A Lawyer’s Guide to Physical, Mental, Emotional and Spiritual Wellness: Staying Physically, Mentally, Emotionally and Spiritually Healthy!
Using Stress to Your Advantage
Eva Selhub, MD
Eva Selhub, MD; Guiding you to the best version of you through my 6 pillars of health” Learn more at ; Author of, Your Health Destiny, The Love Response and Your Brain on Nature; Adjunct Scientist in the Neuroscience Laboratory at the Jean; Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Center on Aging at Tufts University (HNRCA); Corporate Wellness Consultant, Innovation and Resiliency Coach, and Stress & Mind-Body Medicine Specialist;
Former Instructor in Medicine Harvard Medical School and Associate in Medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital
Summary
You can be successful at your work, have meaningful relationships and take better care of yourself, all the while, using stress to motivate you and also warn you when you need to go and when you need to stop. You have the power to make choices that will support you to function at your best at all times, enabling you to be truly resilient.
Always keep in mind that resilient leaders have the ability to think clearly and find solutions to complex situations even under duress. They are able to maintain adaptability and flexibility in the midst of change, stay open to support and learning, cultivate optimism, have the dedication to personal renewal, and ultimately, thrive in the face of adversity.
You can be this resilient leader by knowing the difference between adaptive coping and maladaptive coping, the importance of developing awareness, having a quiet mind, a meditation practice, healthy behaviors and attitudes and the ability to know when to stop and when to keep going.
What is stress?
Stress is part of life. You can’t get around it. If you did manage to get around it, you would likely be dead.
You actually need stress to live.
Without stress, you would not get up in the morning, get to work on time, put food on the table, or shift positions when you are uncomfortable.
Feeling hunger—that’s a stress. Feeling cold—another stress. Worried about meeting a deadline, stress. From changes in the weather, traumatizing world news, looming deadlines, pollution, blood pressure changes, feelings of fatigue, inflammation, sleep deprivation, ingested toxins or processed foods, or emotional upset, stress comes in many forms. The list is endless. To the brain, anything that challenges the body’s steady state or homeostasis qualifies as a stress.
And this is a good thing. Because without stress, no action would be taken and you would be dead. You wouldn’t be alerted to eat when hungry or to put on something warm when cold, run when being chased by a bear, or motivated to do much of anything.
When stress is present, the brain will activate the stress response as well as a whole host of actions that will kick the body into action to solve the problem so that the system can get back into its state of stability. The process of achieving stability through change or adaptation, a course of action that every living organism lives by to survive, is called, allostasis. It is the reason we procreate, innovate, run marathons or climb mountains. When something within us wants for a change, we are driven to make it happen. That drive comes from the stress response.
The Stress Response
The stress response is a physiological response that invariably enables individuals to get out of bed in the morning, fight infections, maintain blood pressure, survive traumas and meet nutritional needs, and allow energy to be expended in response to a wide range of signals to heal wounds so that we can adapt to an ever-changing environment and survive.
Walter Cannon, a Harvard physiologist, coined the term “fight or flight” in the 1930’s to describe our inborn defense response to threat or danger that ultimately ensures survival.1 When faced with danger, we are catapulted into action by stress hormones like adrenalin and cortisol, as our senses become hyper-alert, pupils dilate, peripheral vision is blocked, muscles tense, heart rate rises, breathing rate increases and becomes more shallow to economize on oxygen consumption, and the digestive system shuts down so that all energy is focused towards fighting like mad or running like the wind. The liver releases stored sugar into the blood stream while blood flow is diverted to the brain, heart, large muscles and lungs. With a built-in turn off switch, the stress response will eventually extinguish itself once the threat is gone.
Hans Selye, in the 1950’s, expanded on Cannon’s work and explained that you do not have to be chased by a raging animal for the fight or flight response to be triggered and that this heightened reaction occurs regardless of whether the challenge at hand is life-threatening or not.2 You could be late for work, preparing for public speaking, or worried about your mortgage getting paid. And each time stress is perceived, whether real or imagined, the stress response is evoked, offsetting the myriad of physiological reactions.
