(R. Gorcynski, ‘Conditioned immune response associated with allogenic skin grafts’, Journal of Immunology (1982), Vol. 220, pages 821–2). Animals and humans can ‘learn’ to become healthier and to have improved immune activity.
It is of only partial value to concentrate on just one side of the picture, to think only of stress avoidance or of better stress handling. Ideally, both elements of the stress/health equation should be looked at and, if possible, dealt with. You need to be aware that stress is at its most harmful when you respond to it inappropriately.
Most stress situations in today’s life are not as simple as the ‘fight or flight’ reaction, when the stress is matched by a straightforward immediately executed response. There may be no obvious choices to make, and in many instances there is no on-the-spot ‘caveman’ solution – for example, when you are exposed to someone’s rudeness or aggressive behaviour, and you metaphorically have to ‘take it on the chin’. Repeated exercising of pretended patience may indeed result in stress-induced damage. Many stressful events in life, such as divorce, bereavement, loss of a job, etc., present no opportunity for a simple and immediate ‘fight or flight’ response, and how they affect us depends very much on our emotional coping skills.
Equally damaging are reactions which are inappropriate. For example, when anger is the response to an incident which someone else would treat as being of little importance – in other words, an over-reaction. The question is: how is it that some people can cope with all these things, whilst others cannot? The answer is a matter of attitude, belief and habitual behavioural patterns.
Many of our attitudes derive from the imprinting we receive in our early formative years. Unconsciously we are ‘programmed’ by what we hear and see as children, and these attitudes then become the blueprints, the beliefs, which dictate how we will ‘feel’, act and respond in a multitude of situations, including stressful ones.
It is our acceptance when very young, usually without question or critical judgement, of the attitudes we see and learn from our parents, relatives, friends, schools etc. which mould our later behaviour and responses to stress. To alter entrenched attitudes and behaviour in later life we first must recognize that we may be ‘programmed’ in a manner which leads to inappropriate, self-damaging behaviour, and that just as we first learned attitudes when we were very young, so can we re-learn a different view of life later if we wish to.
The key to such a change is awareness of where the key to improving things lies, to a realization that there are other ways of seeing things, that these may be more life/health enhancing than our current approaches, that we need to challenge our present attitudes and beliefs. As you alter your attitudes so will your feelings change, and this is because it is your thoughts which govern your emotions. If you can learn to see your emotions as a mirror of your thoughts, and if you are aware that your emotions are in turmoil, or that they lead you to inappropriate responses, you can see that it is the way you think which needs to be addressed before changes will come in your emotions and stress-coping skills.
If you can begin to see that a repetitive cycle occurs in which life stresses are poorly coped with, and that the end result of this is depression, and the risk of mental and physical ill health, the need to gain control of the underlying causes becomes clear. Control of the emotions comes through understanding and awareness that negative feelings can be replaced with positive ones.
It is no simple or easy task to make such changes, and it may well require professional counselling, for it is not enough to simply superficially ‘blot out’ negative emotions with an overlay of positive thinking. What is called for is a more fundamental change in which you come to understand your way of thinking, the place where your attitudes were born. The start of this process towards an upwards positive spiral is recognition of what is necessary, followed by the use of a method which leads to greater understanding or insight. This can be achieved by attending workshops or group therapy sessions, or one-to-one counselling with a therapist, whether the method involves psychosynthesis, voice dialogue, neurolinguistic programming, or any other humanistic psychotherapy tool.
In all of these methods, judgements are avoided, and understanding and awareness is encouraged. Once you come to understand and accept yourself, and learn why you think (and, therefore, behave) as you do, change comes naturally.
There are a number of defensive tricks which the mind can play in response to any challenge or stress. These include repression of thoughts and memories which might prove stressful, as well as ‘rationalization’, in which the individual makes up an account of his or her behaviour in response to stress, the true explanation of which would produce anxiety. Such common defences, if producing anxiety states or personality changes, require professional psychotherapy to provide insights into, and resolution of, the problem.
It is self-evident, then, that what is to one individual a major stress factor may to another be only a minor irritant. Recall the student doctors who I referred to earlier. Some became ill and some did not when confronted by the same exam stresses. It was their coping skills and attitudes which determined who would become ill and who would not. In a well-documented study (M. Linn, ‘Stressful events, disphoric mood and immune responsiveness’, Psychological Report (1984), Vol. 54, pages 219–22) it was shown that the psychological response to a stressful event can alter the ability of the immune system to function adequately. In particular, men who reported the most depression after bereavement or serious family illness had the greatest reduction in immune efficiency. Such changes are not confined to depressive illness, but may result in a variety of responses to unpleasant life events.
Now, it is clear that life-events are common to us all. We all experience many, or even most, of the sort of events which are listed below, and yet they do not provoke a negative effect in everyone. Dr Norman Cousins, writing in the American Journal of Holistic Medicine (March/April 1986, pages 1–20) gives his view of the remedy which saves so many from stress-induced illness.
‘If negative emotions like panic can create disease, what is the role of positive emotions – love, hope, faith, laughter, playfulness, creativity? I’ve come to the conclusion that the function of the positive emotions is to interrupt the negative ones. The positive emotions protect the body against the bolts of fear, anger, worry and despair. They are the blockers, magnificent blockers … blocking as they can the disease of panic, which can intensify virtually any underlying illness. It is not possible to entertain two contrary feelings. The positive emotions drive out the negative. You cannot panic and laugh at the same time.’
The difference lies in a person’s attitude towards the cause of stress. For one person, for example, the meeting of a deadline, the need to be at a particular place at a fixed time, is of vital importance, and the prospect of being late, of failing to meet the deadline, generates a great deal of tension and anxiety. To another person, such deadlines are mere guidelines, and no particular worry is felt at their being missed.
Attitudes depend upon a person’s concept of reality. The world as they see it is their own reality, and when this comes into conflict with the external environment stress results. To some extent, all change represents stress. Anything that calls on us to adjust or change from what is normal represents stress. Our concept of what is normal, what is right, how things ought to be is, therefore, the sounding board on which the external environmental factors operate. Beliefs and attitudes often determine the degree of stress, anxiety etc. experienced. For example, the death of someone close is undoubtedly a major stress factor, and yet to someone whose beliefs include a certainty of an after-life or a reincarnation, the death will be seen as part of a continuous process, not an end, and therefore the amount of stress will be minimized. Clearly, what you believe, what you think, and how you see both major and minor events, is linked to your learned responses, which in turn derives from your upbringing and the attitudes and beliefs of those who guided your early years, modified by all that has happened to you since then.
Stress and Changes in Lifestyle
