Stressaholic

5 Steps to Transform Your Relationship with Stress

Heidi Hanna

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781118766026
• eBook ISBN: 9781118841358
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Small Business
• Index: Business

A guidebook for the journey from exhaustion to enlightenment

Chronic multitasking and ever-increasing demands on our time and energy have caused a neurochemically-based dependence on sources of stress and stimulation to provide fuel for our chaotic lifestyles. While this may boost performance in the short-term, studies have consistently shown that when stress hormones are elevated over time they create the worst form of internal wear and tear; decreasing productivity, wasting time, and even killing brain cells. As a result, modern society is tired and wired, suffering from physical exhaustion while mentally amped up, and unable to get adequate rest.

Stress in and of itself is not bad, and is actually utilized for growth when balanced with adequate recovery. The solution to stress addiction is to build in and prioritize optimal rest and relaxation on a holistic level—body, mind, and spirit—in order to consistently recharge and create a more resilient operating system.

Stressaholic shows you how to win the war on stress without limiting progress by creating an optimal performance pulse of stress and recovery for life.

• Explains the impact of chronic stress on the human operating system; body, mind, and spirit
• Shows how a simple shift in mindset can dramatically alter physiological responses to stress
• Reveals simple techniques for altering daily stress patterns to improve natural rhythms, creating a personalized performance pulse

With easy to implement tips and real-world examples of people and organizations that have turned stress into sustainable drive, Stressaholic will guide you on your journey from exhaustion to enlightenment!

I

Understanding Stress Addiction

Worry is like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere.

—Erma Bombeck

1

Are You a Stress Addict?

If you're reading this book, chances are (1) you recognize you're a stress addict; (2) you have a concerned friend, family member, or colleague who thinks you're a stress addict; or (3) you are in denial.

Because the experience of stress is different for each individual, it's hard to know for sure whether you have an unhealthy dependence on stress. The following few questions may help you figure it out:

• Do you thrive on tight deadlines?
• Do you often leave things until the last minute?
• Do you have a difficult time doing nothing?
• Does it take you a few days off to feel like you're on vacation?
• Do you spend much of your vacation time thinking about work?
• Do you constantly worry about what you might be missing?
• Do you feel stressed when you're disconnected from your cell phone or computer?
• Do you find it difficult to turn your brain off at night to sleep?
• Do you feel as though there is never enough time to get things done?
• Do you ever feel as though the work you put in for the day is not enough?
• Do you lack time to see your friends or participate in hobbies you used to enjoy?
• Do you feel as though you're constantly running from one thing to the next?
• Do you find yourself finishing, or wanting to finish, other people's statements?
• Do you wish I'd stop asking questions so that you can get on with the book?

Chances are, you answered “yes” to many of these questions. But who cares? We all have stress, and it's not going anywhere—so we might as well accept it, right? I once had a client tell me, “I love my stress and I don't want to manage it.” She spoke aloud the truth that so many of us are living, whether we accept it or not: We thrive on stress. It makes us feel driven to succeed, boosts our energy, and gives meaning to our life. Our conversations often seem to involve a competition of who's more stressed. “How are you?”“Stressed.”“Me too.” Then the parties go on to explain why they're so stressed, with the person who's worse off winning in our backward way of thinking. This twisted social story tells us that the busier we are, the more stressed we are, the more important we are. Take Seinfeld 's George Costanza, who made it a point to look annoyed so that his boss would assume he was doing something important.

The problem is not that you can't handle your stress. You're likely doing a fabulous job getting the things done that need to get done, meeting deadlines, and even attending a social event once in a while (especially if it's work related). But what is your experience of your life? Are you taking time to appreciate what you're working so hard to accomplish, or are you merely speeding through to tackle the next item on your to-do list?

Perhaps more important, are you aware of the long-term impact that this stress-filled life has on you? Probably not. Or maybe, like most addicts, you know the consequences of your behavior but are so hooked on it that coming down from stress feels uncomfortable. With such a busy schedule, it's easier to stay amped up than deal with the detox of letting go. Remember the advertisement “This is your brain on drugs”? It made a lasting impression. Unfortunately, it's not just drugs that can cause your brain to feel scrambled. Unmanaged stress might be just as dangerous.

