The Upside of Stress - Beyond Flight-or-Fight - Chapter 2:

"Although the purpose of these changes is to help you, the stress response—like stress in general—is more feared than appreciated. Most people view the stress response as a toxic state to be minimized, but the reality is not so bleak. In many ways, the stress response is your best ally during difficult moments—a resource to rely on rather than an enemy to vanquish."

"The study of accident survivors at the Akron trauma center was just the first of several showing that a stronger physical stress response predicts better long-term recovery from a traumatic event. In fact, one of the most promising new therapies to prevent or treat PTSD is administering doses of stress hormones. For example, a case report in the American Journal of Psychiatry describes how stress hormones reversed post-traumatic stress disorder in a fifty-year-old man who had survived a terrorist attack five years earlier. After taking ten milligrams of cortisol a day for three months, his PTSD symptoms decreased to the point that he no longer became extremely distressed when he thought about the attack. Physicians have also begun to administer stress hormones to patients about to undergo traumatic surgery. Among high-risk cardiac surgery patients, this approach has been shown to reduce the time in intensive care, minimize traumatic stress symptoms, and improve quality of life six months after surgery. Stress hormones have even become a supplement to traditional psychotherapy. Taking a dose of stress hormones right before a therapy session can improve the effectiveness of treatment for anxiety and phobias."

"If these findings surprise you, you aren’t alone. Most people believe that the body’s stress response is uniformly harmful. Stress hormones are seen as toxins to be eliminated, not as potential therapies to be explored. From the conventional point of view, your body betrays you every time your hands get clammy, your heart races, or your stomach twists into knots. To protect your health and happiness, the thinking goes, your number one priority should be to shut down the stress response."

"Selye found that he could create the same symptoms by subjecting rats to any uncomfortable experience: exposing them to extreme heat or cold, forcing them to exercise without rest, blasting them with noise, giving them toxic drugs, even partially severing their spinal cords. Within forty-eight hours, the rats lost muscle tone, developed digestive ulcers, and entered immune system failure."

"This is how the science of stress was born. Selye chose the word stress to describe both what he was doing to the rats (nowadays, we’d say he was stressing them out) and how their bodies reacted (what we call the stress response)."

"They were diagnosed with one disease but had other symptoms—loss of appetite, fever, fatigue—that weren’t specific to that condition. They seemed worn-out and run-down. At the time, Selye called it “sick syndrome.”"

"And with this leap in logic, Selye made one more decision that forever changed how the world thought about stress. He chose to define stress in a way that went far beyond his laboratory methods with rats. Stress, he claimed, was the response of the body to any demand made on it. It wasn’t just a response to noxious injections, traumatic injuries, or brutal laboratory conditions, but to anything that requires action or adaptation. By defining stress in this way, Selye set the stage for our modern terror about stress."

"But what Selye really gave the world was the belief that stress is toxic. If you tell a coworker, “This project is giving me an ulcer,” or complain to your spouse, “This stress is killing me,” it’s Selye’s rats you’re paying tribute to."

"Was Selye wrong? Not exactly. If you’re the human equivalent of Selye’s rats—deprived, tortured, or abused—then, yes, your body will pay a price. There is ample scientific evidence that severe or traumatic stress can harm your health. However, Selye defined stress so broadly that it includes not just trauma, violence, and abuse, but also just about everything that happens to you. To Selye, stress was synonymous with the body’s response to life. If this is your definition of the word, and you think that the inevitable consequence of stress is to end up like Selye’s rats, then of course you’ll be worried."

"To this day, much of what you hear about stress’s harmful effects comes from studies of lab rats. But the stress those rats suffer is not everyday human stress."

