Summary of How to make stress your friend | Kelly McGonigal – TED Talk
At the beginning of her talk, Kelly highlights that she believed that stress makes people sick and increases the risk of every bad thing that people go through, which made her provide professional services aimed at helping people avoid being stressed for over ten years. However, she changed her perception of stress after going through a study that assessed how stress affected various people. The study looked at the difference in the lives of people who believed that stress was harmful and those who perceived stress as a normal thing. According to the study, Kelly notes that people who believe that stress is harmful for their heath died prematurely compared to people who did not perceive death as a harmful thing. People who did not have a negative perception of stress during the study had the lowest risk of dying from stress-related causes. The findings suggest that people who perceive death as harmful always die prematurely than those without such a perception.
In her presentation, Kelly explains the biological changes that happen to an individual when they are stressed. Specifically, she highlights some of the biological changes that happen, including the fast pounding of the heart, the fast breathing rate, and the constriction of blood vessels as the heart tries to pump blood faster as a response mechanism for the body. She also highlights how the body generates oxytocin when an individual is stressed up, making them more social by developing the urge to share their predicaments.
Kelly believes that the perception that individuals have towards stress determines their coping mechanisms. She also believes that making people better at stress by changing their perception is better and always led to healthier interventions. She believes that thinking positively changes how the body responds to stress and highlights the importance of sharing stressful conditions with those close as an intervention mechanism. Stress makes people social through oxytocin. By sharing and caring, stressed individuals always create resilience and become better at dealing with their situations.
