Psychology Today
Reexamining: Strengthen Your Mind the Way You Strengthen Your Body
On January 1 of each year, millions of people tell themselves they will follow a healthier diet, exercise more to lose weight, spend more time with family and manage stress better. These are worthy goals, so why do so many fail to control their lives enough to meet these goals? Unexpected events, family and work demands and the complex world we all live in today make controlling life nearly impossible. This creates stress, and it is the lack of control over stress that often leads to an inability to control diet, exercise and our time.
What can be done? Robert Goldman, J.S., Psy.D., makes the case that engaging life by strengthening the ability to tolerate and manage stress is a better approach. Stress cannot be eliminated, he says, but we can train for it. We can improve our emotional tolerance, which leads to positive effects on the mind.
The nervous system includes over a hundred billion brain neurons that are regularly sending signals to a vast nerve network as it processes thoughts, behaviors and feelings. These signals impact your physical, mental and emotional status. Improving the nervous system to expand your ability to tolerate stress means you are better able to stay calm, thoughtful, balanced and connected, no matter what happens in your life.
The Window of Tolerance is Where Stress is Manageable
Psychiatrist Dan Siegel introduced the Window of Tolerance as the optimal zone of nervous system activity where you can think clearly, process emotions and manage life’s demands effectively. Stress pushes activation outside the zone, where we experience hyperarousal (reacting) or hypoarousal (shutting down). Most people have experienced stress that leads to an overreaction or an inability even to process information or react at all.
The good news is the Window of Tolerance is flexible. The nervous system can learn that conscious discomfort or stress is something we can manage and survive. Just like you train your muscles to accept discomfort as a positive experience, you can train your nervous system to accept stress as an opportunity to grow and thrive.
Emotional Strength Training Through Stress
Weight training involves lifting weights that stress muscles. In fact, muscles increase in size, strength and flexibility as a result of microtears that heal. Using the same idea, repeated stress or emotional challenges create neural and psychological “microtears” that we can learn to manage to stay balanced.
It is impossible to avoid stress, but many people try to avoid or ignore it. As a result, says Robert Goldman, emotional “muscles” weaken. Instead, we should accept the challenges and train to manage them. We should accept stress as a part of life and leverage challenges as a source of emotional and psychological balance. You train for emotional strength by accepting repeated challenges, then spending time reflecting on the situation and your response. Instead of lurching from one stressful situation to another, you reflect and learn.
Antifragile Minds and Stoic Hearts
Perhaps you have heard of the Stoic philosophers. Two thousand years ago, they talked and wrote about the fact that we cannot control events, only our judgments and how we respond to them. They believed that deliberately practicing discomfort makes us more tolerant of unpredictable events. We can train to control our responses to stress, in other words, and the only thing standing in the way is our own thinking.
The Stoics believed suffering was a chance to grow. Today, we call that resilience in the field of psychology. People who are mentally and emotionally resilient have expanded their Window of Tolerance through training. Resilient people can acknowledge difficult, stressful situations without overreacting and learn from the experiences. Emotions are aligned with the reality of the experience and do not lead to even more stress.
Stressors in Real Life are Real Opportunities
Today, there is no way to avoid stress completely. There are too many stressful situations in the world, from economic uncertainty to digital overload. The result is that too many of us are kept in a chronic, low-grade stress mode. Chronic stress produces an overabundance of the natural stress hormone cortisol. The consequences are a disruption of many physical systems, leading to unhealthy physical and mental changes. From weight gain and weak bones to poor sleep quality and brain fog, chronic stress is damaging in so many ways.
The goal of “stress training” is to learn to use stressful events as opportunities to build emotional capacity to manage the stress without harming the body and mind. Robert Goldman offers five ways to expand the Window of Tolerance based on research.
First, do something stoic, like not scrolling social media for a day or sitting in silence. This builds perspective and trains for endurance. Second, learn your stress signals because your body will tell you it is experiencing stress. Signals include fatigue, restlessness, difficulty concentrating, sleep disruptions, etc. Being aware helps with stress management. Third, rest in a way you find enjoyable. Practice ways to achieve balance, including mindfulness, social interactions, enjoying a hobby or doing anything that activates the parasympathetic nervous system.
Fourth, think of difficult challenges as opportunities for psychological training and resilience development. Identify the skill you can strengthen and focus on that. Fifth, find purpose by aligning actions with values, which regulate emotions.
The message is that resilience is developed through practice. Resilience means you have built emotional regulation and can cope with various situations without succumbing to debilitating stress.
Make a New Kind of Resolution
Learn to manage stress instead of giving in to it. As Robert Goldman points out, learning to manage whatever life throws our way without breaking means we are accepting the knowledge of neuroscience and the advice of the Stoics. We cannot control the world, but we can develop emotional muscles to meet it. It is physically and emotionally freeing. Bottom line: Stressful situations are opportunities to master resilience and gain courage.