"He told us how he induced stress in his lab mice. First, he selects mice bred to be smaller than the typical mouse. Then he puts a small mouse in a cage with a much bigger mouse bred for aggression. He lets the alpha mouse attack the smaller mouse for twenty minutes, then rescues it. The smaller, injured mouse is separated from the alpha mouse but housed in a new cage where it can smell and see the alpha mouse that attacked it. The physical danger is lifted, but the psychological terror persists. This procedure doesn’t happen just once, but every day. For weeks, the smaller mouse is taken out of its cage and put back in the cage with the aggressive mouse for a daily dose of bullying. When the scientist considers the mouse sufficiently stressed, he looks at how the experience affected its behavior. (Remarkably, many of the abused mice show total resilience to the experience, although some develop what looks like the mouse equivalent of depression.)"

"But when headlines declare, “Science Proves Stress Makes You Depressed,” the stories rarely consider whether the methods used to stress out lab animals are equivalent to what most people mean when they complain, “I’m so stressed.” For some perspective, consider that in a major 2014 survey in the United States, the most commonly named source of daily stress among people who claimed to be highly stressed was “juggling schedules of family members.” The runner-up was “hearing about what politicians are doing.”

More often, the word stress is used to gloss over the study details, with no distinction between the effects of abuse and trauma and the effects of daily hassles. This results in a lot of unnecessary stress about stress. "

"Let’s be clear: A stress response that supported only two survival strategies—throw a punch or run like hell—would truly be a mismatch for modern life. But the full picture of the human stress response turns out to be much more complex. Fleeing and fighting are not the only strategies your body supports. As with humans themselves, the stress response has evolved, adapting over time to better fit the world we live in now. It can activate multiple biological systems, each supporting a different coping strategy. Your stress response won’t just help you get out of a burning building; it will also help you engage with challenges, connect with social support, and learn from experience."

"You might expect the stressed-out men to be more aggressive or selfish, but the opposite was true. Men who had just gone through a stressful experience were 50 percent more likely to extend trust to a stranger and risk their full share of the winnings. They were also 50 percent more likely to be trustworthy, splitting the winnings with the stranger instead of keeping the money for themselves. The rate of trust and trustworthiness in a control group of men who hadn’t been stressed was quite similar to that of contestants on Golden Balls—around 50 percent. In contrast, the men who were stressed-out showed unusually high rates of trust and trustworthiness—around 75 percent. Stress made the men prosocial.

Throughout the study, researchers tracked the men’s physical stress responses. Men who had the strongest cardiovascular reactivity to stress were also the most likely to trust and be trustworthy in the game that followed. In other words, the stronger their hearts’ response to stress, the more altruistic they became.

This finding shocks a lot of people. I’ve had students raise their hands to argue that the study’s findings are impossible. If you believe that stress always produces a fight-or-flight response, these men’s behavior makes no sense. They should be operating from a dog-eat-dog, competitive mentality, ready to take the money of any suckers who make the mistake of trusting them."

"There are several prototypical stress responses, each with a different biological profile that motivates various strategies for dealing with stress. For example, a challenge response increases self-confidence, motivates action, and helps you learn from experience; while a tend-and-befriend response increases courage, motivates caregiving, and strengthens your social relationships. Alongside the familiar fight-or-flight response, these make up your stress response repertoire. To understand how stress can trigger these very different states, let’s take a closer look at the biology of stress."

"Stress Gives You Energy to Help You Rise to the Challenge

As Walter Cannon observed, a fight-or-flight stress response starts when your sympathetic nervous system kicks in. To make you more alert and ready to act, the sympathetic nervous system directs your whole body to mobilize energy. Your liver dumps fat and sugar into your bloodstream for fuel. Your breathing deepens so that more oxygen is delivered to your heart. And your heart rate speeds up to deliver the oxygen, fat, and sugar to your muscles and brain. Stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol help your muscles and brain take in and use that energy more efficiently. In all these ways, your stress response gets you ready to face whatever challenges lie in front of you."

"Many people have this kind of experience during stress: They don’t know how they find the strength or courage to act. But when it matters most, their bodies give them the energy and will to do what’s necessary."

