Chapter 13: Managing Stress

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Welcome back to The Deep Dive.

We're the folks who dig through your sources to pull out the really key bits of knowledge.

That's us.

Today, we're diving into a really fascinating chapter from Robert Sapolsky's classic, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers.

It's all about managing stress.

Yeah, this is a good one.

So if you've ever felt, you know, totally overwhelmed by life or maybe wondered why some people just seem to sail through everything.

Well, this deep dive is definitely for you.

It really is.

And what's interesting is, you know, a lot of Sapolsky's book talks about the, well, the pretty grim effects of stress on our bodies.

Right, it can be quite bleak.

But this chapter, it kind of has this much needed perspective of hope, really.

It moves away from just the universal damage stress can do and looks instead at the incredible variety and how different individuals cope and crucially what we can actually learn from that.

Exactly.

And that's our mission today.

Explore those individual differences, understand the, well, sometimes surprising things that make people resilient and pull out some practical science -backed insights for managing psychological stress in our own lives.

All based strictly on what Sapolsky lays out here.

Let's do it.

Okay, so Sapolsky kicks things off with this really interesting observation he made, I think it was at gerontology meetings.

Yeah, conferences about aging.

Right.

And he sees all these, you know, standard bar graphs showing decline with age across big groups of people, things like kidney function, immunity,

strength,

the usual stuff.

The averages, yeah.

But then he notices these little t -shaped variance symbols on top of the bars.

Ah, yes, those little error bars, they tell a story.

They really do.

Because what's fascinating is, okay, the average score for older people goes down fine, but the range of scores, the variance, what those t -shaped show actually gets wider with age.

Significantly wider.

And this isn't just, you know, statistical noise or an annoyance for the researchers.

It means that within that older group, you have the small but really significant chunk of people who aren't just holding steady.

Some are actually improving on certain things.

Improving.

Get this, their kidney filtration rates might get better, blood pressure goes down, they do better on memory tests.

It's pretty counterintuitive, isn't it?

Totally.

So the big question becomes, who are these people?

What are they doing differently?

And Sapolsky points out this pattern, this increasing variance, it's not just about aging.

You see it in lots of situations where life really tests us.

Right, he gives examples like political prisoners, an absolutely horrific experience.

Most people suffer terrible long -term trauma, understandably.

But then you have this maybe one or two who come out of it.

Sapolsky says, almost grateful.

Like they found some profound new meaning through the ordeal.

Wow.

That's hard to imagine.

It is.

Or think about studies on people doing really dangerous tasks.

Parachuting, landing jets on aircraft carriers, underwater demolition teams.

Super high stress.

And physiologically, some people's bodies are just going haywire with stress hormones.

Others, they're remarkably calm, almost physiologically unfazed by the whole thing.

And it even trickles down to like everyday annoyances.

The slow checkout line at the supermarket.

Ah yes, the classic.

You might be absolutely fuming, blood pressure rising, but the person behind you could be totally calm, just daydreaming.

It just shows we don't all react the same way.

We don't all just collapse into, as Sapolsky puts it, puddles of stressed related disease.

Thank goodness for that variance.

Okay, so let's dig into some of the biology Sapolsky discusses.

Earlier in the book, he talks a lot about glucocorticoids.

Those are the main stress hormones, right?

Like cortisol in humans.

Exactly.

And one of the really worrying findings was how chronic exposure to high levels of these hormones damages the hippocampus.

Which is that part of the brain that's key for memory.

And also for turning off the stress response itself.

It's part of the feedback loop.

Ah, right.

So if the hippocampus gets damaged by stress hormones.

It gets worse at telling the body to stop producing those hormones, which means more hormones, more damage, less ability to shut it off.

It's this nasty downward spiral, a feed forward cascade, he calls it.

And it seemed like this was just, you know, an unavoidable part of aging and chronic stress.

Kind of depressing.

It did seem that way.

But then a friend of Sapolsky's, Michael Meany, did this really elegant experiment with rats that sort of blew that idea up.

Oh yeah.

What did he do?

Well, Meany was also looking at this age related degeneration in rats.

But before he even started that, he just observed the mother rats and their mommy capacity, as Sapolsky puts it.

Basically how much licking and grooming they did with their pups.

Okay.

So some moms were more attentive than others.

Right.

And here's the kicker.

Meany found that all those bad things, the hippocampal damage, the memory problems, the high glucocorticoid levels later in life, they were not inevitable for the rats who had, quote, aged successfully.

And those were the rats who?

Who had the attentive moms.

Or more specifically, it linked back to this concept of neonatal handling.

Neonatal handling.

Yeah.

It's basically this experimental technique where researchers gently pick up and handle a rat pup for maybe 15 minutes a day during the first few weeks of its life.

Just that.

Like mimicking a caring mom.

Sort of, yeah.

And incredibly, rats that received this simple handling grew up to secrete less glucocorticoids as adults when stressed.

Their hippocampus stayed healthier, and that whole damaging feed forward cascade just didn't happen nearly as much.

Wow.

