The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - How to Tame Stress

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Dr Laurie is stressed, and it's harming her health. Constant worry and stress is bad for our bodies and our minds, but how can we break the cycle and relax? It turns out scientists have learned a lot from one of America's most stressed-out communities - caregivers.   Hollywood star Steve Guttenberg talks about the toughest chapter of his life - caring for his dying dad - and Dr Elissa Epel explains why some caregivers suffer badly from stress, while others seem to find ways to live with the awful situation they find themselves in daily.   And we find out how stress can be tamed and turned to our advantage with David Yeager. Further reading: David Yeager - 10 to 25. The Science of Motivating Young People: A Groundbreaking Approach to Leading the Next Generation And Making Your Own Life Easier Steve Guttenberg - Time to Thank: Caregiving for My Hero. Dr Elissa Epel - The Stress Prescription: Seven Days to More Joy and Ease. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. blood work. Most of my test results came back fine, except one. My CRP levels were kind of high, but I didn't actually know what CRP levels were, so I turned to Google. Turns out high CRP levels are a sign of bodily inflammation, which can increase the risk of chronic health conditions like kidney disease, cancer, dementia, and premature death. I'm no medical doctor, but that did not sound good. I returned to the clinic to go over the results. So this inflammation thing, I asked, what's causing it? Inflammation, my doctor replied, can be lots of things, but it's usually a sign that your immune system is on the defense. But we often see levels like these when patients are experiencing a period of intense stress.

Have you been going through any stress lately? I fidgeted. Well, I said, then launched into all the stuff on my plate. I talked about how I'd cared for over 500 students during a pandemic while also running a lab, while also making a podcast. I admitted I hadn't been exercising or eating well and that I was feeling totally overwhelmed. My doctor,

a fan of the show, gave a smirk. So the famous happiness expert has been all stressed out, huh? Yeah, yeah, I guess she has been. And apparently, it's making her ill. Stress is a normal bodily response. It can be triggered by external factors like major life changes, relationship troubles, financial worries, and troubles at work, but also by internal things like self-criticism, unrealistic expectations, and being too busy all the time. Stress is just the body's natural response to a perceived threat. But as I know well, that response doesn't feel good. It can make us anxious, sad, and irritable. But it also hurts us physically, causing headaches and insomnia and digestive problems. And if we leave stress unchecked,

it can badly damage our bodies and our immune systems. Stress is a happiness challenge that I and so many others face on a daily basis. But is there anything we can do about it? For my own sake, I really hope so. but is there anything we can do about it? For my own sake, I really hope so. Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy, but what if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us,

leading us away from what will really make us happy? The good news is that understanding the science of the mind can point us all back in the right direction. You're listening to The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos. At around the time I was thinking about my own struggle with stress, a new book landed on my desk. There seemed to be an odd mismatch between the author and the subject matter. But after reading it, I realized there was a lot I could learn from his experience. Hey, Steve. Hi, I'm in the car because for some reason all the traffic lights on St. Boulevard are out. When scientists study stress, they often turn to one particular group of very stressed out people, caregivers. And there's no shortage of such research subjects.

Around 30% of U.S. adults provide some form of care, to say a child with special needs, a sick partner, or even an aging parent. It's a round-the-clock job that's often really brutal. Thanks so much for taking the time. Of course. The person I wanted to talk to had a hectic life before he took on the tough role of a caretaker. And he's still rushing around L.A. from meeting to meeting today. Traffic allowing, of course. Do you want to talk now? Do

you want to wait till you get back to your place? What's better? Let's start right now because I have another appointment, but I'm thrilled to talk to you. But not as thrilled as I was. You see, I'm not just a fan of Steve's book, Time to Thank, Caregiving for My Hero. I'm also a fan of Steve's acting. Steve Guttenberg is the star of some of my favorite 80s movies, Three Men and a Baby, Cocoon, and Short Circuit. Number five is alive. And Steve attributes much of his amazing career success to his father. He was my hero. My dad was really a very tough guy. He was a U.S. Army Airborne Ranger, one of the first Jewish ones. And then my dad became a New York City policeman, and he actually went to the New York City Police Academy.