"You also get a motivation boost from a chemical cocktail of endorphins, adrenaline, testosterone, and dopamine. This side of the stress response is one reason some people enjoy stress—it provides a bit of a rush. Together, these chemicals increase your sense of confidence and power. They make you more willing to pursue your goals and to approach whatever is triggering the flood of feel-good chemicals. Some scientists call this the “excite and delight” side of stress. It’s been observed both in skydivers falling out of planes and people falling in love. If you get a thrill out of watching a close game or rushing to meet a deadline, you know this side of stress."

"When your survival is on the line, these biological changes come on strong, and you may find yourself having a classic fight-or-flight response. But when the stressful situation is less threatening, the brain and body shift into a different state: the challenge response. Like a fight-or-flight response, a challenge response gives you energy and helps you perform under pressure. Your heart rate still rises, your adrenaline spikes, your muscles and brain get more fuel, and the feel-good chemicals surge. But it differs from a fight-or-flight response in a few important ways: You feel focused but not fearful. You also release a different ratio of stress hormones, including higher levels of DHEA, which helps you recover and learn from stress. This raises the growth index of your stress response, the beneficial ratio of stress hormones that can determine, in part, whether a stressful experience is strengthening or harmful.

People who report being in a flow state—a highly enjoyable state of being completely absorbed in what you are doing—display clear signs of a challenge response. Artists, athletes, surgeons, video gamers, and musicians all show this kind of stress response when they’re engaged in their craft or skill. Contrary to what many people expect, top performers in these fields aren’t physiologically calm under pressure; rather, they have strong challenge responses. The stress response gives them access to their mental and physical resources, and the result is increased confidence, enhanced concentration, and peak performance."

"Stress Makes You Social to Encourage Connection

Your stress response doesn’t just give you energy. In many circumstances, it also motivates you to connect with others. This side of stress is primarily driven by the hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin has gotten a lot of hype as the “love molecule” and the “cuddle hormone” because it’s released from your pituitary gland when you hug someone. But oxytocin is a much more complex neurohormone that fine-tunes your brain’s social instincts. Its primary function is to build and strengthen social bonds, which is why it’s released during those hugs, as well as sex and breastfeeding. Elevated levels of oxytocin make you want to connect with others. It creates a craving for social contact, be it through touch, a text message, or a shared beer. Oxytocin also makes your brain better able to notice and understand what other people are thinking and feeling. It enhances your empathy and your intuition. When your oxytocin levels are high, you’re more likely to trust and help the people you care about. By making the brain’s reward centers more responsive to social connection, oxytocin even amplifies the warm glow you get from caring for others."

"But oxytocin is as much a part of your stress response as the adrenaline that makes your heart pound. During stress, your pituitary gland releases oxytocin to motivate social connection. That means stress can help you be this “better” version of yourself ..."

"Unlike the fight-or-flight response, which is primarily about self-survival, the tend-and-befriend response motivates you to protect the people and communities you care about. And, importantly, it gives you the courage to do so."

"Your stress response has a built-in mechanism for resilience—one that motivates you to care for others while also strengthening your physical heart."

"The stress recovery process isn’t instantaneous. For several hours after you have a strong stress response, the brain is rewiring itself to remember and learn from the experience. During this time, stress hormones increase activity in brain regions that support learning and memory. As your brain tries to process your experience, you may find yourself unable to stop thinking about what happened. You might feel an impulse to talk with someone about it, or to pray about it. If things went well, you might replay the experience in your mind, remembering everything you did and how it worked out. If things went poorly, you might try to understand what happened, imagine what you could have done differently, and play out other possible outcomes."

"Emotions often run high during the recovery process. You may find yourself too energized or agitated to calm down. It’s not uncommon to feel fear, shock, anger, guilt, or sadness as you recover from a stressful experience. You may also feel relief, joy, or gratitude. These emotions often coexist during the recovery period and are part of how the brain makes sense of the experience. They encourage you to reflect on what happened and to extract lessons to help you deal with future stress. They also make the experience more memorable. The neurochemistry of these emotions render the brain more plastic—a term used to describe how capable the brain is of remodeling itself based on experience. In this way, the emotions that follow stress help you learn from experience and create meaning."