The real problem with stress
If the stress response is left unchecked, all the physiological responses that were activated that are meant to be beneficial in the short-term, become harmful as they rage on. Heightened blood pressure can turn into heart disease, muscle tension, into fibromyalgia, negative mood into depression and heightened inflammation to a wide variety of immune disorders. In other words, stress itself is not necessarily always the problem, but rather, the hyper-activation of the stress response that prevents the system from resuming homeostatic stability.
Whether it is a result of the stress itself (highly traumatic or chronic), a genetic predisposition to an over-active stress response, or how an individual perceives themselves and their resources, the result is taxation on the system, which can eventually lead to physical, mental, emotional or psychological pathology.
The point here is that stress itself is not always or necessarily bad. It is the perception, real or imagined, that stress isn’t manageable that leads to an over-activation of the stress response, a burdening on the mind-body system, and pathological outcomes—physical, psychological or emotional.
The key to resilience: Managing stress
The key then to a resilient mind-body system is to manage stress more often than not. Though this task might sound impossible as many stressors are out of our control, it is often not actually necessary to actually manage a particular stress, but to believe that you can if you need to, both consciously and unconsciously.
The more an individual believes in their own abilities and resources, the more likely they are to perceive stress as manageable, resulting in less worry, more confidence, and positive expectation, which translate into a shorter-lived stress response and a more resilient mind and body.
The glitch here is that you have to be aware that the body is actually under stress and doing something about it to uphold this belief, at least sub- or unconsciously. If you are not taking care of your body, for instance, the body will not have the tools or resources to handle challenges.
For instance, normally, if your body experiences a drop in blood sugar, you eat and the problem is solved. You have coped adaptively. But let’s take another scenario. This time, you are anxious or worried about something. To soothe your nerves you eat, even though the body is not actually in need of more fuel. By eating, the sensation of feeling anxious is temporarily resolved, but the problem you are actually worried about isn’t resolved. Additionally, you have likely added stress to your system but putting in energy when it is not needed so now it has to be put into your fat stores. If you are like most other Americans, you have also chosen to comfort yourself with “comfort” foods, containing high fructose corn syrup or trans-fats, which add to the stress by enhancing inflammation and putting toxins in the body, wreaking havoc on the gut-brain connection, heightening anxiety, worsening your mood, causing stomach irritability or headaches. The heightened stress response and resultant stress hormones then shut your mind down, destroy your memory and slow down your cognitive processing and ability for higher reasoning. Though you have enabled yourself to cope temporarily by eating, you have actually harmed yourself, in the long run, known as maladaptive coping.
Through discomfort of one kind or another — physical, mental, emotional or psychological — the body lets you know that there is an underlying problem it would like you to address. If you listen close enough, you will understand what your body or brain is trying to tell you and make better choices. The better choices you make, the more both the mind and body develop a surety the future stress will be manageable, as you learn to use stress as a signal for change rather than letting it get the best of you.
Here’s an example: You have a big case coming up which entails a lot of research and late nights. You have little time to exercise, sleep or eat healthy, though somewhere in the recesses of your mind, you know that you could probably allow some time for self-care, but choose to repress the knowledge. You are being driven by deadlines and something that you deem far more important. Unfortunately, it is that time of the year that the flu is traveling through the office. You notice that you feel more fatigued and a bit achy, but you chalk it up to your hectic schedule. You drink more coffee, grab a bagel loaded with cream cheese to boost your energy and keep going. Next thing you know, the minute the case is done, you find yourself unable to get out of bed with a raging fever, cold sweats, chills, and a deep cough. You feel like you are dying. You aren’t dying. You have the flu and you have little to no immune system right now to fight it. Whether you want to be in bed or not, you are stuck there for the duration of the illness.
