Change is a
tremendous source of stress and good or bad, change increase demands on your
resilience. Whether it's relocating, buying a home, or selling one, a promotion,
or losing a job, marrying, divorcing, a new baby, getting ill, or being the
caregiver of someone with chronic illness—each stressor places demands on your brain
and body’s complex, interwoven system. An overload reveals itself in physical
and emotional aches, pains and illnesses, and can even trigger genetic
expression of disease. Your ability to bounce back depends on how much
resilience you have, and what tools are at your disposal to bolster it.
Advances in
scientific understanding about the interactive body/brain /mind functioning continue
to validate common, even ancient human wisdom for dealing with stress. Yet in
our 21st century society, we are biased toward new solutions, new
medications, new interventions for whatever ails us. We want a pill, not a
daily prayer and exercise routine! But new is not always best, nor necessary.
To build
resilience, you need basically two things.
First is a way to consistently,
repeatedly, turn off your body’s stress response while turning on the opposite,
known as the relaxation response.
Then you need to also cultivate positive
beliefs, emotions, and expectations. Together these will increase not just your
well being, but also your resilience factor, and ensure you have the tools on
hand, polished and ready to use, when needed.
You may
already be aware of activities and beliefs that can strengthen stress
management and resilience. Silly little expressions, like "Look on the bright
side,” “Every cloud has a silver lining,” “Don't worry, be happy,” and even “Fake
it till you make it” embody the cognitive tools required for resilience. Many
spiritual teachings as well are affirmed by the findings of positive psychology
research (a 21st century field) and have actual neurophysiological
manifestations. The more you learn about the science behind them, the more
confidence you can have that they will work for you.
Exercise,
of course, is widely recommended for managing stress and related conditions
like anxiety and depression. But did you know that exercise is the fastest
method for neurogenesis (brain neuron growth) of your human mission control
center, the prefrontal cortex (PFC)? When you turn on the relaxation response, you
are moving mission control from the threat/stress brain area (your amygdala) to
the PFC, allowing you access to better planning, reasoning, emotional control
and other higher executive functions, as well as to learning, memories,
creativity, hope, love and all positive emotions. A thicker PFC and a less
engaged amygdala correlate with greater resilience for bouncing back from
life’s challenges, for creating value from whatever comes your way.
Other important
stress-deactivating activities you can choose from include yoga, taichi, meditation,
mindfulness practices, even prayer. Or weaving, or weight-lifting! In all
cases, you just need to apply the basic components for evoking the body's
relaxation response while engaged in the activity. It is a mind-body
engagement, not a wandering mind opportunity. Maintain a single, nonthinking focus
combined with a non-judging attitude, and return to that focus when your
mind wanders without beating yourself up about it. Focus, return to focus,
return to focus.
Elisabeth Carter Ed.M., MFA, completed the training to provide SMART at the Benson Henry Institute in 2015. For
information about her Metro-West (Boston) based program, visit www.managemystress.net
or her blog at ECarterEdM.blogspot.com.