So a little bit of early life experience could fundamentally change their stress physiology and protect their brains decades later.

That's the implication.

It showed this degeneration wasn't baked in.

It wasn't inevitable,

which is, I mean, pretty hopeful.

That is hopeful.

OK, so that's rats.

What about people facing really extreme stress?

Sapolsky brings up a classic, quite powerful study from the early 60s.

It looked at parents whose children were dying of cancer.

Just immense, unimaginable stress.

Oh, gosh.

Researchers measured their glucocorticoid levels, those same stress hormones, trying to understand how they were coping physiologically.

And as you'd expect by now, there was huge individual variation.

So some parents had much lower stress hormone levels than others, even in that same awful situation.

Exactly.

And the researchers tried to figure out why.

What were the low stress parents doing or thinking differently?

They pinpointed three key coping strategies.

OK, what were they?

First was religious rationalization.

Some parents found comfort and meaning within a religious framework.

They might see the illness not just as a tragedy, but maybe as God choosing them for some kind of extra special assignment.

Right.

Finding a higher purpose in it.

And that perspective correlated with lower stress hormone levels.

Second was displacement of worry.

Displacement, like shifting focus.

Yeah.

The ability to take this huge, terrifying worry, like, my child might die any minute, and shift it onto something slightly less overwhelming.

So instead, they might focus on worrying, oh, I hope my child isn't lonely right now.

Ah, focusing on a manageable piece of the anxiety.

Kind of.

And the third factor was denial during remission.

When the child was temporarily doing better in remission, some parents really leaned into that.

They focused only on the present wellness, actively denying the possibility that the cancer could return.

OK, living in the moment, pushing the fear away.

And that also correlated with lower stress hormones.

During the remission period, yes.

But here's where it gets complicated.

That study had a really poignant follow up.

Oh.

When the children, sadly, did eventually pass away, the parents who had most strongly used denial during the remission phase, they experienced the biggest spike in glucocorticoids afterwards.

Wow.

So the relief was temporary, but the crash was harder.

It suggests that, yeah, it highlights how these coping mechanisms, while maybe helpful in the short term, can be like double -edged swords.

If reality eventually shatters that denial, the physiological cost might be higher.

That makes sense.

It's not a simple fix.

OK, another concept Sobulski revisits is learned helplessness.

Right.

That idea where if you experience uncontrollable negative events, you eventually just stop trying.

You give up, even if control becomes possible later.

We've talked about that before.

But again, he says, not everyone succumbs to it equally.

Exactly.

There's a variance here, too.

Some people, and animals, are much more resistant.

And a big factor, especially in humans, seems to be developing what psychologists call an internal locus of control.

Internal locus of control.

Meaning, you feel like you are in charge of your fate.

Pretty much.

You believe your actions make a difference, that you can influence outcomes.

That's opposed to an external locus of control, where you feel like things just happen to you.

It's all luck, or fate, or powerful others pulling the strings.

And people with that internal locus are tougher against learned helplessness.

Significantly more resistant, yes.

And there's animal research supporting this, too.

Studies with dogs, for instance.

What did they find?

They found that dogs who first had experience with controllable stressors say, they learned they could press a lever to turn off a mild shock, were much less likely to become helpless later on, even when they were put in a situation with shocks they couldn't control.

Interesting.

So that earlier experience of having control kind of inoculated them.

It seemed to.

It's like they learned to see bad events

as localized or temporary, not as proof that the whole world is uncontrollable.

They didn't generalize the helplessness.

That's a powerful lesson.

Okay, let's shift gears a bit.

Baboons.

So Polsky's famous for studying them.

Decades in the Serengeti, yeah.

And what's fascinating is these baboons, they live in a pretty cushy environment, biologically speaking.

Not many predators, plenty of food.

Sounds nice.

It is.

So most of their stress isn't about basic survival.

It's social and psychological stress.

Sound familiar?

Painfully so.

So what stresses out a baboon?

A huge amount of it revolves around dominance rank, where they sit in the social hierarchy.

Ah, the picking order.

Exactly.

And Sapolsky's early work found a really clear physiological link, low -ranking males.

They consistently had higher baseline levels of glucocorticoids.

The stress hormones again.

Yep.

Also more bad LDL cholesterol,

fewer of those important immune cells called lymphocytes, and just a much bigger, more dramatic stress response when something bad did happen.

And crucially, it seems like achieving a certain rank actually caused these physiological changes.

So your social standing directly impacted your stress biology?

That was the initial finding.

But then, maybe a dozen years into the study, Sapolsky started noticing.

It wasn't just about rank.

There was more going on.

Like what?

Personality variables.

He saw some high -ranking males who actually had high stress hormone levels, despite their status, and conversely, some low -ranking guys who seemed to be coping remarkably well physiologically.

So rank wasn't the whole story.

Personality mattered, too.

What kinds of traits made a difference?

Sapolsky identified a few key characteristics of the successful baboon males, the ones with low glucocorticoids, regardless of their rank.

First, cognitive appraisal.

Meaning how they interpreted things.

Precisely.

