How the stress of fight or flight turns hair white
nature.com
nature.com
1. Buy as much nice stuff as you can – it's okay if you go into debt because it'll persuade you to work harder!
2. Since you're so busy, accept that you don't have time to exercise. You can get around to it in the future (once you're rich!)
3. Stay up as late as you can. After all, you can sleep when you're dead. Caffeine is your friend.
4. Be too lazy to make todo lists or mark anything on your calendar.
5. At least once per week, compare yourself to everyone else. It's the only way to judge how you're doing.
6. Do everything yourself. You don't need to hire that tax accountant. You don't need to ask for help.
7. Sell your time to [Company Name Here]. Yeah, they're hard to work for, but they might make you rich.
Ah yes, the ever simple act of 'being' any adjective identity assignment. As someone who had large parts of his hair bleach over night via a superoxidative immune system reaction following extreme stress, lemme translate how you come across here:
"Employ free will sorcery to magically shrink your amygdalea, deshrink your hippocampus, transcend depression by magically snapping your finger in one grand act of permanent auto-hypnosis. Don't order food for yourself even if ordering food is often the only thing standing between you either eating something or proceeding to remain in low calorie intake induced parapsychosis which can always potentially lead you to some suicide attempt despite technically having the option of doing so and hence getting food into you to stave off the existential low level hormonal anxiety of not having eaten right for days simply due to lacking the mental spoons to cook food, just ignore the fact that the psychophenomenological experience of the exertion of physical exercise feels vastly different when attempted in an anhedonic, stressed out, anxious & depressed state. Also, ignore the fact that even when you've cut out caffeine of your life for months at a time, it never made a positive difference, as while on the one hand, the high caffeine doses you take represent one of the causes of your long waking periods, on the other hand, high doses of caffeine represent one of the few things which occasionally manage to peirce through the complete slump."
I'm down to my absolutely last money, I have no health insurance, every day I read in the newspapers how the government will cut back on social security next and cut future bonuses to companies who don't deserve them, and I feel stressed out as hell, dude. A good quarter of my head has already turned snow white, and I haven't even reached the first quarter of my 30s. If you'd try to shove this load of bullshit advice on me in real life, I probably couldn't even muster the energy to begin expressing just how much I despise this kind of 'advice'. You know what I'd find fucking destressing? People like you, who assert that they speak from 'personal experience', yet don't actually name a single example of said personal experience, would stop trying to play Internet mental health professional and went back to using their armchairs to read books, or even better, went out to socialize more, to build a better capacity for empathy.
What should I do? Should I drop everything to live a stress-free life in Thailand? Should I do meditation everyday? What are the ways for someone to live a stress-free life :)?
That sounds like it would be a really stressful thing to do...
You probably have a number of good ways to reflect on your priorities, but its very difficult for someone else to tell you how to reflect on those. Most people can only speak to what worked for them, which depends on where they were before, etc.
IMO to start:
Wake up way earlier than you have to. (This changed me into a morning person.) When you have 1-2 hours where you can just sit there calmly, drinking coffee, and not be rushed, you feel ten times better. Many mornings me and my wife wake up and just sit by the fire (that we restart to heat our home) and make coffee. Sometimes she will write, or we will both read, or talk, etc, but often we just sit together for a while and relax. Later on, you can work on being ~productive~ in the a.m. too if you please.
Invite ritual into your life. Spend a time making your home a place you would want to be. A house is a place for having coffee, having conversation, having memories and symbols that give you feeling or inspiration (pictures, objects), how much of their designs do that? How much yours?
I used to start my day stressing. In hindsight, that wasn't healthy.
IMO "Things that will change your life for $100 on amazon" lists are dumb and most people's lives would be improved by the opposite - renting a dumpster!
This year I'm getting up a little later (maybe average 6:30, to be out the door by 8:30), mostly because I am writing more at night this winter, and its not as cold. I think in the summer I'll switch to writing in the morning more and go back to waking up 5:30-6.
Years ago, I would go to bed at 12-2am. I always used to say most of my best work was done between 10pm-2am. I much prefer it this new way, though past me would have a hard time believing it!
