Why stress can be good for you

Halloween's final ghost is scarcely thrust back into the closet before Canadian women brace themselves for that annual workshop in stress management, otherwise known as the Festive Season. A popular Christmas carol bids merry gentlemen to rest and be undismayed. But there is nothing, anywhere, in any Christmas lore that suggests what women should do other than sharpen their survival claws on memories of past Christmas disasters and deploy their financial, culinary, social and artistic resources in a grimly determined bid to make this a "real Christmas." After all, everyone knows that a woman's job description includes a commitment to ensure that harmony, satisfaction and goodwill envelop loved ones, hangers-on and even mere acquaintances.

A recipe for total stress out? No kidding! And totally bad for you, right? Not necessarily. In fact, what we know as stress can be a very positive force in your life, providing you understand what it is and how to make it work for you.Stress is a modern concept
We hear so much about stress these days that most people are amazed to discover it is a relatively recent phenomenon, first described by Montreal researcher Dr. Hans Selye in 1950. It is generally defined as your mental, physical and emotional response to demands that seem to exceed your personal and social resources.

Stress itself is not necessarily good or bad. It becomes either good or bad depending on the way you react to it. If it overwhelms and depresses you, it is harmful and destructive. But if you can manage to change your attitude toward stress, you will be able to use it to enrich your life.

The first step in learning to make stress work for you is to acknowledge that stressors -- recognized and unrecognized -- surround you and are part of your daily life. The second is to demystify stress by understanding how it works and why it affects you. Step three happens when you change those attitudes so that stress stimulates and excites you, which leads to better mental, physical and psychological health.

1. You can't escape stress
It's a given that daily stress is unavoidable. We're stuck with it, which is a good thing because without stress, which lets us know of the need to eat and work and keep relationships going, most of us wouldn't bother to get out of bed each morning.

You'll probably recognize the following stressors. Missing a bus, losing an important list, forgetting the essential ingredient in a recipe. How do these minor disasters make you feel? Your blood pressure goes up and your heart starts hammering. But the same physical symptoms can be caused by many other experiences: cheering for the home team, hoping for a win; getting asked out to dinner; mastering a new exercise routine; getting an unexpected phone call from an old friend. Are these stressors? Oh, yes! They, too, cause a rise in blood pressure and make our hearts beat faster. The difference is in the emotional experience. Minor disasters become bad stressors when you allow them to make you feel frustrated, irritable and angry with yourself. Pleasurable anticipation and a sense of satisfaction are good stressors and cause you to feel joy and excitement.

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2. Bad stress vs. good stress
Why do you feel so different when you are excited and happy versus being excited and frightened and unhappy? It has to do with the chemicals your body produces. Bad stress stimulates an overload of adrenaline, which makes you anxious and fearful, keying you up for the fight or flight reaction essential to survival in times of danger. When you experience good stress, you produce a chemical cocktail of endorphins, serotonin and dopamine, which do great things for the way you feel.

Athletes who have achieved their goals describe this as "runner's high" -- and they love it! It is this sense of excitement and achievement that drives us to push ourselves to do a job well, to work hard so that we get good marks at school, to grow a beautiful garden or to master a musical instrument. None of it is easy, but we accept the stress of these endeavours because of the great way we feel, not just when we achieve our goals but also in planning and working at them. After all, we know there is no gain without pain -- and this mantra is at the heart of accepting and embracing good stress.3. Change your perception
Can you deliberately influence the way you interpret bad stressors? Yes. Almost all reactions to daily events are mediated through the cerebral cortex, the thinking part of the brain. You can change your perception and interpretation of irritating events so you influence the output of brain chemicals, thus moving your emotional response from fear and anger to cheerful acceptance, or even amusement. In addition, you may gain a sense of something learned to be put to future good use.

(The exception is a true fight-or-flight response in the face of life-threatening danger that effectively hijacks the brain so your response becomes purely instinctual. There is no thought involved, thank goodness.)

See our chart: Stress: Don't escape it; embrace it!

Harking back to the stress-laden onslaught of Christmas festivities, how, faced with that annual frenetic madness, can you transform your attitude so that stress becomes a stimulus and an inspiration? You have choices.

Jenny always dreaded Christmas because she felt that if everything wasn't perfect, the festive season would be a failure. Last year, disaster struck. The freezer broke down while she and her husband were away, and all her carefully prepared food was ruined. In despair, she started phoning to cancel their neighbourhood party.

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"Cancel!" her friend Angie yelped, horrified. "Not likely! I have a new dress to wear. Make it a potluck -- I'll do a dessert!"

Within hours the party was reconfigured, and to her amazement, Jenny realized she was actually looking forward to it. This felt so good that, with candles flickering and carols playing in the background, she phoned her extended family and organized a Christmas Day feast with everyone contributing. This year she is again looking forward to Christmas dinner, another potluck, focusing her energy on all the small creative touches she never felt she had time to do.

Instead of dwelling on the labour necessary to produce a family dinner, Jenny shifted emotional gears and allowed herself to anticipate with pleasure how much fun everyone would have and how fabulous she'd feel when her really great dessert got rave reviews.Holiday blues begone
The same shift can solve other holiday crunches, such as the drudgery of gift shopping and wrapping. Will it be unrelieved misery, punctuated only by financial panic and sore feet? Could be. On the other hand, you can, even at the last minute, make a commitment to savour the pleasure of choosing or creating special gifts for those you love. Make time for a cappuccino or meet a friend for lunch. And nothing beats the pleasure of wrapping by candlelight with glorious Christmas music in the background. This is when we experience that wonderful sense of inner joy otherwise known as the Christmas spirit.

By becoming your own stress manager (reconfiguring stress into a positive force) you'll learn to welcome challenges and look forward to developing new skills. You'll improve your physical health by strengthening your immune system. You will find it easier to nurture your spirituality, making kindly and confident connections with yourself and others.

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