How to make stress your friend: create the biology of courage

Reframing your experience can be critically important in the process of healing. Here is a new way to consider stress. It’s really very beautiful.

Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others.

Kelly says we are built to be resilient. I believe that! Listen up. It’s always good to reconsider what we’ve been told to believe.

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She wants to help people get better at stress. Not eliminate it. This sounds very wise to me. This sounds like embracing your experience to me which is what I’m always talking about here on Beyond Meds.

More with Kelly McGonigal on Beyond Meds:

• Pain is not suffering

• Neuroscience of change, another take on neuroplasticity: self-compassion and awareness to start

• Willpower and choice…we can do simple things to strengthen our capacities to make healthy choices

See also: About reframing: embrace your experience