"This is all part of how past stress teaches the brain and body how to handle future stress. Stress leaves an imprint on your brain that prepares you to deal with similar stress the next time you encounter it. Not every minor irritation will trigger this process, but when you go through a seriously challenging experience, your body and brain learn from it. Psychologists call this stress inoculation. It’s like a stress vaccine for your brain. That’s why putting people through practice stress is a key training technique for NASA astronauts, emergency responders, elite athletes, and others who have to thrive in highly stressful environments. Stress inoculation has been used to prepare children for emergency evacuations, train employees to deal with hostile work environments, and even help coach those with autism for stressful social interactions. It can also explain the findings of scientists like Stanford’s Karen Parker, who has shown how early life stress can lead to later resilience.

Once you appreciate that going through stress makes you better at it, you may find it easier to face each new challenge. In fact, research shows that expecting to learn from a stressful experience can shift your physical stress response to support stress inoculation. As we saw in Alia Crum’s study, viewing a video on stress’s enhancing qualities increased participants’ DHEA levels during and after a mock job interview. Other studies show that viewing a stressful situation as an opportunity to improve your skills, knowledge, or strengths makes it more likely that you will have a challenge response instead of a fight-or-flight response. This, in turn, increases the chance that you will learn from the experience."

Rise to the Challenge:

- Focuses your attention

- Heightens your senses

- Increases motivation

- Mobilizes energy

Connect with Others:

- Activates prosocial instincts

- Encourages social connection

- Enhances social cognition

- Dampens fear and increases courage

Learn and Grow:

- Restores nervous system balance

- Processes and integrates the experience

- Helps the brain learn and grow

"The stress response system is adaptive, constantly trying to figure out how to best handle whatever challenges you face."

"Your brain and body continue to reshape themselves to help you face the most important challenges in your life."

"If you want to respond to stress differently—to face challenges confidently, to stand up for yourself, to seek social support instead of withdrawing, to find meaning in your suffering—there is no better way to change your habits than to practice this new response during stress. Every moment of stress is an opportunity to transform your stress instincts."

"Rushing to get your kids ready for school, dealing with a difficult coworker, thinking about criticism you received, worrying about a friend’s health—we have stress responses to all these things because we get stressed when something important to us is at stake. And most important, we have stress responses to help us do something about it.

We get stressed when our goals are on the line, so we take action. We get stressed when our values are threatened, so we defend them. We get stressed when we need courage. We get stressed so we can connect with others. We get stressed so that we will learn from our mistakes.

The stress response is more than a basic survival instinct. It is built into how humans operate, how we relate to one another, and how we navigate our place in the world. When you understand this, the stress response is no longer something to be feared. It is something to be appreciated, harnessed, and even trusted."

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Claude:

"This chapter fundamentally reframes the stress response from threat to resource. McGonigal challenges the legacy of Hans Selye, whose rat experiments established our modern view of stress as toxic, arguing that his brutal laboratory conditions don't reflect everyday human experience.

The core insight: your stress response is adaptive and multifaceted, not just fight-or-flight. It activates three distinct strategies depending on context:

Challenge response - increases confidence and focus, releases optimal hormone ratios (including DHEA for growth), powers peak performance in flow states

Tend-and-befriend response - driven by oxytocin, motivates social connection and caregiving, enhances empathy, literally strengthens your physical heart

Traditional survival response - still available when truly needed, but not the default for modern stressors

The evidence is striking: stress hormones are now used therapeutically for PTSD, administered before surgery to improve outcomes, and enhance psychotherapy effectiveness. Men under stress showed 50% higher trust and generosity, with stronger cardiovascular responses predicting more prosocial behavior.