Stress (and drugs) have been shown to have the following side effects: increased heart rate and blood pressure, increased blood sugar, breakdown of muscle tissue, decreased digestive functioning, ulcers, blood clotting, migraines, skin problems, premature aging, loss of brain cells, social isolation and loneliness, anxiety, panic attacks, depression, substance abuse, relationship problems, lack of focus, multitasking, and disengagement. A 20-year study by the University of London completed in the early 1990s found that unmanaged reactions to stress were a more dangerous risk factor for cancer and heart disease than either cigarette smoking or high-cholesterol foods.¹ Stress may even be as addictive as drugs. In addition to the hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline, stress releases the “feel good” chemical dopamine, which encourages repeat behaviors by activating the reward center in our brains. This may be at the heart of many addictive behaviors and substance abuse issues.

Although it may seem a bit extreme to consider stress an addictive substance, just about anything can become addictive depending on the individual who is responding. Addiction expert Stanton Peele has suggested that any habit can become excessive, compulsive, or life endangering. According to Peele, “Addiction…is not a label to be applied to specific things but to an involvement a person creates in time or space.”² It's all about the relationship that we build with our habits of behavior.

When we lose sight of our natural pulse—or worse, intentionally disrupt it to accomplish something—we trigger an adaptive response that becomes addictive. At its core, addiction is a dependence on some external or internal stimulus that causes either a feeling of pleasure or the avoidance of pain. Early-stage stress addiction usually attracts us to sources of stress to get something positive—a neurochemical satisfaction such as dopamine release, an intrinsic (internal) reward such as feeling needed, or an extrinsic (external) benefit such as money, power, or success.

As our addiction progresses, however, it becomes less about what we might get and more about avoiding loss, which brings with it an even stronger tie to our basic survival mechanisms. Instead of intentionally turning to stress-providing stimulation for positive reinforcements, we require them to avoid the pain of its absence. We shift from triggering positive dopamine to avoiding negative cortisol, from seeking importance to avoiding insignificance, and from accomplishing success to merely remaining employed. This fear-based shift moves us from what appeared to be healthy striving to merely surviving.

We can reverse this process by neurochemically rebalancing our brain, nourishing our mind and body with love and support, and establishing training behaviors or habits that strengthen our ability to resist stress's addictive nature. As we've already discovered, stress is not the problem. Depending on or accepting stress without recovery despite hazardous consequences, such as fatigue, dissatisfaction in life, loss of joy, and anxiety, is what destroys our health, energy, and engagement.

Stress is neither good nor bad; it just is. Therefore, it is not the existence of stress that causes an addictive dependence; rather, it's our individual response to the stress in our lives over time. Each person has unique experiences with stress throughout the life span; certain situations cause severe disability, while others enhance learning and facilitate growth.

A life without stress would be stressful. It would push us out of our comfort zone in the opposite direction, with a lack of stimulation for growth. Research shows that one of the highest spikes in human mortality occurs within six months of retirement. It is quite dangerous to go from being always “on” to a screeching halt. The human system is not designed to function in a state of all or nothing, yet because of our hectic environment and constant connection, people tend to be pulled back to the extremes. To operate most effectively, we need to find the balance between stress and recovery that enables us to experience challenge and growth without constantly breaking down.

As discussed in Chapter 33, peak performance in sports, business, and other competitive endeavors occurs at the pinnacle of stress, where there's just enough meaningful, focused stimulation to energize our efforts without going over the top and burning out. The challenge that most people have in finding this balance at the peak is getting pulled into increasingly stressful situations without allowing the necessary rest or recovery time. As a result, the system starts to depend on false sources of energy to push through the symptoms of fatigue until we experience an energy crisis. When that happens, even the harshest stress hormones can't get us up in the morning or through a simple task.

Understanding Stress

Attempting to come up with a universal definition of stress is a lot like trying to define love; it can mean so many different things to different people, and its true experience lies in the eyes of the beholder. The simplest and most helpful definition of stress that I've discovered comes from Hans Selye, a pioneering stress researcher who is often accredited with discovering, or at least first conceptualizing, our modern notion of stress. In 1936, Selye coined the word stress as being “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change”³ after noticing that laboratory animals who were subjected to acute physical stimuli (such as deafening noise, blaring light, or extreme temperatures) exhibited similar pathological changes, including stomach ulcers, shrinkage of lymphoid tissue, and enlargement of the adrenal glands. He later showed that persistent, chronic stress could cause these animals to develop diseases similar to those seen in humans, such as heart attacks, stroke, kidney disease, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Although the word stress quickly became associated with negative threats and responses, Selye also recognized that any definition should also include good stress, or what he called eustress. This differentiation between positive eustress and negative distress helped to categorize the initial stimulus. However, it still didn't provide a true separation in how individual responses might differ. Many people have negative stressors that cause growth and a positive outcome, while others experience significant benefit that includes positive stress—and still find themselves suffering negative consequences. As you look back on your life, you can most likely see how the periods when you experienced the most growth were also some of the most challenging. At the same time, you probably know people who despite seeming to “have it all” complain about the minor details of their existence, such as choosing cabinet colors for a new home, or even create drama when it's not there.