So when I auditioned for Police Academy, the movie, he said, why don't you wear my Police Academy shirt? And I said, yeah, that would be great. The director asked about Steve's shirt and seemed impressed by the actor's attention to detail. After all, Steve was reading for character Kerry Mahoney, who was also the son of a police officer. It was a great start, but the audition went terribly. I called my dad and I said, Dad, you know, I wore your shirt, but I don't think I got this thing, you know. Nobody laughed, nobody clapped, nothing. He said,

well, you never know. Just give it a little time. My dad was a really positive thinker. He just said, it'll all work out. Take your time with it. About 10 minutes later, my agent called, and I said, oh, I feel lousy. I did terrible. He goes, no, you got it. I said, what?

And that was the phone call that changed my life. And I think that my dad's lucky shirt really helped me. So Steve was going to star in Police Academy. What could possibly go wrong? Actually, my manager saw Police Academy. He said, this is going to be the worst movie ever. I'm going to put you in a TV series tomorrow. Steve landed a role in a spy series made by Blake Edwards.

He's a great director, directing Breakfast at Tiffany's and all the Pink Panthers. Steve's dad was incredibly supportive of his new role and wanted to join his son on set. But that might have also had something to do with Blake Edwards' famous wife. My dad wanted to come out because he thought maybe he'd get to meet Julie Andrews. Stanley Guttenberg's set visit coincided with a short delay in shooting.

Steve's character was supposed to jump off a 30-foot roof, and Steve didn't want to do the stunt himself. And my dad was looking up there and said to Blake Edwards, you know, I could do that. And the director, Blake Edwards, said, yeah, but you don't want to do it, do you? And he said, yeah, I'll do it. I'm an airborne ranger.

I've jumped from airplanes from thousands of feet. Stanley made the jump, and as he was finishing up the stunt, it became clear that he wasn't the only visitor on the lot. All of a sudden, this Rolls Royce pulls up, and out of it comes Julie Andrews. And my dad looks down there and says, Julie Andrews, Julie Andrews. And Julie Andrews looked up and I guess asked who that was. He said, hello, Mr. Gutenberg. And he said, oh my God, I've been wanting to meet you. She goes, well, here I am.

So Steve's dad got to play the hero and meet his movie idol. Steve's dad was a caring, positive guy, who also took great joy in his powerful physique. But age and infirmity pay little respect to such things. Stanley was diagnosed with kidney failure, Look how thin my thighs are. And I would say, Dad, but you're still tough, Dad. You're still tough. Stanley was diagnosed with kidney failure, a disease that immediately reversed the Gutenberg family roles. Steve, along with his sister, were now cast as caregivers,

with all the stress that entails. And I was a reluctant caregiver because I didn't want to see my dad like that. As many of us know, being a caregiver is very challenging. Dr. Alyssa Epple is one of many scientists studying stress in caregivers. It's a job that doesn't end 24-7. And that's because we care so much. We're so connected to another's well-being. We feel responsible for it. And that doesn't end. Alyssa is a professor at UCSF and the author of The Stress Prescription, Seven Days to More Joy and Ease. She explained that caregivers, like so many of us, are often harmed by the very biological reaction that's supposed to help us.

Our stress response is the only reason we're all here, the only reason our ancestors have survived. Thanks to those ancestors, we've inherited a unique biological control center, the autonomic nervous system, which allows our brains to switch instantly from normal processes like breathing or digesting food to the high-energy fight-or-flight activities we need for emergencies, like sprinting away from a tiger or punching an attacker. Whenever our brains perceive a threat, this fight-or-flight system kicks into high gear. We breathe quicker, our hearts pump faster, our pupils dilate,

and our brains release energy-rich glucose into the blood. This response allows us to react faster, see better, and summon the muscle power required to flee or tackle an oncoming threat. Neuroscientists like to think of this fight-or-flight response kind of like jamming your foot on a gas pedal. And if the brain decides a particular threat isn't going away, it will keep that response pressed to the metal. That's when we launch a hormone cyclone. Our adrenal glands release substances like cortisol, which keep our energy up and our muscles at the ready, at least until the threat passes. And that's when our brains finally hit the glands release substances like cortisol, which keep our energy up and our muscles at the ready,

at least until the threat passes. And that's when our brains finally hit the brakes. We relax our muscles, and our bodies switch back to running the normal rest and digest processes we need for everyday life. The problem is, the modern world leaves our fight-or-flight mode switched on way longer than it should, which means our digestive, sexual, and sleep functioning gets all screwed up. We up our risk for high blood pressure and headaches. We spend our days feeling irritable and anxious. Our body's really living in a chronically aroused state that we don't even notice anymore.