Could you have avoided getting so sick? The answer is most likely, yes. By ignoring the body’s whispers, the stress happening in your body went unchecked, leaving your immune system weaker and less capable of fighting off the flu virus as it passed through the office. Better sleep, nutrition, and self-care would either have warded off the virus completely or at least kept it at bay so that it didn’t completely knock you out.
Old habits die-hard
Though adaptive coping is enticing, it is not easily done as most of us are wired to automatically fall back to old coping patterns that have been working for us since childhood, especially when negative emotions or beliefs are triggered. Trying to stop a bad habit that helps you cope is sometimes like trying to stop a shiver when it’s cold outside because the stress response is being driven by memory.
Emotions and emotional memory are directly connected to physiological responses, both positive and negative. When faced with challenges, the brain searches its memory bank for details to see how such challenges have been handled previously, what resources were used, and what the outcome may have been. It will match the current emotion to the data bank of emotional memories, igniting the associated assumptions, beliefs, behaviors, physiological reactions, and physical behaviors.
The result is that situations that arise today can trigger a positive or negative physiological response and subsequent belief and behavior, based on a passed memory. For instance, perhaps a colleague is disrespecting you or not taking your advice. If in your past you were often criticized and put down, this type of situation may trigger you to get extremely upset and angry, more so than someone else might, whereby your rational brain is bypassed and your subsequent actions are harmful to others or your yourself (i.e. you drink alcohol to calm your nerves). But since this is what you have always done to relieve your stress, it is challenging to behave differently, even though it is maladaptive.
Let’s take another scenario, common to your profession. Part of your job as an attorney is to be able to see clearly and to objectively predict and plan for likely consequences based on advantages and disadvantages of taking various courses of action. When you have no emotional stake in the outcome, attaining this objectivity is more possible. The same is true when you are well rested, fed, and feel calm, yet alert. But what if you are sleep deprived, coming down with the flu and having problems at home with your spouse? Feeling a tremendous amount of stress, is objective decision making as possible, not to mention being completely thorough in your work? How beneficial are you now for your client?
Stopping the cycle and using stress to your advantage
Always remember that the environment is constantly changing and so are you. This means you have the ability to influence any change in a positive or a negative direction by the choices you make. You have the power to transform your mind and improve the functioning of your body if you choose.
As attorneys, you will invariably experience negative emotions, be stressed by time or need to search for information that is yet unavailable, and by decisions that are hard to make. You will also be stressed by life, by lack of self-care habits, relationship issues and so forth. You could choose to employ these six action steps and master your ability to use stress, rather than let it use you.
1. Pause, breathe, listen
So you feel stressed. You are tired. You are trying to find information that will help your case but keep reaching a dead end. You feel frustrated and like a headache is coming on. What to do?
This is when and where you want to learn to quiet your mind and your stress response. You may wish to take a moment and ask yourself these questions (rather than pushing forward with your task at hand): Why am I anxious? Why am I tired? What is my body really telling me?
Then simply breathe in and out slowly while witnessing your body’s signals and your thoughts without judgment. Witnessing your physiology involves listening and observing your body and how it speaks to you. You observe with an open mind without judgment. Nothing is good or bad; nothing is right or wrong. Witnessing has its roots in the Buddhist meditation practice called mindfulness, which is now a widespread secular practice. Mindfulness involves being in a moment-by-moment awareness of your thoughts, sensations, and feelings, as well as of the surrounding environment and has the added benefit of turning down the stress response, which then improves your mood, ability to cope more effectively as well as cope.3
How to do it:
Stop. Take a pause. Take a deep breath in, counting to four, and let the breath out, counting from four down to zero for five cycles of breath. Allow your thoughts and tension to be released with your breath. As you quiet down, ask your body what it needs. Observe and listen. Keep focusing on the in and out of your breath, continuing to count. Release the thoughts from your mind and the tension from your body. Listen and observe.