The reality is that if it's important, you'll make time to go to bed earlier. It takes a while for the body to hit restful sleep so early (and using blackout curtains / dawn clocks have been pivotal). For me it was wanting to start working out in a particular morning class... I immediately shifted from midnight to 9:30-10 to give myself the extra time in the morning.
Last year I made the switch and used those unspoilt morning hours to finish a 100k word first draft of a novel, which is a first (heh) for me. 10/10 would not go back to selling my brain's most fertile hours to The Man.
I'd say the only way out is to be aware of whether you have too much stressful stuff on your plate, and either not add more, or proactively remove. Say "no" to more things. Say "yes" a lot less. Manage your commitments. Without this awareness people take on too much stuff, which can only end in tears for everyone involved for several simple reasons:
- If you continue biting off more than you can chew, eventually you will fail to deliver on your obligations, and you'll be too stressed to do your best work
- If you never say "no", you pretty much don't respect yourself, and therefore other people will not respect you. I feel like this affects women more, because they try to be more agreeable and avoid confrontation at all costs. As they say "if you let people walk over you, eventually they will complain you're not flat enough". That is very, very true. I wish I learned this lesson much earlier than I did. My wife still hasn't learned it though.
- As a manager: if you're worried about your career progression, the way to achieve that is by taking a few significant chunks of responsibility, and delivering them with high quality and in at a predictable cadence, NOT taking on a million different things and delivering half baked shit way after it's needed by your team. In the former case you've succeeded and delivered, in the latter case you've failed, and worse, you've made your boss and your team appear like a bunch of idiots. _And_ on top of that your hair is now falling out because you're stressed AF.
If you can't do something about something, don't worry about it. If you can, then do, and don't worry about.
I'm sure others will chime in with lots of good ways to manage stress. Therapy, working out, meditation, drugs, etc. Working out is def good in my experience. But I get the most bang from my buck by just plain not worrying. Deadlines and money can make that hard, but I just take the next step, over communicate, and let someone else stress out.
Meditate
Eat healthy
Get enough sleep
Spend time in nature
Avoid long commutes
Avoid social media and the news
Some people handle stress in positive ways - for example, I find I work much better under some degree of stress (e.g. deadlines) - without stress, I would just procrastinate indefinitely. Under emotional stress, I typically go hard in the gym.
Other people seem to breakdown under stress though, and I can't imagine that's healthy.
And the rats in these studies are usually essentially tortured (which is definitely something to avoid).
I highly recommend everyone look at the book "The Upside of Stress", the Ted Talk is here: https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress...
To summarize a bit (and likely leaving out a lot of important details), do stress reducing activity if you can find one that you genuinely enjoy. Meditation is great if you enjoy it, but if you hate it every minute it going to just increase your stress. Same with finding a physical activity. Studies on stress show great results if and only if the subject enjoy and do it volunteerly because they want to do it.
The second way to reduce stress is to have control over things in life, but with a major caveat. A bit cliche, but have a feeling of control for things you can control, do not try control that which you can't, and have the wisdom to know the difference. Its a complicated balance.
The third way is to be respected. Studies show that judges, conductors and similar professions have significant lower stress and live longer. Being part of a community and receiving genuine respect is great in order to reduce stress. Don't need to be ones professional life, as family or hobby can achieve similar results.
I find that helpful. We all had "actually it wasn't that bad" moments which basically mean "I suffered for no good reason". You can train yourself to anticipate these moments in advance. Imagine that this thing your stressed about fails miserably and the worst possible consequences unfold. What then? What will you do? What if you miss the deadline and the project fails and your boss gets mad and you're fired. What will you do? Will you land on your feet eventually? Maybe you'll actually enjoy some free time and then find a better job or work full time on that thing you keep postponing? What if your relationship deteriorates and your s/o ends up leaves you? Will you land on your feet eventually? Would you manage to find happiness again?
I think that realizing that I'll be alright even in the extreme case, is very reassuring and actually frees me to be more focused on the job at hand and do it better, because I don't need to waste brain-cycles on stressing on what might otherwise feels like a live-or-die situation. Your relationships will be much better if you know deep down that you don't need that specific person to be happy, but that rather its your choice.
