Why do people have a “nervous breakdown” when they have to wait in line for five minutes at the bank, while others don’t mind? How is it that some weirdos like to skydive or bungee when so many people are afraid of flying? What to say to those who never recover from the death of their spouse, when others find it a bright opportunity for growth?

Much of it is a question of personality, attitude and life experiences. The intensity of the stress reaction depends mainly on the message sent by the brain to the endocrine glands, and therefore on the perception that the person has of the situation in question – the fact of seeing it as more or less dangerous, demanding or constraining.

According to the work of psychologists Lazarus and Folkman, the mental process set in motion by the appearance of a stressor consists of two stages:

First step: assess the dangerousness of a stimulus. How “bad” is this for me? The answer would be determined by an impressive number of factors: temperament, education, social norms, culture, past experiences, values, etc. It is clear that, for the most part, this evaluation is done unconsciously, using highly subjective perceptions, thoughts, emotions, concepts and reasoning.

Second step: assess our resources available to deal with it. Can I get myself out of this mess? The resources in question can be of various kinds:

– physical: do I have health, strength, energy?

– material: could I find the money, the tool?

– social: can my friends, my brother, my colleague help me?

– psychological: am I capable? do I deserve such an effort?

– and one of the most problematic: do I have time?

The more negative the answers to these two questions, the more the signal sent by the brain to the metabolism is at a high alarm level, the more intense the physiological reactions. It could be fainting or, ultimately, stroke.

Approaches that aim to sustainably help people with stress problems – these so-called stress reduction or management programs – focus a large part of the work on attitude modification. The attitude adopted so far may have turned out to be harmful, and our health depends on it.

According to current learning theories, much of human behavior is the result of what has been learned (as opposed to what is innate) and firmly anchored through countless reinforcement experiences. Even impotence is often a learned behavior!

To make a modification on this point, it is a question of making conscious the thoughts (the cognitive process) brought by the agents of stress and to see how they determine the emotional reactions and the choice of the strategies of action. Changing the way the cognitive process works in a given situation is called “cognitive restructuring”. Changing the way you behave in a given situation is called “behavior modification”. The tool developed to meet these objectives is called the cognitive-behavioral therapy.

When, in the dark, we believe that the rope coiled in a corner is a snake, we are as afraid as if it were a real snake. Cognitive behavioral therapy is used to develop verification mechanisms likely to improve the accuracy of our evaluations, both on the nature of the “danger” and on our resources to overcome it.

Should we deduce from this that stress is always inappropriate behavior? Not necessarily. This is sometimes eminently normal and appropriate behavior in an abnormal situation. In such cases, attitude analysis must turn to the life choices that place us in such situations. Or question the social norms to which we have complied until then … It is then a question of “transcending” the problem and operating a transformation in itself that is not conditioned by the surrounding norms.

The manifestations of stress therefore have their usefulness, because they act as a warning signal: Attention! Dangerous situation! In many cases, the many compromises we make to adjust to the situations imposed on us adversely affect our mental and physical health. We want to believe that we have what it takes to deal with a situation, while it is eating away at us … An in-depth exploration of the motivations could reveal, in this case, that we do not have the resources necessary and that help should be sought.

Often, we have to go upstream of the causes of stress and make changes in our way of life: settle a latent conflict, abandon a responsibility, enforce one’s limits, etc. And then, the manifestations of stress sometimes indicate to us that a stage has had its day and that it is time to move on to the next: moving to another city, changing professional orientation, undertaking psychotherapy … type of situations, the discomforts of stress will have turned out to be “a bad for a good”.

Any stress-relieving strategy obviously looks at the possibilities of eliminating or reducing stressors, but sometimes the solutions can be as stressful as the problem (being unemployed or supporting a cantankerous boss). It is then necessary to continue the psychotherapeutic exploration to identify the best solution or, in some cases, to accept that there is no solution. This is called letting go, and in some circumstances it is also a healthy attitude.

As if life does not provide enough stressors, there are times when you create them yourself or aggravate existing ones – a pernicious mechanism if there is one. Take the example of people who are put off by certain tasks and who use a thousand strategists to postpone them. However, not only do these tasks not disappear, they accumulate and form, over time, a monstrous stressor which perpetuates itself.

A cognitive-behavioral approach should be able to help these people to better observe their disorganization or their procrastination mechanisms and to modify them – which requires the significant effort of learning to operate differently. Internal stressors, apart from procrastination, include unrealistic expectations, perfectionism, the desire to look good, lack of communication, poor anger management, etc.

Changing these attitudes is demanding and long-term work. But it also brings a lot of satisfaction and gives back access to a huge part of vitality and creativity, monopolized until now by a metabolism that runs empty because of stress …