All this would be bad enough if we only freaked out about our actual daily stressors. But... Part of the problem with our stress today is that we keep it alive with our thoughts because things aren't always happening, but they can be in our mind if we take them with us and we ruminate about what's happened or we are worrying about what might happen next. And we're all challenged by that to some extent, and especially right now, because things are more unstable than they used to be. We live in an unstable climate, in an unstable political world, and then we still have our daily drama that we need to cope with as well. It's a lot.

And, as I have definitely experienced in my own life, we usually react to these daily mental dramas in ways that make things even worse. For so many of us, it really is about rushing, about creating a schedule that has no spaciousness in it, that has no time for breaks. And it doesn't match our values usually. We don't have time for people. We don't have time for health or eating healthy meals. We no longer want to eat normal food. We want to eat highly palatable food, high sugar food, high fat food, and for some of us, high salt food. And we call this comfort food because it is biologically comforting to the body and brain. Ah, comfort food. I could honestly spend a whole episode in this series

talking about this happiness challenge. When my Yale students disappeared during lockdown, I comforted myself with whatever sugary food looked good. I wound up putting on the so-called COVID-19 pounds and then some. But Alyssa says this wasn't a willpower failure. It was just my basic biology at work. Take one experiment in which researchers stressed out a bunch of rats and then gave them access not just to their usual meals, but also to human junk food like cookies and candy. The rats switched over to the fatty stuff, but they also changed their approach to feeding time. The addition of stress on top of giving rats access to Oreos creates this craving and addiction in

these rats. So each time they get access to the Oreos, they're not just eating leisurely and saying, what a fine meal. This feels great. They're binge eating. They will eat more and they'll develop greater intra-abdominal fat. And that is just a little disease-making machine to have a lot of intra-abdominal fat means that we're just a little disease-making machine to have a lot of intra-abdominal fat means that we're also having a lot of lipids in our blood and insulin resistance. So stress plus comfort food means we're becoming more apple-shaped in our body. But chronic stress doesn't just change the size of our midsections. As my own heightened CRP markers show, it can also affect our immune systems.

Our immune cells have receptors for cortisol, but when we're chronically stressed and cortisol gets too high, then the immune cells are not turning off inflammation in response to cortisol, and those cells are more pro-inflammatory during stress. Chronic stress results in exactly the same inflammation profile that I presented with at my doctor's visit, what researchers are referring to as inflammaging. Chronic stress also damages our DNA. It destroys the part of our chromosomes that we need for cell division, what are known as telomeres. Telomeres are these caps at the tips of our chromosomes and they protect our genes, so they have this incredibly important role in the cell. Telomeres are basically these sentinels,

or these guards, and when there's too much stress in the cell, the telomeres tend to shorten quickly and more excessively. Telomeres work like the plastic tip at the top of our shoelaces, excessively. Telomeres work like the plastic tip at the top of our shoelaces, which the internet tells me is actually called an aglet. Did not know that. In any case, if you've ever had a shoelace lose its aglet, you know what happens next. The lace starts to fray and fall apart. Telomeres at the top of a DNA strand work the same way. When they get messed up, our DNA winds up frayed and broken. And once they get too short, they start sending out distress signals saying, this cell is no longer good. We've got to call it quits. Time for this cell to become senescent. Dying senescent cells, higher abdominal fat levels, longstanding anxiety, irritability, inflammation, and an increased risk for premature death.

Apparently, this is where all my self-imposed pressures over the last few years have gotten me. At this point in my conversation with Alyssa, things were starting to sound kind of hopeless. But Alyssa assured me that chronic stress doesn't have to be a cellular death sentence. In fact, her newest research has shown that healthier stress responses are possible,

even in a population that experiences some of the hardest possible stressors. We've learned more about chronic stress from these caregiving studies than other types of stressors. But what lessons can we learn from the painful experience of stressed-out caregivers? We'll find out when the Happiness Lab returns from the break. When you are a caregiver, you have a responsibility to be more than a human being.

You just do. When his father Stanley became ill, movie star Steve Guttenberg was forced to trade the glamour of Hollywood for the hard job of a long-term caretaker. You have to be superhuman. Because it takes a superhuman to clean somebody up when they go to the bathroom, when they throw up, when they have a seizure,

when they have bouts of true darkness. You have to be more than an average human being. Steve and his sister joined the 34 million other Americans offering unpaid care to an older person in need. I would call them angels. Super angels. Muscular, strong, super-powered angels. Because when you're looking at somebody at two in the morning, and they have to go to the bathroom, and you have to pick them up out of bed, and they can't make it to the regular bathroom and you have to put them on a commode and you have to give them their privacy and their dignity at the same time being there to help them. You're not a human being. You're way above a human being. Because the average human being walks out of the room.