2. Redirect the focus to positive expectation
Once you have taken this pause, you can begin to recognize the negative stance you are in, what the cause might be and that you need to take a time out to take care of yourself a bit more. At this point, you can also recognize that you have the ability to gain more balance simply by choosing to redirect your focus away from your task or negative thoughts and towards a memory or thought that is light, joyful or loving.
It is possible to disassociate from negative emotions and beliefs from unhappy memories, reprogram the brain with positive emotions and expectations of trust. Positive perception is directly correlated to inner surety or trust in success or manageability of a particular endeavor or challenge. This positivity, according to current research, confers better health in mind and body.4
How to do it:
Take a pause, breathe, listen and then redirect your focus to something that will activate your brain’s positive expectation centers (reward centers). You can focus on your favorite place in nature, someone you love, something funny, or any situation that elicits the feeling of awe or love. Focus on this image as well as your feelings of appreciation for having this experience or person in your life for at least 10 cycles of breath. For the best results to reduce stress response reactivity overall and over time, aim to extend this practice to twenty minutes a day.
3. Move your body
The term “survival of the fittest” means your ancestors had to be fit to survive. Not only did the strongest and fastest person get to the food first, but research also tells us that regular exercise not only helps your cardiovascular functioning and reduction of stress response activity.5
How to do it:
It doesn’t matter what kind of exercise you do, as long as you do it. I personally recommend alternating days of vigorous exercise (can’t hold a conversation), with days of moderate exercise (holding a conversation), with active rest days (strolling with the dog, or someone else’s dog).
4. Food is your fuel
It is important to keep in mind that food is not your enemy, nor is it your savior when you are anxious. Rather, food is fuel, your source of energy, not your source of inflammation. If you were to slow down and eat mindfully or take the time to listen to how your body reacts to different foods, you might discover that certain foods leave you feeling more achy, tired or irritable, even though in the short-term, they enable you to feel better as your cravings are tempered. Indeed, studies now show that sugar intake, particularly in the form of glucose, is likely more of a risk factor for developing high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease that high salt intake.6
How to do it:
Choose food that is grown naturally in your environment. Choose grass-fed foods. If it doesn’t grow in the earth or natural bodies of water, don’t eat it regularly. How do you feel, not only immediately after eating your food, but the next day? Aim for an 80/20 healthy eating plan (20% of the not-so-good stuff, if you can tolerate it and you still really want it).
5. Make time for rest and recovery
We live in a society that encourages us to push ourselves, go faster, work harder, sleep less. Even high-level athletes know that their best performance happens when they take the time to allow their body to rest and recover. Even modest sleep deprivation of one or two hours negatively affects your physiology, especially stress physiology.7
How to do it:
You may wish to ask yourself why you might be tired, if you are. Are you rested when you awaken in the morning? Examine your food intake. Examine the stimulants you may be taking (caffeine, sugar, etc.). Examine the quality of your sleep—how comfortable is your bed? Do you have physical pain disturbing your sleep? When does your energy dive during the day? When do you lose your focus? Perhaps this is a time to take regular naps or practice a 10 to 20 minute mediation.
6. Play has a pay-off
I am sure you have heard of the saying “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” According to how the stress response works, if stress accumulates without periods of rest, recovery and fun, your mind does dull down. Play, socialization, or finding ways to ignite your creative nature, all enable stress response reduction and can empower your sense of well-being. Several studies, for example, have reported that social support facilitates coping, improves psychological and physical health.8
How to do it:
Think about who or what ignites your fire; get’s you excited or passionate? Who or what causes you to feel like you belong to something bigger, greater? Who or what supports your to feel and act at your best? Whatever and whomever this may be, choose it and do it.
