Buddying up to stress

Confession: I write this column on the last day of our monthly magazine deadline-sometimes literally the day before we send the issue to the printer. Nothing like that looming cutoff to clarify your thought process.

This particular deadline has gone fairly smoothly, but last month was a different story. With some issues we editors fight it out at every step-the text and images don't fall together the way they should, and problems and changes seem to crop up endlessly, forcing us to redo work we'd thought was completed.

I imagine you have similar challenges in veterinary practice with difficult days and weeks or cases that just don't go the way they should. (Obviously with pets' lives sometimes in the balance, your stress takes on a whole different level of significance!)

Still, stress is stress, and after a particularly rough deadline I'm usually wasted and useless for several days afterward. The brain doesn't fire; conversation is sluggish; the body doesn't want to move. This time around, however, was different. Here's what happened.

On one of those final days of deadline (our print deadline is five business days leading up to the printer date), I had a meeting with my fellow channel directors in which we watched a TED Talk by psychology researcher Kelly McGonigal, PhD, titled “How to Make Stress Your Friend.” In the video, McGonigal explains how stress has been linked with dozens of health problems over the years: heart disease, obesity, chronic pain and so on.

However, what researchers have come to realize recently, according to McGonigal, is that these effects show up primarily in those who think of stress as a negative thing. Those who experience high amounts of stress but don't necessarily think it's ruining their lives have clear, wide arteries, low blood pressure and trim midsections.

The upshot? If you view stress as your friend rather than the enemy, it doesn't destroy your body-in fact, it gives you the energy and mental clarity to conquer the challenges in your life.

Well that was all very interesting, I thought, but I had to get back to work-deadline was calling! I plowed through the rest of the issue by the sweat of my (and my team's) brow, got it sent to the printer and waited for the post-deadline hangover/coma to hit.

But you know what? It never did! I sailed right into the next phase of work and life with nary a moan. It was actually kind of spooky.

I had to wonder if merely receiving some new information about stress-even without consciously embracing or acting on it-had caused my body to respond differently to the stress I was experiencing.

So I'm just throwing it out there: Watch the TED Talk and see if you don't react differently to your next crisis.