Can't do it. Cannot do it. Now, I'm not going to tell you that I didn't have my moments of gagging and dry-giving because some of it was really hard to watch. And I feel my metal coming up in me when I'm talking about this. Because you have to be made of metal to deal with this. The range of daily challenges that carers face is immense.

Medical bills, dealing with hospitals and insurance companies, negotiating time off work. And that doesn't include the heartbreaking pain of watching once-healthy loved ones deteriorate. The reason I wrote the book is caregiving is a really lonely occupation. You're basically sitting in the room with that one person who's very ill and you're looking at them constantly monitoring their health and seeing what you can do for them. And at the same time, you're trying to figure out your own life and what you're doing with it and what you can do for them. And at the same time, you're trying to figure out your own life and what you're doing with it

and what you have to give up to be part of this process. The problems caregivers contend with can last day after day after day. And as Dr. Alyssa Epple explained earlier, such sustained stress can be really bad for our bodies. Alyssa likes to point to one caregiver study in particular. Showing that their wounds heal almost 10 days longer than low-stress, age-matched, older controls. And that really is about the chronic stress response, the excess of exposure to cortisol. It wouldn't be surprising if Steve Guttenberg's cortisol levels

were through the roof during his time as a caregiver. Steve was living in L.A. when his father was diagnosed with renal failure. So taking care of him meant regular drives to his father's house in Arizona. So an 800-mile round trip every week. And I started listening to podcasts or music, but quickly I stopped and

just started thinking. So what I would think about was when my dad was younger and my dad was really fit and young and healthy and enthusiastic. Sitting behind the wheel for long hours isn't ideal, but ruminating about his father's physical decline during those long drives was bound to trigger even more stress. My dad was in such pain, physical pain, mental pain. He did not want to die. Steve says his father's final years were the most depressing period of his entire life. And Steve's not alone. It's estimated that half of caregivers have major depression, a rate that's twice as high as the general population. Even more shockingly, 12% of dementia caregivers die before their sick loved one. One study estimated that a caregiver's mortality risk

was 63% higher than their non-caregiving peers. With stats like these, it's probably not surprising that many caregivers like Steve wind up neglecting their own self-care. It fell by the wayside. I did not exercise for so many years. I didn't sleep very well at all. There was about a month before he passed where he would be up all night and he would be screaming all night. So my self-care did go to the side. But researcher Alyssa Epple has found that not all caregivers succumb to the effects of stress. The good news is that there are ways to be with this life situation. Alyssa studied caregivers' telomeres, that part of our DNA that gets prematurely shortened

by chronic stress. She found that many of her subjects' telomeres were badly affected. They showed all the expected hallmarks of inflammation. But the telomeres of some caregivers were fine. Even though these people faced the same stresses as those with shortened telomeres, their bodies weren't affected in the same way. How is that possible? Alyssa discovered that one factor was the

narrative these caregivers created to explain the difficulties they were facing. The healthier caregivers embraced what's known as radical acceptance. I don't control outcomes. I don't control the disease course. I don't control someone else's behavior. I can control X and Y. So really separating out a situation to understand there is a little bit that we can control. We can control our response and we can do things to show compassion, to be with someone with a loving presence, spend our time with them, showing that we care. There are ways that we can be our best self in these uncontrollable situations that allow us to not be in this chronically stressed state of striving, of hitting a brick wall. If you're a caregiver, you might be saying,

well, that's easier said than done. Radical acceptance was definitely something Steve Guttenberg struggled with. I was reluctant to accept the reality of the situation. I just couldn't accept it. I wouldn't accept it. Everyone else knew my dad was dying. I knew it, but wouldn't accept it. So I never talked about it. I always said he's going to get better. He's going to come through this, even at the very end. Alyssa shared one strategy we can use to bring a healthier narrative to times of stress. We can try out what's known as expressive writing. Take time to journal about all the crap on your plate

and how it makes you feel. I suggest just starting off with a massive list without any editing or censoring, just writing down everything that you feel bothered by, worried by, pressured by, and then thinking about your day. You know, what stresses you out most during the day? We often don't give ourselves the opportunity

to step back and reflect on the level of burden that we're carrying. The act of putting all your stresses down on paper can also reveal all the things you're doing that inadvertently add to your stress levels. We're very routine animals. You know, we get into this, I'll call it a daily stress routine, and we can break that routine. We can see where we're creating unnecessary stress. You can then take stock of all the neglected stuff you can control about your situation. Practices like sleep or food or time with friends. You can also take some time to count your blessings.