Jack’s turn-around
One of my clients came to me to help him with rising anxiety, insomnia, headaches and ultimately, marital problems. As one of the partners in his firm, he told me, he had to keep up appearances and worked hard at hiding his symptoms and never spoke about his flailing marriage. It was all taking a toll on his health, life and productivity. He could not find the motivation to work as hard and bring in the clients. He was worried the other partners were going to pull him aside or ask him to resign. He was worried he was going to lose his wife. His worry was affecting everything.
After to listening to Jack’s worries as well as hearing about his childhood and young adult history, we started working on Jack’s abilities to control the stress response through breathing and meditation techniques. He took out sugar, dairy, processed foods, most grains, and alcohol for three weeks (and reduced caffeine), to clear the body out of stimulants that may be worsening symptoms of anxiety, headaches and sleep deprivation. He added in exercise three to four times a week of a thirty minute brisk walk outside and we worked on ways to improve his sleep hygiene and calm the mind with meditation prior to sleep.
Within this three week period, Jack started feeling better, so much so, that he found his headaches were gone, sleep improved, and anxiety reduced. As we continued forward, I had Jack expand his meditation practice to include connecting with feelings of compassion and love, which helped his anxiety even more. At work, he was instructed to take breaks every hour, for a minute to five minutes, to breathe deeply, practice mindfulness, or do a meditation. Over the next three months, Jack continued to see positive changes not only with his health and mood, but his perspective on life, work and his marriage, and found himself better communicating with his wife.
I am happy to say that one year later, Jack was back to be a high earning partner and had renewed his vows with his wife.
Use stress so it doesn’t use you
You see, it is possible to have it all. You can be successful at your work, have meaningful relationships and take better care of yourself, all the while, using stress to motivate you and also warn you when you need to go and when you need to stop. You have the power to make choices that will support you to function at your best at all times, enabling you to be truly resilient.
Always keep in mind that resilient leaders have the ability to think clearly and find solutions to complex situations even under duress. They are able to maintain adaptability and flexibility in the midst of change, stay open to support and learning, cultivate optimism, have dedication to person renewal, and ultimately, thrive in the face of adversity.
You can be this resilient leader by knowing the difference between adaptive coping and maladaptive coping, the importance of developing awareness, having a quiet mind, a meditation practice, healthy behaviors and attitudes and the ability to know when to stop and when to keep going.
References:
1. a. Cannon, Walter. Wisdom of the Body. United States: W.W. Norton & Company,
b. Cannon, Walter. Bodily changes in pain, hunger, fear, and rage. New York: , 1929.
2. Selye, Hans. Science, October 1955, 122: 625–631.Fadel, Z., Johnson, SK., Diamon, BJ., Zhanna, D., Goolkasian, P. Mindfulness meditation improves cognition: Evidence of brief mental training. Consciousness and Cognition, June 2010, 19(2): 597-605.
3. Fadel, Z., Johnson, SK., Diamon, BJ., Zhanna, D., Goolkasian, P. Mindfulness meditation improves cognition: Evidence of brief mental training. Consciousness and Cognition, June 2010, 19(2): 597-605.
4. , , . Optimism and physical health: a meta-analytic review, Annals of Behavioral Medicine, June, 2009, 37(3): 239-56.
5. Warburton, DER., Nicol, CW., Bredin, SSD. Health benefits of physical activity: the evidence. Canadian Medical Association Journal, March 2006, 174(6): 801-9.
6. DiNocolantonio, JJ, Lucan, SC. The wrong white crystal: not salt but sugar as aetiological in hypertension and cardiometabolic disease. Open Heart, November 2014, 3;1(1):e000167.
7. Irwin, MR., Wang, M., Campomayor, CO., Collado-Hidalgo, A., Cole, S. Sleep deprivation and activation of morning levels of cellular and genomic markers of inflammation. Archives of Internal Medicine, September 2006, 166(16): 1756-62.
8. Uchino, BN. Social support and health: a review of physiological processes potentially underlying links to disease outcomes. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, August 2006, 29(4): 377-87.