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Key points
- It is almost impossible to go through life without stress.
- After a stressful event, talking about what happened can be helpful.
- Distraction can also help by breaking the replaying of the event in one’s mind.
It seemed like a scenario from a sitcom. I brought my car in to the service department for its annual state inspection. "Wait in our waiting room," I was told. "It won’t take more than 30 minutes." Some of those 30 minutes were spent browsing through a magazine filled with articles on how to relieve stress. The stories were accompanied by elaborate advertisements for supplements, probiotics, amino acids, and parts of plants that supposedly induce calmness, resilience, and adaptability during times of stress.
No car or service representative appeared after more than 45 minutes to tell me my car was ready. The reason, I learned after finding my service representative, was that "my car was lost." No one knew what floor of the large service department it was on and no one knew whether or not it had been inspected. The service representative was very upset and told me he was about to quit. It was the third time that day a car had been lost. And my own stress levels rose when after another 30 minutes had passed, I was told that the car was located, but had not been given its state inspection.
As the service representative and I tried to resolve the problem, I wondered whether this would have been the time to find the nearest health food store to get a product guaranteed to decrease stress. I could share it with the service representative and perhaps he wouldn’t quit his job. But finding the car and eventually getting my inspection sticker seemed a simpler solution to decrease my stress.
The type of stress I experienced was acute and like any acute stress, its cause was unpredictable, uncontrollable (think being in a plane during a thunderstorm), and intense. But unlike chronic stress, the cause was likely to be resolved or minimized (the car was found, the plane flew away from the lightning) within hours or a day or so. Dealing with a source of stress that has no immediate resolution is different because like chronic pain, it may become harder to bear the longer it lasts. However, the advertisements and articles about how an endless number of products can decrease stress do not differentiate between how they can help endure an acute stressful situation or one that goes on and on. And none of the articles or advertisements talked about how to handle the emotions when the adrenaline begins to recede, because the acutely stressful period is over.
A friend whose mother is in her early stages of dementia is often but unpredictably acutely stressed when her mother disappears. "I go through these periods of enormous anxiety," she said, "but fortunately they are short-lived because I have so many tracking devices on her. But when I find her and bring her home, I feel a sort of secondary stress, sort of a ‘what if’ I hadn’t found her? And then I have to do something to calm down.” When I asked her whether she used any supplements or amino acids or probiotics, she laughed and said she did what her English grandmother used to do when stressed. "I drink a cup of tea with lots of sugar and munch on a few cookies."
Her remedy for bringing her stress levels down to manageable levels is not only simple, it is natural. Unlike the stress-relief products available commercially, many of which are extracts of berries or synthetic amino acids, various minerals or vitamins, etc., sugar in the tea and sugar and starch in the cookies are natural stress-relievers. They don’t decrease the stress directly. Rather, their consumption sets in motion a physiological process that ends up increasing the production of serotonin. And the increase in serotonin soothes and calms the emotional turbulence left by the stressful situation.
Most advice-givers on how to deal with acute or chronic stress agree that talking about it helps. The so-called venting usually elicits sympathy, understanding, and compassion. Sometimes even laughter results when some aspects of the stressful situation seem so absurd or strange. My story about my lost car elicited disbelief at first and then laughter. Most of us had lost cars in parking lots, but no one had a car lost in a service department.
Distraction also helps by breaking the often repetitive replaying of the event in one’s mind. It is often hard not to visualize and even describe the ambulance ride, the frightening plane trip, or the lost relative over and over again. Doing something that requires complete attention may help stop focusing on the stressful event. The brain-teaser games that can be played on a cellphone or figuring out a complicated knitting pattern may be sufficient to halt the stress scenario from being repeated in your head.
Writing down the details of the event is another way of diminishing its emotional impact after it is over. Your computer or paper document now holds all the information and you can feel free to let it go.
Exercise, especially doing something vigorous, may release the tension and even the anger seemingly held in your muscles. This is particularly useful if a stressful event includes you being the recipient of a potentially harmful event like a car accident and your body is holding onto the tension you felt. If you have the opportunity and time, taking a strenuous exercise class that demands your attention (as well as exertion) will decrease your stress. Swimming is a good alternative, as it works out your body but because you are in the water, without any danger from high-impact exercise.
Unless one lives in a bubble resembling the Garden of Eden (before the snake), it is almost impossible to go through life without stress. But laughter, carbohydrates, and exercise may go a long way to help your emotional state return to normal after it is over.
