Notes on Kelly McGonigal's The Upside of Stress
Kelly McGonigal’s The Upside of Stress argues that changing how you think about stress can transform its effect on you.
The book rests on two ideas from the study of mindsets:
Mindsets affect our physiological response and the resulting outcomes
Mindsets can be changed (with relatively light interventions)
While this sounds suspiciously close to New Age magic, apparently there’s good evidence for it. McGonigal cites a convincing combination of both short term and long term studies across different contexts. And the basic idea seems to pop up throughout psychology in enough forms and studies that I assume it’s not entirely wrong. Carol Dweck’s research on how student outcomes can be taught to shift from a fixed to a growth mindset comes to mind.
But what about all those studies on the toxic effects of stress?
McGonigal says those are caused by some types of stress responses, but not all. The classic fight or flight are not the only way we respond to stress.
A challenge response (think flow state) by contrast is a beneficial balance of hormones (more DHEA = good) that helps with focus in the short term and brain growth in the long term.
A response of increased care for others is another variation that’s also beneficial. This idea makes a lot of sense to me intuitively: we’re always capable of more than we think when it’s for someone else (eg parents doing extraordinary things for their children or people helping each other in disasters)
In lab studies a short mindset intervention where participants are told that stress can be enhancing resulted in a huge increase in the markers of challenge response vs the control group.
McGonigal then shows that this effect isn’t just a short-term placebo but in fact persists over time. In several examples, people who received a mindset intervention were tested again months later. Despite most not remembering the intervention at all, they still showed significant increases in beneficial hormone responses versus the control. It also seems to work just as well in people with clinical anxiety.
But McGonigal says the more you actively engage with the changing your mindset towards stress, the more effective you will be. So this summary is my way of telling my body don’t fight, don’t flight, but challenge! (My partner has banned further talk on the subject).
Even if it’s not totally true, there’s no obvious downside.