The Myth of Stress

Once you read the Stoics, lots of philosophical and psychological ideas seem relevant to their teachings.  My latest example of this is a book I recently came across: The Myth of Stress by Andrew Bernstein.  I haven't read this book yet, I've only seen his website, and watched one of his talks.  The idea seems to be that we get stressed out because we have an opinion that what actually is happening shouldn't be happening, and this upsets us.

To rid ourselves of stress, Bernstein advises us to reason about why what is happening should in fact be happening, and figure out how we can change that.

The ideas here seem very Stoic-influenced to me, especially, the realization that it isn't the situation that causes stress, it is the opinion about the situation.

Here's his Leading@Google talk:



If you watch the Q&A section of the video, it feels like the audience is a bit skeptical.  Bernstein doesn't profess to be an expert in psychology, and I'm unsure what his degree is in.  If he's done experiments with this technique and has data to back up his assertion that it works, that'd be great, but he doesn't seem to mention more than anecdotal reports.  Maybe it's in the book.  Also, his example of stress being caused by fight or flight responses that are essentially subjective seem sketchy to me.  If I see a tiger about to pounce on me, I don't think that an opinion will be formed, at least consciously.  The fight or flight response is quite instinctual, so his example seems to work against him.  Whether a looming deadline is anything like a pouncing tiger is something I'm unsure of.

Still, even with my skepticism, the ideas are interesting here.  I haven't tried Bernstein's technique, which he calls ActivInsight, but I may give it a try the next time I'm feeling stressed out about something.