Btw, if you feel that you actually wont be ok in some scenario that your stress is warranted! But then you should probably aim to fix that unhealthy attachment because you are probably wrong...
Can't tell if the smile means your question is tongue-in-cheek, but assuming it isn't, you likely don't want a stress free life.
Stress, when it is the result of a situation that is tractable, is a helpful signal to help inform one's plan of action. A completely stress free life would arguably be one empty of purpose and direction.
It's stress of the pathological and insurmountable variety - whether internally or externally generated - that is damaging. Find ways to identity and address the causes of that. If those causes can't realistically be removed, consider things like meditation to manage the stress.
As for Thailand, it sounds hot and humid, which to me personally feels stressful, but to each their own ;)
My doctor always tries to get me to take it but it just seems like a bandaid. Granted, I don't claim to be able to fix it myself either, but the last thing I want to do is mess with my brain chemistry more, especially since I'm starkly aware of the arrogance of humanity (i.e. nobody really knows what is actually going on).
EDIT: I feel like baby(user comment below) might be on to something. I constantly am in fear of something bad happening and stress about that far more than I stress about things that have already happened. But I do experience both.
For milder cases, medication can disrupt negative feedback mechanisms. eg Adderall didn't cure my ADHD but a few months at a high dose gave me momentum to build organizational habits and understand what "normal" meant. Now I just take the occasional low dose in response when life gets hectic to stay on top of what matters.
It talks about stoicism, and how accepting what is happening is the path to tranquility, and happiness.
It seems like stress is mostly about fear of something that hasn’t happened (and perhaps never will) and lack of acceptance of bad things happening.
A strong dose of CBD before bed seems to help the forthcoming days. I'm much calmer.
basically, there's 2 not insignificant accidental causes of cat death:
(1) getting run over or attacked by other animals (dogs, other cats, coyotes, etc.) so keep them inside, and
(2) eating something that's severely poisonous [1] (mild poisons usually just upset their stomachs) so keep those things out of reach.
accidental fires are very rare and you don't need to worry about them (unless, for example, you leave candles or fireplaces lit when not at home).
this goes for life in general too. most of us know not to worry about lightning strikes, but most dangers we worry about are even less likely, like dying in a plane (or helicopter) crash or via terrorist attack. it's way more likely to die in a car accident, by heart attack, or due to cancer, and most of us don't incessantly worry about those things either.
In my dad's side of the family, we seem to have an interesting inherited trait. We don't really have any balding, but the men (including me) go grey very early in life. I'm turning 40 in a couple of days but my beard has turned almost completely grey by now and I have a lot of grey in my hair. My eyebrows are holding on though.
My dad and his brothers were all mostly grey by the end of their 30's as well.
Interestingly, when my dad got cancer in his mid 50's and started undergoing radiation treatment, the hair on his chin started growing back brown. By the time he passed away about 2 years after, that part of his beard was his original hair color from when he was young.
One hypothesis is that perhaps due to the damage being done from the radiation to healthy tissue encouraged stem cells to migrate back to that area and had the effect of regenerating the melanocytes in the follicles in the area.
I look young for my age, at 44 I look far younger than my silver haired 43 year old brother. People say I am "chill" and "zen" but I bathe in stressful situations as an entrepreneur and independent consultant all day, everyday. I just don't get excited in high stress moments. I'm the guy in center of the storm when everyone is freaking out. It is certainly both part of my nature and learned, as I have worked on improving that over the years.
You can learn to not freak out, and even if it doesn't keep your hair dark and luxurious like mine, you will be better in lots of scenarios.
Not sure if this can be applied to your specific life situation but in my case after I had reached 30 years of age I realized that "chasing everyone else" is simply not worth the hassle, and, worst off, that it changed me into a person I didn't like, a "fake" me, so to speak. Mind you, I'm still stressed about money and bills and paying rent/mortgage like almost everyone else, not sure if there's a way of eliminating that, but for me at least it came as a huge stress reliever the fact that I didn't have to "chase" everybody else anymore.
If it matters I came to that "realization" that chasing others is futile after I had read a compendium of Stoic writers (there is another HN-er mentioning Marcus Aurelius, and for good reasons), but I'm sure there are also other writers/thinkers that have written about this.
I need to work on this myself.