Gratitude, it turns out, is a powerful tool for tackling stress. Fortunately, this was a practice that did come naturally for caregiver Steve Guttenberg. His dad was a gratitude role model. Oh yeah, my dad was grateful for anything. Dad would get a cup of coffee and go, ah, hot coffee. My dad taught me, you know, Stephen, enjoy your life.

Enjoy your life. Be happy. That's it. Just be happy. Everything else will come. Steve called his book A Time to Thank because in spite of his father's difficult illness, he still managed to remember all the many ways

in which he was fortunate. Thank God I have a job that I could stop and just sit there with my dad all the time. How lucky I was that I didn't have to be in some office hearing about my dad on the telephone. Steve hated seeing Stanley's physical decline, but the time Steve spent with his dad in those final months allowed him to remember the debt of gratitude he owed the old man. I think gratitude is a verb. I think like love is a verb. You know, my dad used to say to me, you can either love someone or you can love someone and show up.

You know, that's gratitude. That's gratitude. That's the deep part of gratitude. Research shows that strategies like gratitude and radical acceptance can protect us from the negative effects of chronic stress. But as I read through Alyssa's work, I learned one additional way to handle stress that sounded kind of odd. It turns out we can fight stress by sounded kind of odd. It turns out we can fight stress by looking for new chances to get stressed out. This is the insight behind what affective scientists call hermetic stress. Hermetic stress is absolutely fascinating because

it's so counterintuitive. We know very well from fly studies that organisms like a little shock of moderate repeated stress. And in fact, it's strengthening. It's like a vaccination. So it really is building up biological resistance. It's exercise for our nervous system. What you're looking to create is a short episode of stress, something that will get your heart racing and blood pumping, but also an episode that you can stop so you can train your autonomic nervous system to create is a short episode of stress, something that will get your heart racing and blood pumping, but also an episode that you can stop so you can train your autonomic nervous system to go back into recovery mode. And it doesn't have to involve finding true fight-or-flight danger. Hermetic stress can be way easier than that. The best example, of course, is exercise. We know exercise is good for our health, but we haven't thought about the fact that short bursts of exercise are creating that positive hormetic stress response.

One study found that caretakers who were asked to exercise three to five times a week showed less shortened telomeres than those who didn't move their bodies. The blast of stress that comes from exercise seems to slow down and possibly even reverse the effects of inflammation. Exercise was another strategy that came easily to the Gutenberg family. When Steve's great-grandfather first came to the U.S., his physical fitness came in handy. What he would do for extra money is he would go down to the Brooklyn Bridge and do feats of strength. He would carry people on his back. He would carry huge weights. And at the end, he had a Shetland pony, and he would pick up this little Shetland pony and walk around with it. Steve's grandfather was a powerlifter, who then passed on the gym bug to his son, Stanley.

My dad started lifting weights when he was 12 years old. My dad was a handstand king. My dad could do a handstand for about four hours straight. As a skinny teen, Steve turned to his dad for exercise tips. Under Stanley's tutelage, Steve was able to put on 50 pounds of muscle. I'm building a mean lean monster, his dad had announced proudly. But like many stressed out folks, Steve let his usual exercise routine slide at exactly the time he needed it most. As Steve explained just how infrequently he hit the gym during his time as a caretaker, I felt a bit called out.

I mean, I rarely make my yoga classes or hit the elliptical when I'm feeling frantic. But ironically, a jolt of hermetic stress was probably the perfect remedy for the strain I was under. But giving our bodies additional bursts of stress to fight stress isn't even the most surprising way we can protect ourselves from chronic overwhelm. We also need to train our brains to think differently about stress. I'll explain more when the Happiness Lab returns after the break. When someone says they're feeling stressed, we usually assume that they're having a bad time. My own periods of stress are accompanied by yucky feelings like irritability, interrupted sleep, digestive issues,

and a sort of forehead clenching. Feeling stressed sucks, and I usually just wish that I could avoid it. Your heart is racing, your palms are sweaty, you have butterflies in your stomach. So of course, in that circumstance, it feels like self-evident that stress is bad, right? This is UT Austin psychologist David Yeager. Your stress could be viewed in a debilitating way, that it's a sign your body is preparing for damage and defeat. Who wants damage and defeat? Seems like we're all agreed then. Stress sucks. But, David says, that's not the whole story. There are lots of times when we face a stressor and we're thrilled and excited. And that energy allows us to show what we know.

