Book report: The Myth of Stress by Andrew Bernstein
I’m not big on self-help books. I certainly need the help, but I’m skeptical. Too often, the book claims to be the absolute solution, and it can’t be: people are too different. Or it demands some absurd commitment of belief and energy that I’m not going to invest. Or it simply doesn’t work. So, for me to pick up, read, and recommend a self-help book is very unusual.
But “The Myth of Stress” is an unusual book. It starts by introducing the explanation behind stress that we’ve all come to know – and then debunking it. As we all know, stress is caused by the fight-or-flight response to danger that we evolved to survive. Saber-tooth tiger shows up: we either run, fight the tiger, or become lunch. Only the runners and fighters survived. Now, whenever the modern equivalent of the saber-tooth tiger shows up, we have the same response, but it’s no longer helpful. We can’t run from our work or families. We can’t battle the other commuters or our boss. So, we’re stuck with stress.
Wrong.
The problem isn’t the saber-tooth tiger. We can deal with the saber-tooth tiger fine. We run or we fight, no stress involved.
The problem is THINKING about the saber-tooth tiger, WORRYING about the saber-tooth tiger, WONDERING if that shadow is a saber-tooth tiger. As Shakespeare said, “nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so”. Our heads are full of thinking, full of shoulds – I should make more money, my kids should be quiet, my ride home should be pleasant – and it’s the shoulds, the contrary-to-reality expectations, that cause our stress.
Luckily, Bernstein also has a way of relieving this stress. The entire method is spelled out in the book, but it basically revolves around reversing our shoulds and becoming comfortable with the result. He gives about ten detailed examples in the book, but I’ll pick the traffic one as an example. What we think is, “I shouldn’t be stuck in traffic” or “Traffic shouldn’t be so bad.” Reverse this, and add a couple of phrases, to make, “In reality, traffic should be this bad, at this time.” We resist this statement, but it’s true, and part of the exercise is to come up with lots of reasons why it is true. Too many people. Too many cars. Too little public transportation. Bad timing of work hours.
There’s more to the process, of course. I’m just giving the outline. But it’s amazing how helpful it is to go through his approach with the stressors of daily life. Somehow, dealing with reality is much easier than dealing with our shoulds about reality.
The author makes it clear he doesn’t consider this the cure for everything. And his writing is pretty funny at times. If stress is ever an issue for you, I would recommend checking out this book.
I’m not big on self-help books. I certainly need the help, but I’m skeptical. Too often, the book claims to be the absolute solution, and it can’t be: people are too different. Or it demands some absurd commitment of belief and energy that I’m not going to invest. Or it simply doesn’t work. So, for me to pick up, read, and recommend a self-help book is very unusual.
But “The Myth of Stress” is an unusual book. It starts by introducing the explanation behind stress that we’ve all come to know – and then debunking it. As we all know, stress is caused by the fight-or-flight response to danger that we evolved to survive. Saber-tooth tiger shows up: we either run, fight the tiger, or become lunch. Only the runners and fighters survived. Now, whenever the modern equivalent of the saber-tooth tiger shows up, we have the same response, but it’s no longer helpful. We can’t run from our work or families. We can’t battle the other commuters or our boss. So, we’re stuck with stress.
Wrong.
The problem isn’t the saber-tooth tiger. We can deal with the saber-tooth tiger fine. We run or we fight, no stress involved.
The problem is THINKING about the saber-tooth tiger, WORRYING about the saber-tooth tiger, WONDERING if that shadow is a saber-tooth tiger. As Shakespeare said, “nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so”. Our heads are full of thinking, full of shoulds – I should make more money, my kids should be quiet, my ride home should be pleasant – and it’s the shoulds, the contrary-to-reality expectations, that cause our stress.
Luckily, Bernstein also has a way of relieving this stress. The entire method is spelled out in the book, but it basically revolves around reversing our shoulds and becoming comfortable with the result. He gives about ten detailed examples in the book, but I’ll pick the traffic one as an example. What we think is, “I shouldn’t be stuck in traffic” or “Traffic shouldn’t be so bad.” Reverse this, and add a couple of phrases, to make, “In reality, traffic should be this bad, at this time.” We resist this statement, but it’s true, and part of the exercise is to come up with lots of reasons why it is true. Too many people. Too many cars. Too little public transportation. Bad timing of work hours.
There’s more to the process, of course. I’m just giving the outline. But it’s amazing how helpful it is to go through his approach with the stressors of daily life. Somehow, dealing with reality is much easier than dealing with our shoulds about reality.
The author makes it clear he doesn’t consider this the cure for everything. And his writing is pretty funny at times. If stress is ever an issue for you, I would recommend checking out this book.
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