Stress and Stressing
My heart is rent by the war in Israel, and my prayers are particularly with those with loved ones in the Middle East.
But I don’t have any words of wisdom to share. So in fear of just saying something that might end up sounding trite, and recognizing that there’s been so much palpable tension in the air—even before the most recent tragedies—that I thought I’d go over some of the impacts of stress, so you can recognize it, be a bit more patient with others and perhaps yourself.
Hope this helps.
Stress’s Impact on the Mind
Some degree of tension—stress—is necessary to really do your best. No stress will likely lead you to underperform, just too much stress also has adverse effects.
In high-performance situations, attention is the most important decider of outcomes: Are you paying attention to the right thing at the right time?
But stress narrows your attention, and I mean this literally and figuratively. Stress changes visuospatial ability. Imagine you hear a loud sound from some distance away. You probably jerk your head towards the sound, then you dart your eyes back and forth trying to see where the sound came from, trying to figure out what it was.
Under stress, we don’t take in a scene thoughtfully. We just scan it for anything that seems to be a threat. But because we’re looking hither-and-thither we don’t really make sense of what we’re looking at.
In a very similar way, stress impacts decision-making: You scan through the options, trying to figure out how to respond. But you do so in a nonsystematic way. Then, you lock onto an answer that pops out at you, before you’ve even gone through all of the alternatives. You feel time pressure in that you have to make that decision now. (And if you are under a time constraint, the time you have feels shorter than what is really available to you.) And you may miss the most obvious, and best, solution, because you’re so distracted by all the stressors.
One of my all-time favorite study findings: In a study where pilots were taking a simulator test needed to renew their licenses, the simulator was set for an engine failure and general chaos in the cockpit. Stressed pilots were so distracted by the alarm bells blaring, their heads kept spinning to look at all the emergency lights, that they forgot to look out the window so they could figure out how to land the plane.
Quick Shots
When the Mars Orbiter reached the planet and was set to go into the planetary orbiting pattern, it was instantly lost. An investigation concluded that the reason was that one of its contractors was using the metric system for its calculations and another was using English measures, and no one bothered to tell each other.
In one study of a military population, 54% said they had trouble thinking during periods of high stress, 29% said they blanked out, and 15% said they froze and couldn’t act.
Stress is a social contagion.
When others face a risk, we consider the riskiness of the action. We do a cost-benefit analysis and calculate the likelihood of success. When we face a risk, we consider the people who are already taking the risk.
People who are chronically stressed experience more stressful events each day, and it adds up to their experiencing about one month more of stressful days a year, compared to someone who isn’t chronically stressed.
Stress’s Impact on Communication and Teamwork
These perceptual changes also have parallels in teamwork and collaboration. When stressed, we lose the ability for perspective-taking. (Again, this is both literally and figuratively.) We stop paying as much attention to our teammates. We stop checking in to ask how they are doing. We’re less sensitive to cues we normally would catch. (We miss our own warning signs, too.)
Because our perspective taking is off, so, too, is our communication. Believing they have access to the same information that we do, we may share the (distracting) details that catch our attention. But we don’t share information that we alone have, because we assume everyone has access to that information. When they don’t.
And here is the most trickiest part of this. The quantity of communication doesn’t really change. It’s just the quality of our content that declines. So the recipients of information may not even be aware of the degradation of the information’s value.
In Your Sight: Stress Management Tips
There’s more to dealing with stress than just reducing stress or taking up yoga.
Be open to new techniques. In a study run this summer of FAA air traffic controller trainees, 90% had thought they’d mastered the stress-management material they’d learned but they only learned about 40% of it. They chose a couple things they did and promptly forgot the rest. But studies show that the mentally tough have a repertoire of stress techniques, but they keep adding new ones to it.
Stress Inoculation Theory: Expose yourself to small stressors to build up your resistance over time (like a vaccine exposure to a virus).
Exercise. Experiencing physical stress results in a metabolic process that is largely the same as the process that results from psychological stress, so physical exercise can help build up tolerance against both forms of stress.
Think of stress is a diagnostic tool, not the diagnosis: Think of stress as a symptom that something needs to be addressed, rather than as a diagnosis. When you’re getting distressed, ask what is the issue and if there is anything you need to do to change the situation.
Don’t avoid it. For example, rather than distracting yourself until the last minute before something that you know will be a stressor (e.g., a big game, presentation), start thinking things through sooner. Move back what you consider the start time to be when you need to be ready to go (or earlier, not the actual event, so you have time to address problems along the way.
Believe that stress is a good sign. It means you’re excited and engaged. Focus on that, rather than a sense of nerves or dread.