McGonigal introduces "stress inoculation" - each stressful experience rewires your brain to handle similar situations better. The recovery period's emotions and rumination aren't dysfunction but learning mechanisms. This is why practice stress trains astronauts and athletes.

The reframe matters: when you view stress as enhancing rather than debilitating, your body responds accordingly - different hormone ratios, better outcomes. Stress happens because something you care about is at stake, and the response exists to help you address it."

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grok:

"Chapter 2 is the foundational pivot of the book: McGonigal systematically dismantles the dominant cultural belief that the stress response is inherently toxic and shows instead that it is an adaptive, multifaceted biological system designed to help us rise to challenges, connect with others, and grow stronger.

Core Argument

The widespread view that “stress is always bad” originated largely from Hans Selye’s mid-20th-century rat experiments, in which extreme, inescapable torment (poisoning, spinal-cord severance, forced exhaustive exercise, etc.) produced ulcers, immune collapse, and death. Selye then made a fateful leap: he defined stress as the body’s response to any demand whatsoever, and implied that this response itself was pathological. Modern media and many researchers still cite animal studies that use outright abuse or chronic defeat (e.g., small mice bullied daily by aggressive larger mice) and then generalize those results to ordinary human stress—traffic jams, deadlines, or juggling family schedules. This conflation creates unnecessary “stress about stress.”

In reality, the human stress response is far more sophisticated than fight-or-flight. It is a flexible repertoire of biological states that evolved to match the actual demands of human life.

The Three Main Positive Stress Responses

1. Challenge Response (“Rise to the Challenge”)
   • Energizes you for performance rather than pure survival.
   • Heart rate and adrenaline rise, but you feel focused and confident, not fearful.
   • Releases higher levels of DHEA (along with cortisol), which promotes recovery and learning.
   • Seen in athletes, surgeons, musicians, and anyone in a flow state.
   • Gives you the physiological resources—energy, motivation, sharpened cognition—to perform at your peak under pressure.
2. Tend-and-Befriend Response (“Stress Makes You Social”)
   • Driven by oxytocin (released in large amounts during stress, not just during hugging).
   • Makes you crave connection, enhances empathy, intuition, trust, and courage.
   • Counteracts fear and motivates caregiving and cooperation.
   • Study example: Men who underwent an acute lab stressor became 50% more trusting and trustworthy in a subsequent economic game; the stronger their cardiovascular stress response, the more prosocial they behaved.
3. Learning & Growth Response (“Stress Inoculation”)
   • After the stressor ends, stress hormones keep the brain in a heightened learning state for hours.
   • Emotions (even negative ones) make the experience more memorable and drive meaning-making.
   • Literally rewires neural circuits so you handle similar stressors better next time (the biological basis of resilience training used by astronauts, first responders, etc.).
   • A stronger initial stress response often predicts better long-term outcomes after trauma (e.g., higher cortisol during/after a traumatic event is linked to lower PTSD risk; some hospitals now give cortisol prophylactically before high-risk surgery).

Evidence That Flips Conventional Wisdom

• Trauma survivors with stronger acute stress responses recover better.
• Cortisol therapy can reverse chronic PTSD and reduce post-surgical traumatic stress.
• Viewing stress as enhancing (mindset intervention) shifts physiology toward the beneficial challenge response and higher DHEA.

Key Takeaway

We don’t get stressed because we’re weak; we get stressed because something we care about is at stake—and our body mobilizes to help us act on it. The stress response isn’t a betrayal of the body; it’s an ally that provides energy, courage, social connection, and the capacity to learn. Once you see it this way, stress stops being an enemy to eliminate and becomes a resource you can trust and harness.

The chapter ends with a powerful reframing:

“We get stressed when our goals are on the line, so we take action… when we need courage… so we can connect with others… so that we will learn from our mistakes. The stress response is more than a basic survival instinct. It is built into how humans operate, how we relate to one another, and how we become resilient.”

In short, Chapter 2 transforms stress from public health enemy #1 into one of evolution’s greatest gifts—provided we stop treating it like poison."