Channelling Your Inner Zebra
April is stress awareness month and we wanted to take a minute to call importance to mental health. We all experience stress which is an inevitable part of life, but did you know not all stress is bad? Eustress is known as the “beneficial stress,” for example the motivation to help us be productive and feel worthwhile- such as the satisfaction we feel after solving a problem or meeting an important deadline. Distress, however, is the more commonly experienced “bad stress” that can impact us in harmful ways. There are many studies cataloging the negative impacts stress can have on our physical health as well, from increased risk of cardiovascular, metabolic and even neurodegenerative diseases. The issue of course is not how we eliminate stress, as we know this to be an impossible task, but how in fact we cope with the predominant stressors in our lives. To quote the cognitive-behavioral psychoanalyst Dr. Mike Gropper, “choosing to manage stress before it manages you” is the best approach. He uses the example of animals in the wild; “One of my favorite health books is Robert Sapolsky’s Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers (Henry Holt and Company, New York third edition 2004). Since zebras have to flee from lions on a regular basis, they have a lot of stress. But after the crisis is over, they go back to grazing calmly as usual. People, on the other hand, spend too much of their downtime worrying about the lions in their lives.”*
The adverse sequelae of stress can of course come from the offending agent or person or event, but oftentimes it’s our perpetual “stewing” over the stressor that really increases our health risks in the long run. Stress management is not one size fits all but there are numerous outlets you can use to help cope with both acute and chronic stress in your life. I like to mix it up when choosing how best to decompress; in a physical sense I enjoy twice weekly hot yoga for improvement not only in strength, flexibilty and posture, but for the mental solitude and peace it provides me. Sometimes I need the opposite and a drive blaring 90s hip hop classics does the trick. Practicing gratitude is also immensely helpful in not only reducing stress but gaining perspective; as belittling as it may sound, there is always someone who has it much worse than you and it’s important to remain humble and grateful for life’s many blessings, especially on the harder days. No matter how you like to shake off stress, make sure you check in on your mental health this month and show yourself some love.
*Source The American Institute of Stress
