Excerpt from Dr. Shanker’s newest book Restoring Resilience
Ours is a civilization obsessed with stress, which no doubt is the reason why Odysseus was so tempted when offered the opportunity to be free from worry if he stayed on the island of Calypso. The modern view of “toxic stress” goes back to the Victorians. As do the ideas that we need grit to withstand stress, that some are born with much less grit than others, and that stress winnows out the strong from the weak.
Here, more than anywhere in our beliefs around stress, is where we need a paradigm revolution.
We need to demystify the idea that stress is some mysterious force that wears down our body and mind. Stress is any stimulus, thought, memory, or emotion that causes us to burn energy to maintain our organs in proper working order or to protect ourselves. We have natural neurochemicals for countering the wear-and-tear of stress. When the stress is too great for these neurochemicals to keep up, we have each other. And when that is not enough, we have Self-Reg.
But the first step to any successful revolution is to fully understand what we’re overthrowing. Only then will we be able to detoxify stress. Even more important is that we will then be in a position to thrive from stress. For it is stress that drives growth: physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and prosocial. Only when the stresses we are under are counter-balanced by experiences that turn off the stress-response and we recover from the physiological strains of modern life. Only then will childhood return to being a time of innocence. Will adolescence return to being a healthy period of sturm und drang. Only then will empathy return in every aspect of our lives.
