How to Transform Stress into
Courage and Connection
Stress doesn't always lead to fight-or-flight,
says Kelly McGonigal. It can also activate brain systems that help
us connect with other people.
In the late 1990s, two
psychology researchers at UCLA were talking about how the female scientists in
their lab responded differently to stress than the men did. The men would
disappear into their offices; the women would bring cookies to lab meetings and
bond over coffee. Forget fight-or-flight, they joked. The women were tending
and befriending.
The joke stuck in the
mind of one of the women, postdoctoral researcher Laura Cousino Klein.
Psychology research has suggested that stress leads to aggression, but that
wasn’t her experience. And it didn’t fit with what she observed in other women
either. They were more likely to want to talk with someone about their stress,
spend time with their loved ones, or channel their stress into caring for
others. She wondered if it was possible that science had gotten stress wrong.
Klein decided to dig
deeper into the science, and she made the surprising discovery that 90 percent
of the published research on stress was conducted on males. This was true of
animal studies as well as human studies. When Klein shared this observation
with Shelley Taylor, the director of the lab she worked in, something clicked
for her, too. Taylor challenged her lab to study the social side of stress,
especially in women. Looking at both animal and human research, they found evidence
that stress can increase caring, cooperation, and compassion.
While the
tend-and-befriend theory began as an investigation into the female response to
stress, it quickly expanded to include men—in part because male scientists
said, “Hey, we tend and befriend, too!”
Taylor’s team, along
with other research groups, began to demonstrate that stress doesn’t only
motivate self-defense, as scientists had long believed. It can also unleash the
instinct to protect your tribe. This instinct sometimes expresses itself
differently in men than it does in women, but the two sexes share it. In times
of stress, both men and women have been shown to become more trusting,
generous, and willing to risk their own well-being to protect others.
Why would stress lead
to caring?
From an evolutionary
point of view, we have the tend-and-befriend response in our repertoire first
and foremost to make sure we protect our offspring. Think of a mama grizzly
protecting her cubs, or a father pulling his son from the wreckage of a burning
car. The most important thing they need is the willingness to act even when
their own lives are at risk.
To make sure we have
the courage to protect our loved ones, the tend-and-befriend response must
counter our basic survival instinct to avoid harm. We need fearlessness in
those moments, along with confidence that our actions can make a difference. If
we think there’s nothing we can do, we might give up. And if we are frozen in
fear, our loved ones will perish.
At its core, the
tend-and-befriend response is a biological state engineered to reduce fear and
increase hope. The best way to understand how the tend-and-befriend response
does this is to look at how it affects your brain:
·
The social
caregiving system is regulated by oxytocin. When this system is
activated, you feel more empathy, connection, and trust, as well as a stronger
desire to bond or be close with others. This network also inhibits the fear
centers of the brain, increasing your courage.
·
The reward
system releases the neurotransmitter dopamine. Activation of the
reward system increases motivation while dampening fear. When your stress
response includes a rush of dopamine, you feel optimistic about your ability to
do something meaningful. Dopamine also primes the brain for physical action, making
sure you don’t freeze under pressure.
·
The attunement
system is driven by the neurotransmitter serotonin. When this system
is activated, it enhances your perception, intuition, and self-control. This
makes it easier to understand what is needed, and helps ensure that your
actions have the biggest positive impact. In other words, a tend-and-befriend
response makes you social, brave, and smart. It provides both the courage and
hope we need to propel us into action and the awareness to act skillfully.
Here’s where things
get interesting. A tend-and-befriend response may have evolved to help us
protect offspring, but when you are in that state, your bravery translates to
any challenge you face. And—this is the most important part—anytime you choose
to help others, you activate this state. Caring for others triggers the biology
of courage and creates hope.
Whether you are
overwhelmed by your own stress or the suffering of others, the way to find hope
is to connect, not to escape. The benefits of taking a tend-and-befriend
approach go beyond helping your loved ones, although this, of course, is an
important function. In any situation where you feel powerless, doing something
to support others can help you sustain your motivation and optimism.
The tend-and-befriend
theory doesn’t say that stress alwaysleads to caring—stress can
indeed make us angry and defensive. The theory simply says that stress can, and
often does, make people more caring. And when we care for others, it changes
our biochemistry, activating systems of the brain that produce feelings of hope
and courage.
I wrote my book The
Upside of Stress with that
purpose in mind: to help you discover your own strength and compassion. Seeing
the upside of stress is not about deciding whether stress is either all good or
all bad. It’s about how choosing to see the good in stress, and in yourself,
can help you meet the challenges in your life. Tending and befriend is one of
the best ways to do this, and to transform your own stress into a catalyst for
courage and connection.
By Kelly
McGonigal |
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_transform_stress_courage_connection?utm_source=GGSC+Newsletter+%232+-+May+2015&utm_campaign=GG+Newsletter+%232+-+May+2015&utm_medium=email
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