I mean, if you talk to great athletes, right, they talk about performing at the level of your preparation. And one of the ways they do that is they kind of get in a zone in their heads and they're like amped up before a performance. Right. And so in those cases, that's a much better situation to be in than to have no stress at all, where you're like about to fall asleep. David is an expert on the power of mindsets, the beliefs we have about things like our abilities, and how our brains respond to challenges. David's work has shown that how we think about things has a huge impact on how we behave. His early research focused on what's known as the growth mindset, the belief that our abilities and talents can improve over time, if we're willing to put in some work and practice. But these days, David has started thinking about a different type of mindset, the beliefs we have about the effects of stress. If we think about stress as terrible, we may behave in ways that lead us to suffer.

But if we greet stress as a potential friend, could it improve our lives? Researchers have begun conducting some elegant laboratory experiments to test this possibility. But David's favorite illustration of the importance of our stress mindset occurred when he was on vacation with his daughter, Scarlett. We went water skiing in Wisconsin, and she'd never skied before. She's a fourth or fifth grader, and she's sitting there bobbing in the lake, and I'm holding the back of her skis, and she says, daddy, I'm so nervous. I have butterflies on my stomach. I don't think I can do this. And I was like, well, Scarlett, you know, that, that stress and that energy, that's just getting oxygenated blood to your muscles and your brain. And those, those

muscles with that oxygenated blood are going to like be stronger. You can hold onto the rope a little more. And once you do that, you're going to pop up and just have the most fun of your life. It's going to be thrilling. And what I was doing was just giving her a different way of appraising or making meaning out of that bodily experience. She's like, okay.

And she got right up, and I just stayed there bobbing in the water for, I don't know, 20 minutes while she just did laps around this lake in Wisconsin. Just as Scarlett initially interpreted her stress response as a signal that she shouldn't try water for, I don't know, 20 minutes while she just did laps around this lake in Wisconsin. Just as Scarlett initially interpreted her stress response as a signal that she shouldn't try water skiing, David says that many of us greet the early signs of stress the wrong way. In general, in society, people tend to have a stress is debilitating mindset. You see that if you just Google image search stress and well-being memes, they all take this assumption that stress is always bad and should be avoided, right? It's like depleting you. It is something that you need to suppress.

Most people are convinced there's only one way to look at stress, which is that it's always bad. And when they do that, it spirals on itself and it becomes self-confirming for them. But we know from just basic science of stress in both animals and humans that the stress response is simply there to keep us alive, to overcome and meet the demands that are imposed on us. And so there's a different kind of mindset or belief you could have about stress, which is the stress can be enhancing mindset. Stanford psychologist Alia Crum was the first to show the harmful effects of the wrong stress mindset. She found that people who expected stress to be debilitating experienced more anxiety and lower happiness ratings than people who thought stress to be debilitating experienced more anxiety and lower happiness ratings

than people who thought stress was enhancing. The people she studied who believed that stress was good for them also showed more optimism, better performance at work, and even better physical health. Crum's work showed it's not our stress that seems to be hurting us, it's how we think about it. Which got David wondering, could people shift from one stress mindset to the other?

Just as he did with Scarlet at the Lake, could David encourage people to reframe how they saw stress? Could you just tell people what their physiology means one way or the other, and could that change their performance when they're in a stressful situation? David and a colleague, Jeremy Jameson, recruited college students planning to take the GRE exam and presented them with a practice version of the test. Everyone was reminded that it's normal for people to feel stressed out before an exam, but half of participants were given a list of reasons why their stress response might improve their performance. You know, the body's releasing catecholamines, and those catecholamines are going to enhance performance, and the reason your heart is pumping so much is because it's getting more blood to your brain and to your muscles. It's

