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Rebecca Donatelle: Coping With Stress
interviewed by Emma Taylor on 3 April, 1996
"The body will eventually break down, if you abuse it."
Rebecca Donatelle is the author of "Access to Health," and Tripod's Guide to Managing Stress. She talked to Tripod about good stress, bad stress, and managing stress.
Listen to Rebecca Donatelle in Real Audio! If you haven't downloaded the free Real Audio 2.0 player yet, hurry on over to Progressive networks and hear what you've been missing.
Tripod: Do you think stress is a bigger problem now than it was, say five or ten years ago?
RD: I think that we're dealing with different stresses. Before, people had stresses from disease, and stresses from social ills and poor sanitation and so forth. Prior to that, they had problems with wondering if they were going to get shot by some raiding force in the wilderness, or wild animals, whatever. So it's all relative. But I think that today that the expectations are higher. I think we're more aware of what stress is, and people self-identify as being stressed, and in some cases that may exacerbate the problem!
Tripod: Are there things that can stress us out, without us realizing that they're actually causing us stress?
RD: Oh yes. I think every day. I have a doctoral student right now who's doing a dissertation on noise, looking at airport noise, and the subtle health effects of excessive exposure to high decibel noise. Traffic, that kind of thing. You become accustomed in some respect, but your body still is responding, and you don't even know it. That's just one example, but I think that there are tons of those things.
Tripod: Does stress always affect the body physically?
RD: If you're really talking about a stressor, that really is stress-producing, there usually is a physiological response of some form. The body adapts, it's remarkably adaptive, and after a period of time, it may take a little bit more stress to get a physiological response, because it's always trying to self-protect and bring things back into balance. It's a unique part of our physiology.
Tripod: What sort of effect does long-term stress have on your body?
RD: Over time, the body basically begins to become less resilient, and less able to defend itself. Actually, there are some very complex bio-chemical and physiological responses that are occurring in terms of hormone release and so forth. There are some theorists who believe that in time, the body, after it's continually reverberating with a stress response, then after a while, that reverberation tends to last longer and longer times, as the body has more and more difficulty trying to bring it back to homeostasis, or normality.
So basically, what happens is, you become less resilient, and your stress can become more and more prolonged. That's where there are some people who believe that conditions such as diabetes and other things happen, because the body can't adapt. It could be other physiological responses, as simple as a skin responses, rashes, those kind of things, to sleep disorders to anxiety problems, depression, lots of other things.
Tripod: How can you know if your stress is serious enough to seek professional help?
RD: Well, I don't know if there's a pat answer to that. I think that the key here is to become very aware of your body, to listen to your body, and to know what's normal, first of all. I think a lot of people just kind of get up in the morning, eat, sleep and do their work, and maybe have a little time for fun, but they don't really notice. They don't notice subtle changes, they don't notice when it's taking maybe a little bit longer to perform a task, or whether they might be a little more tired than usual, or find out that they get up, and they're still tired. They may not attribute that to the right things. I think people get kind of numb to their own bodies, so I think that looking for unusual symptoms, things that seem different than they might have even a month or six months ago.
Tripod: What about people who claim that they thrive on stress, that they need stress to get anything done -- is that dangerous?
RD: Well, there are a lot of different studies on that. It used to be, probably in the late seventies, a lot of the research was saying, "boy, the air traffic controllers were really stressed, and they had a lot greater propensity towards negative physiological effects." Now, what they're starting to say is that there are individual who really in fact do seem to thrive on that, and that's the hardiness principle, that Kabasa and some others brought forward a few years back.
I'd say that people thrive on excitement through a period of time, and what probably is happening among those people is that they like it, it's stimulating, it's invigorating, and if they keep everything else balanced -- and they may be doing this unconsciously -- they may still be sleeping enough, they may be having an appropriate diet, I think that they're going to be fine, as long as they do everything else. However, the body will eventually break down, if you abuse it, so it depends what it is, and how long it's prolonged, and what you do to counteract those effects. I don't think that we have infinite resources in that area, although it also is important to realize that excitement and energy can be rejuvenating in a sense.
Tripod: What's your favorite stress-relief method?
RD: Well, one of the things that I tend to like to do, is just to go for a quiet walk some place. I think that just kind of getting away, or to read, or to just go sit by a lake. There are a lot of different things. I don't think that anything has to be too fancy. I'm not into meditating, per se, or some of the very traditional eastern methods of stress reduction. I think that just finding some quiet time.
Tripod: On the stress quiz, you talk about hot reactors and cool reactors -- is there some way you can train yourself to become a cooler reactor?
RD: That's a good question. I think that the key there is to learn what stress does to you, first of all. Some people may have an acute physiological response; some others may not. There's a lot of research, I think it's in its infancy in terms of its the effects of things like bio-feedback. People have been able to do some remarkable things in terms of conscious practice, thought-monitoring and thought-mapping. They've actually been able to bring stress response back more into balance.
So there are ways of doing that. It takes some commitment, and some good investigative stuff. I also think that there are some scams out on the market, and consumers have to be particularly alert to make sure that they don't get involved with the Charlatan who's promising some quick fix for stress reduction, for making yourself more in control of your stress response. I don't think that just happens, I think it's ...
Tripod: Something you work at?
RD: Yes.
Have you seen Tripod's Guide to Managing Stress?
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