The Art of Taking It Easy - Brian King

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      Oh no, there is a freaking bear charging toward me!

      Yes, but is this situation actually threatening?

      Duh, it is a bear! It is most likely going to do some very bad things to me.

      Can I do anything about this? Well . . . That’s going to depend on a few things, such as what I know about bears, what type of bear is it, what I have in my possession, what is around me, and what kind of physical shape I am in. Let’s just say that the answer is “yes.” Yes, I believe there is something I can do to help me survive this bear attack. Then I should probably get stressed out.

      Does that surprise you? If we are facing an actual threat and we can do something about it, our stress response is there to help us out. When we are stressed, our brain and body initiate a series of physiological changes to help us take action against the threat we are facing. When the system works, stress helps increase our chances of survival or catching that flight or meeting that book deadline. Whatever the threat, our experience of stress is there to help us face the challenge.

      The problem is that more often than not, there is no bear. Remember, stress is not our reaction to threat, it is our reaction to the perception of threat. If we only felt stressed when we were truly threatened, then stress-related illnesses would be less prevalent than they currently are, and I would not be writing this book.

      Thanks to all the generations of humans that lived before us, enduring hardship and creating the modern world, we live really cushy, comfortable lives. When we leave the house, we don’t have to be wary of sudden attacks from our enemies, we don’t have to compete with other predators for food, and we are rarely, if ever, attacked by bears, or anything else for that matter. We are using a system intended to help us escape bear attacks. Instead, we moan and whine about inconveniences like traffic.

      And now for the skimmers:

       When stressed we should ask ourselves, is this an actual threat?

       If it is an actual threat, then can I do anything about it?

      Already I believe we have discussed something quite valuable: the need to assess our stressors. Engaging in a little inner dialogue may not seem like a major intervention, but it can be extremely helpful. Let me give you an example of when I had an opportunity to observe this firsthand.

      I was giving a seminar on stress, and before we went to a break I gave the audience the same advice I just shared with you. My speaking engagements are usually located in hotel conference centers and most of the time they provide coffee during the breaks. Generally, I use the break time to refill my own cup of coffee as well.

      I got into the line, with about two or three women ahead of me. Everything was going smoothly and people were moving along until the woman in front of me made it to the coffee dispenser for her turn. After waiting patiently for those in front of her, she took an empty cup, held it under the spout, and flipped the switch, but no coffee came out. Not a single drop. The woman before her must have gotten the last bit.

      I started to notice her reaction to this. Her face became flushed red, she started to shake, and appeared to be visibly upset. Then, she said out loud in a soft voice, “This is not a threat to me,” and began to calm down. Here is the thing, she did not know I was standing behind her and at this point I decided to tap her on the shoulder and let her know.

      “Finally, somebody gets it!” I said, and we waited for the coffee to be refilled.

      What Happens in Our Head During Stress?

      Earlier I discussed stress in simple terms using my usual “Bears and Traffic” hypothetical examples. I will let you in on a little secret, for a while I was actually considering “Bears and Traffic” as the title of this book (it sure beats “Untitled Funny Book About How to Cope with Stress”), but I decided against it because I thought it might be misleading for all those readers out there hoping to learn about animals and the cars they drive.

      As I mentioned, I use these examples to represent threatening situations, ones where we are probably in some degree of real danger (i.e., bears), and the others where the threat is more likely felt due to our own mental activity or the fact that the dude in front of us is clearly on his cell phone and is driving way too slow to be in the left lane yet he still has his blinker on like he’s going to make a left turn. What is he going to do, drive into oncoming traffic? Who gave this guy a driver’s license anyway? Great, now I’m late for my anger management class. Jerk.

      Regardless of how real the stress may or may not be, when our brain perceives a situation as being threatening, the process it engages is the same. Just like airport security, our brain has to take every situation seriously because failure to identify threats could be disastrous. Therefore, whenever we encounter a stimulus, whether it is a bear, a highway full of slow-moving cars, or a traveler who for some reason chose to wear shoes, the first thing our brain has to do is determine if that stimulus is going to kill us. It is a very high-priority decision that the brain has to make before we take any other action. I am sure I don’t have to explain to you why it is so important that our brains do this.

      Let me pause for a moment to prepare you for the next few paragraphs. As I mentioned in the introduction, this is not a technical book and I do not intend to get into a whole lot of detail; however, I am about to introduce a little about the anatomy of the brain and the nervous system as well as related bodily systems. I feel like I might lose a few of you as you skip ahead, but I promise I will keep it simple and relevant. Besides, a little neuroscientific knowledge never hurt nobody. We all own human brains, so I figure we should have some understanding as to how they work. Plus, my specific area of psychology was neuroscience and “Brain” is even a common misspelling of my first name (even cooler, sometimes they add in my last name and I become “Brain King”), so I feel compelled to discuss the brain. Don’t worry (more on that later), this is not a textbook and there will be no exam on Friday.

      Getting back into it, the first thing the brain has to do when we encounter a stimulus is determine if it represents a danger. This processing is called threat appraisal, and is carried out by an area of the brain called the amygdala. The amygdala is an almond-shaped bilateral structure located deep in the brain and part of a group of structures known as the limbic system. It is involved in our experience of emotions, learning, memory formation (particularly those relating to emotion), and basic decision-making. I should also point out that the activity of the amygdala, and most of the brain, happens outside of our conscious awareness. That is, this crucial area has an extremely important role in our lives and we are completely oblivious of its activity.

      Information about whatever we have encountered is brought into the brain via the sense organs, and is transmitted to the amygdala to be evaluated for potential danger. Contextual details, memories of past experiences, and some instincts factor in to make a quick decision as to whether or not this stimulus is bad news. Say for example we encounter a bear (yes, again). Is that bear bad news—or a Bad News Bear? The context could be that we are on a trail all by ourselves deep in the woods of the Sierra Nevada mountains and suddenly realizing that smoked salmon was a bad choice to pack for lunch, or we could be staring the bear down through a fence at the Denver Zoo. Obviously, the context is going to influence our appraisal of threat. Our memories can include direct experiences with bears, but much more likely for most of us it is knowledge we have acquired through indirect means like studying or hearing stories about bear attacks.

      Unlike our memories, instincts are not learned, they are inherited as part of our genetic makeup. I am unaware if anyone has been able to identify all our instinctual triggers but I believe that there are certain characteristics common to most predators that we intrinsically respond to, like an arched back, a growl, or exposed teeth. Whatever the threat cues are, it is reasonable to believe they are there. Watching my daughter as she has developed over the past eighteen months has helped confirm this for me. Having no prior knowledge of dogs, the first time she met my brother Jon’s dog

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