going to help you perform better. The results were striking. Students who reappraised their stress response as beneficial showed way better scores than those in the control condition. On some parts of the exam, their scores were more than 100 points higher. But the interesting thing is that a month later, students went and took the real GRE and brought their scores back, and they did much better. The difference is like the difference between getting into a mid-tier top 50 graduate program or a top five graduate program. But GRE exams are acute stressors. David wanted to know whether the same mindset shift could also reduce the chronic stress that dogs people like me day after day. So he turned to a group of high school

students from low-income backgrounds. And these are almost exclusively Black or Latino students stress that dogs people like me day after day. So he turned to a group of high school students from low-income backgrounds. And these are almost exclusively Black or Latino students whose parents had not gone to college. And we explicitly wanted to choose this situation because we know kids experience lots of stressors. They might experience racial discrimination, prejudice, but also for kids whose parents are experiencing poverty, food insecurity, things like that. So could a little mindset shift have an impact in that kind of population? David's students watched a 30-minute video that explained both the importance of a growth mindset and why stress can have beneficial effects on performance.

Would this be enough to change how they greeted stress? Would the video help students react better to the annoying challenges of everyday life? So over the course of the annoying challenges of everyday life? So over the course of the first semester of high school, kids completed daily diary surveys three times a day, provided cortisol samples several times per day. And what we find is that on days in which kids say, yeah, this is a really stressful day, like I'm feeling judged and evaluated by my teachers, I'm feeling left out by my friends, kids were saying, I can handle this. I'm feeling good about myself. I feel positive. So it's by definition, stress resilience. And then what we see also is just lower cortisol levels almost across the board. And that's significant because the body produces cortisol in part when the mind expects damaged tissue. And so if you are expecting

defeat, then you see increase in cortisol. But if you're expecting to do well, to take on the challenge, then you should see less cortisol. And that's what we see over the rest of the semester. This is an amazing finding. By merely thinking of stress not as a prelude to damage and defeat, but as something helpful and useful, you can prevent your body from chronically releasing the very substances that cause the inflammation effects usually experienced by stressed out people like me. That is really cool. But there is a trick to getting the benefits of the right stress mindset.

You need to practice long-term. You need to carry over that positive mindset from one situation to the next. So if you train yourself to appreciate exam stress, you need to return to that same positive mindset when your car breaks down, or when you lose your wallet, or when you face a tough meeting at work. Again, David's daughter Scarlett is there to show us the way. Remember the mindset pep talk David gave Scarlett before she went water skiing? Fast forward two years later, and she's getting in the car on the

way to a cello audition. She's like, Daddy, I'm so nervous. Like, I don't know if I can do well in this. I was like, Scarlett, you know what I'm going to say? She's like, yeah, you're going to say that the butterflies in my stomach are there just to pump, you know, good energy through my body and give me adrenaline and oxygen, et cetera, et cetera. I was like, how did you know that? She's like, oh, you told it to me two years ago, whenever it was king. And so what I love about that is, first of all, it's proof that at least once in my life, my kids listen to me, which is not always happening. But second of all, she's transferring some appraisal about her stress to a totally different situation years later. And I think about that a lot with our interventions. We're often giving you a different mindset right before you need it. And there's some

stressful situation, and then you kind of see that it works for you. And then you carry that new mindset with you and apply it to new situations. And I knew that from my research, but I'd never seen that firsthand until the Scarlet situation happened. Making this episode has made me realize that I'm way too negative about stress. I can remember lots of times in my own life when small bursts of stress have felt good. That rush I get before a big talk or that push I experienced during a tough yoga session. The adrenaline I experience in those moments doesn't feel stressful or debilitating. It feels exciting. A reaction that's going to help me perform better. I need to harness that and

apply it across other situations in life. Our daily stressors probably aren't going away anytime soon. But that doesn't mean we're stuck experiencing the negative health and happiness effects of chronic stress. We can examine our feelings and create a narrative that lets us accept the things we're not able to control, while at the same time trying to control the stuff that will help us improve our lives. All those self-care essentials like sleep, exercise, diet, and social interaction. And like Steve Guttenberg, we can work to greet tough times with gratitude and seize the opportunity to notice the blessings in life. With strategies like these, I'm hopeful that my inflammation markers

will be a bit lower at my next annual checkup and that my doctor will have fewer opportunities to mock me for not practicing what I preach. But there are still plenty of other happiness challenges that I still mess up. So join me next time as I learn some new strategies for being nicer to my future self. Ones that involve a trip down memory lane and through a time machine. I realize my skin would look so bad. That's really disturbing. All that next week on the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.