, starting with 996. go!audience: (counting) go faster. faster please. you're going too slow. stop.stop, stop, stop. that guy made a mistake. we are going to have to start allover again. (laughter) you're not very good at this, are you? okay, so you getthe idea. now, if you were actually in this study, you'd probably be a littlestressed out. your heart might be pounding, you might be breathing faster, maybebreaking out into a sweat. and normally, we interpret these physical changes asan_iety or signs that we aren't coping very well with the pressure.
but what if you viewed them instead as signs that your body was energized,was preparing you to meet this challenge? now that is e_actly what participantswere told in a study conducted at harvard university. before they went throughthe social stress test, they were taught to rethink their stress response ashelpful. that pounding heart is preparing you for action. if you're breathingfaster, it's no problem. it's getting more o_ygen to your brain. andparticipants who learned to view the stress response as helpful for theirperformance, well, they were less stressed out, less an_ious, more confident,but the most fascinating finding to me was how their physical stress responsechanged. now, in a typical stress response, your heart rate goes up, and yourblood vessels constrict like this. and this is one of the reasons that chronicstress is sometimes associated with cardiovascular disease. it's not reallyhealthy to be in this state all the time. but in the study, when participantsviewed their stress response as helpful, their blood vessels stayed rela_ed likethis. their heart was still pounding, but this is a much healthiercardiovascular profile. it actually looks a lot like what happens in moments ofjoy and courage. over a lifetime of stressful e_periences, this one biologicalchange could be the difference between a stress-induced heart attack at age 50and living well into your 90s. and this is really what the new science of stressreveals, that how you think about stress matters.
so my goal as a health psychologist has changed. i no longer want to getrid of your stress. i want to make you better at stress. and we just did alittle intervention. if you raised your hand and said you'd had a lot of stressin the last year, we could have saved your life, because hopefully the ne_t timeyour heart is pounding from stress, you're going to remember this talk andyou're going to think to yourself, this is my body helping me rise to thischallenge. and when you view stress in that way, your body believes you, andyour stress response becomes healthier.
now i said i have over a decade of demonizing stress to redeem myself from,so we are going to do one more intervention. i want to tell you about one of themost under-appreciated aspects of the stress response, and the idea is this:stress makes you social.
to understand this side of stress, we need to talk about a hormone,o_ytocin, and i know o_ytocin has already gotten as much hype as a hormone canget. it even has its own cute nickname, the cuddle hormone, because it'sreleased when you hug someone. but this is a very small part of what o_ytocin isinvolved in. o_ytocin is a neuro-hormone. it fine-tunes your brain's socialinstincts. it primes you to do things that strengthen close relationships.o_ytocin makes you crave physical contact with your friends and family. itenhances your empathy. it even makes you more willing to help and support thepeople you care about. some people have even suggested we should snort o_ytocinto become more compassionate and caring. but here's what most people don'tunderstand about o_ytocin. it's a stress hormone. your pituitary gland pumpsthis stuff out as part of the stress response. it's as much a part of yourstress response as the adrenaline that makes your heart pound. and when o_ytocinis released in the stress response, it is motivating you to seek support. yourbiological stress response is nudging you to tell someone how you feel insteadof bottling it up. your stress response wants to make sure you notice whensomeone else in your life is struggling so that you can support each other. whenlife is difficult, your stress response wants you to be surrounded by people whocare about you.
okay, so how is knowing this side of stress going to make you healthier?well, o_ytocin doesn't only act on your brain. it also acts on your body, andone of its main roles in your body is to protect your cardiovascular system fromthe effects of stress. it's a natural anti-inflammatory. it also helps yourblood vessels stay rela_ed during stress. but my favorite effect on the body isactually on the heart. your heart has receptors for this hormone, and o_ytocinhelps heart cells regenerate and heal from any stress-induced damage. thisstress hormone strengthens your heart, and the cool thing is that all of thesephysical benefits of o_ytocin are enhanced by social contact and social support,so when you reach out to others under stress, either to seek support or to helpsomeone else, you release more of this hormone, your stress response becomeshealthier, and you actually recover faster from stress. i find this amazing,that your stress response has a built-in mechanism for stress resilience, andthat mechanism is human connection.
i want to finish by telling you about one more study. and listen up,because this study could also save a life. this study tracked about 1,000 adultsin the united states, and they ranged in age from 34 to 93, and they started thestudy by asking, "how much stress have you e_perienced in the last year?" theyalso asked, "how much time have you spent helping out friends, neighbors, peoplein your community?" and then they used public records for the ne_t five years tofind out who died.
okay, so the bad news first: for every major stressful life e_perience,like financial difficulties or family crisis, that increased the risk of dyingby 30 percent. but -- and i hope you are e_pecting a but by now -- but thatwasn't true for everyone. people who spent time caring for others showedabsolutely no stress-related increase in dying. zero. caring created resilience.and so we see once again that the harmful effects of stress on your health arenot inevitable. how you think and how you act can transform your e_perience ofstress. when you choose to view your stress response as helpful, you create thebiology of courage. and when you choose to connect with others under stress, youcan create resilience. now i wouldn't necessarily ask for more stressfule_periences in my life, but this science has given me a whole new appreciationfor stress. stress gives us access to our hearts. the compassionate heart thatfinds joy and meaning in connecting with others, and yes, your pounding physicalheart, working so hard to give you strength and energy, and when you choose toview stress in this way, you're not just getting better at stress, you'reactually making a pretty profound statement. you're saying that you can trustyourself to handle life's challenges, and you're remembering that you don't haveto face them alone.
thank you.
(applause)
chris anderson: this is kind of amazing, what you're telling us. it seemsamazing to me that a belief about stress can make so much difference tosomeone's life e_pectancy. how would that e_tend to advice, like, if someone ismaking a lifestyle choice between, say, a stressful job and a non-stressful job,does it matter which way they go? it's equally wise to go for the stressful jobso long as you believe that you can handle it, in some sense?
kelly mcgonigal: yeah, and one thing we know for certain is that chasingmeaning is better for your health than trying to avoid discomfort. and so iwould say that's really the best way to make decisions, is go after what it isthat creates meaning in your life and then trust yourself to handle the stressthat follows.
ca: thank you so much, kelly. it's pretty cool. km: thank you.
(applause)
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