How to make stress your friend

The way you think about stress matters.  This is an interesting lecture about stress and how our body responses to stress. Kelly McGonigal, a health psychologist explains about a research study that has made her rethink her approach to stress. According to the social stress test conducted at Harvard University, people who don’t see stress as harmful are no more likely to die! So, if we change our mind about stress, we can change our body’s response to stress. In this study, the participants were taught to rethink their stress response (heart pounding, sweating, faster breathing) as helpful when they are in a stressful situation. Kelly says, if we think that those biological changes help us rise to the challenge ( a stressful situation) our body response becomes healthier. She then talks about oxytocin as cuddle hormone, compassionate and caring hormone which is released from pituitary gland. Oxytocin enhances empathy, the desire/willingness to help and support people we care about. Kelly believes that stress gives us access to our heart. The compassionate heart that seeks joy in connecting with others, so pounding heart means that it is working so hard to give us strength and energy and when we view stress in this way, we trust ourselves to handle life’s challenges.