Perhaps this conundrum is what caused the idea of stress to revert to a one-size-fits-all concept—describing not just the stimulus but also the experience and the outcome. As one physician explains in a 1951 issue of the British Medical Journal, “Stress in addition to being itself, was also the cause of itself, and the result of itself.”⁴ Stress continues to be difficult to define because it is ultimately grounded in the perception of the individual having the experience. Circumstances such as prior life experiences, sense of control, and current level of resilience can all play a role in determining whether people simply drag themselves along through chronic, overwhelming stress or use the opportunity as a stimulus for personal growth.

We can't control what's already happened to us and are oftentimes dealing with elements beyond our control. However, the critical factor in how we respond to stress is our personal resilience, which can change our response to stress across all levels—body, mind, and spirit.

The Stress Response

Let's first look at our ingrained stress response as we work to create a simple understanding of how stress affects the human operating system. According to stress researcher Robert Sapolsky,⁵ all vertebrates respond to stressful situations by releasing hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol to mobilize energy throughout the body, particularly in those areas that allow us to fight our way out of or flee from danger, such as the large muscles in our lower body. Our evolved nature means that humans are the only species able to imagine a potential threat and respond as if it were actually happening in the moment. Regardless of whether the stress we face is real or imagined, the impact on the body and brain is identical.

As a result, physiological changes ensue: an increase in heart rate, blood flow, and available blood sugar to provide fuel for energy production. This enhanced energy metabolism is beneficial in the short term; it leads to increases in strength, improvements in short-term memory, and enhanced immune functioning.

The problem is that we engage the same response even if we are not truly in danger. Over time, the responses that were meant to protect us start to have the opposite effect, causing internal wear and tear on both the body and the brain. This parallels our internal inflammatory response, which is designed to help us repair acute damage but over time begins to attack even healthy cells, causing more harm than good.

Acute (short-term) response	Chronic (long-term) response
Increase in adrenaline	Increase in cortisol
Increase in heart rate	Continued strain on heart and arteries
Increase in blood sugar	Excess sugar stored as fat
Enhanced immune functioning	Increased inflammation
Improved short-term memory	Poor decision making

In addition to the simple but powerful hormonal shifts that occur, stress that persists over time, accumulates to toxic levels, or if not given adequate time for recovery, can speed up the development of life-threatening diseases and disorders. Although stress has not yet been shown to cause any particular illnesses, it has been correlated with all of modern society's major diseases: heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and dementia. The exact connection between chronic stress and disease is still not clear, but many studies under way may soon provide a better picture.

One new area of research seems to pinpoint the impact of chronic stress on our genetic coding and a particular part of our DNA molecule called the telomere. A simple way to think of a telomere is that it functions like the cap on the end of shoelace. Telomeres experience normal erosion during cell division, but this aging process may speed up as a result of chronic stress. As the protective coating begins to wear away, it allows the sensitive fabric underneath to become damaged and frayed. Elizabeth Blackburn and her colleagues at the University of California at San Francisco discovered that chronic stress and perception of life stress both affected three biological factors—the length of telomeres, the activity of telomerase, and levels of oxidative stress, all of which speed up the biological aging process. People undergoing the greatest perceived levels of stress were said to have a biological age that was 10 years greater than their chronological age.⁶

Exciting developments in biotechnology will soon enable us to measure both the internal damage we've experienced through unmanaged stress and the changes and improvements we're able to initiate using techniques such as those discussed in Parts 2 and 3 of this book. Until then, it's important that we pay close attention to our symptoms of imbalance, noticing when there are warning signs being sent by our body and brain, such as fatigue, irritability, anxiety, depression, changes in appetite, and illness. If we stay constantly amped up on stress hormones without taking a break from time to time, we may be able to avoid the temporary disruption of warning signs and symptoms but find ourselves running out of steam with a debilitating personal energy crisis.

Overload, Overwhelm, Over it All

Stress is both additive and accumulative, meaning that the number of stressors, the intensity of each, and the frequency and length of time each persists all combine to create the total effect on your system. This is similar to how food affects your digestive system's glucose response. You may have heard of the glycemic index; this is a score that's given t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Foreword
• Preface: Monkey Business
• Introduction: The Crash
• Part I: Understanding Stress Addiction
• Part II: Recharge Your Energy
• Part III: Reprogram Your Operating System
• Final Thoughts
• Notes
• Resources
• Index