hi I'm dr. Stan Kuchar and I'm going to
talk for a little bit about how most
stress is actually really good for you
Wow how could it be talking about that
we all know that stress is bad no that's
completely wrong there is some stress
which is bad it's called toxic stress
and that is really bad stress like
living in aleppo like being sexually
abused like experiencing severe neglect
deprivation that's toxic stress and when
some people are faced with toxic stress
they develop mental health difficulties
and sometimes even a mental disorder but
most stress is not like that in fact
most of us go through most of our lives
without ever experiencing toxic stress
but schools in our society have been
doing a really bad job of teaching us
that usual everyday good stress is the
same thing as toxic stress and that's
completely wrong
in fact usual everyday stress social
relationships doing your homework taking
an exam trying out for for the sports
team or the orchestra or the debating
Club
those are good stresses they actually
help us tune our bodies our brains
improve with the stress they learn how
to handle the stress they learn how to
overcome it they learn new skills we
call that resilience and adaptation and
they learn it all by themselves they
don't need a program to teach it to do
that because human beings have been
doing that for millennia and you can do
it too the right way to do that is
approach everyday stress with the
expectation that the feeling's you get
that stress response that your body is
doing with the expectation that it's a
good thing and all the research asks
shows that if you think that stress is
bad you do poorly but if you think that
the stress is good you do exceedingly
well and we need to rethink what we call
this normal everyday stress it's not the
toxic stress it's not what people refer
to as the fight-or-flight phenomenon
yeah that exists but our brains have
that to help save us when we're faced
with a horrible situation you know like
a tiger jumping out at you're in our
society a truck coming barreling down
the street or someone's got a gun
that's fight-or-flight that happens
rarely most stress is what we call
excite and delight it gets us ready to
do courageous things it gets us ready to
take on the world and make the world our
oyster that signal is the signal that we
need to perform that signal is the
excitement of the challenge that we're
about to undertake the wrong thing and
this is important the wrong thing is to
interpret that signal as negative the
wrong thing is to try to avoid the
stressor the wrong thing is to try to
simply focus on decreasing that stress
response whether it is through
meditation or deep breathing or whatever
that you do if all you do is focus on
decreasing the stress response without
understanding that it's the excitement
that leads to solving the problem that
led to the stress or in the first place
it's that engaging with life if all you
do is try to decrease the stress
response you never learn to engage with
life and so then when really big
problems come about you're gonna have
difficulty you know you can think about
your body's immune system your brain is
works the same way you are exposed to
thousands millions of bacteria and
viruses every single day but you don't
get sick why because your brain
recognizes your
body recognizes these bacteria viruses
haha I've got good defenses I can deal
with them and it goes into overdrive you
make your immunoglobulins your killer T
cells and B cells do their thing and you
don't get sick and you build immunity
you build the capacity for when
something really bad comes along you'll
be much better at dealing with it in
fact we have a whole Public Health
approach that is built on stressing your
immune system it's called vaccinations
what we need is a public health system
that provides good everyday stress so
that you can learn how to overcome it
not run away from it and not avoid it
thanks I'm dr. Stan Kuchar