They were good at telling the difference between a real threat and something neutral.

Like, is that rival approaching me aggressively, or is he just walking past to grab some food, or is he just napping over there?

The guys who couldn't distinguish well, who saw threats everywhere,

hire glucocorticoids.

Okay, so accurate threat assessment.

What else?

Taking initiative.

When a real threat did occur, the successful males didn't just wait passively.

They tended to take control, maybe make the first move, initiate the confrontation.

Passivity was linked to higher stress.

Interesting.

Being proactive helps.

Seems so.

Third was outcome assessment.

Basically, knowing if you actually won or lost a fight.

That seems important.

You'd think, and reacting appropriately.

So, if you won, maybe you go groom a female or hang out with an ally.

If you lost, well, maybe you engage in what's called displaced aggression.

Taking it out on someone lower down the ladder.

Picking on someone smaller.

Not nice, but apparently for baboons, it can be an effective outlet for frustration, physiologically speaking.

The males who couldn't tell if they'd won or lost or didn't react effectively.

Higher stress levels.

Okay, so accurate appraisal, taking initiative, knowing the outcome.

Anything else?

Yes, and this one's huge.

It resonates a lot with human studies.

Social affiliation.

Friendships, basically.

Exactly.

The males who had lower glucocorticoids were the ones who invested in social bonds.

They spent more time grooming females, not just for mating, but friendly grooming.

They got groomed a lot by others.

They played with the young baboons.

They were just better connected.

The nice guys finish first, physiologically speaking.

In terms of stress hormones, it looks that way.

It really mirrors all the human research on the protective power of social support.

It strongly suggests that how an animal or a person perceives the world, responds to it, copes with it.

That stuff, driven by personality and social ties, is just as important, maybe more important, than just their external situation like rank.

Whether they see the glass as half full or half empty, their body reflects that.

That's a good way to put it.

Okay, so this is all fascinating, but it could sound a bit deterministic, like you're stuck with your personality or your early experiences.

Does Sapolsky offer hope for change?

Absolutely.

He emphasizes that we are malleable beasts.

We're not locked in.

Our coping styles, even our physiology, can change.

How?

What are the examples?

Well, think about simple physical conditioning.

Regular exercise, it doesn't just make you fitter.

It actually helps recalibrate your whole stress response system.

Right, lower resting heart rate, blood pressure.

Exactly, your body just becomes less reactive to everyday hassles.

Then there's psychotherapy.

Studies have shown it can lead to changes not just in behavior, but in things like cholesterol profiles, and even heart attack risk, especially for those classic type A personalities.

Changes beyond just talking about feelings.

Real physiological shifts and various relaxation techniques, things like transcendental meditation, lamez breathing for childbirth, other practices that sort of alter consciousness.

These have been shown to measurably reduce glucocorticoid levels.

So conscious practice can change the body's stress chemistry.

It can, and another powerful mechanism is habituation through repetition.

Getting used to something.

Pretty much.

He talks about that classic study of Norwegian soldiers learning to parachute.

Oh yeah, you mentioned parachuting earlier.

Right, so the first few times, these guys were terrified.

Their stress hormones were sky high for hours before and after the jump.

Understandable.

Totally.

But as they did it again and again, their bodies learned.

The huge anticipatory stress response shrank.

The post -jump stress response shrank.

Eventually the big physiological spike was confined pretty much only to the actual moments of jumping out of the plane.

Their minds and bodies sort of habituated away the psychological fear part.

Exactly.

The psychological component got dialed way back through experience.

It shows just how much learning and adaptation influence our stress response.

And it brings us back to those key psychological factors.

Let me guess.

Control, predictability.

You got it.

Control, predictability, social support, and having outlets for frustration.

These keep coming up as mediators of the stress response.

Okay, so let's look at some real -world proof for these.

Control seems like a big one.

Huge.

Think about self -medication for chronic pain.

There were studies, for example, with cancer patients or people recovering from surgery.

In one set up, they get painkillers on a fixed schedule.

In another, they get a button they can press to administer the dose themselves whenever they feel they need it.

They have control.

And what happened?

The patients who had control over their dosage actually ended up using less pain medication overall.

Less.

Even though they could take it whenever they wanted.

Yep.

Just having the control, even just the knowledge that they could get relief immediately if the pain got too bad, that reduced their stress and anxiety so much that their actual need for the drug went down.

They cut down the uncertainty.

That's powerful.

Control reduces the stress of the pain itself.

Seems so.

And you see similar things in studies about increasing control in nursing homes.

Ah, yes.

The elderly residents, what did they find there?

Really remarkable stuff.

When residents were given more choices, more responsibility, simple things like choosing their meal options, deciding activities, maybe taking care of a plant, being part of a resident council.

Giving them agency back.

Exactly.

Compared to control groups who didn't get these choices, the residents with more control became more active.

They reported feeling happier.

Their health markers improved.

And this is stunning.

Their death rate over the study period was half that of the control group.

Half death rate just from having more control over their daily lives.

Incredible, isn't it?

Another study looked at residents facing an unavoidable move to a different facility.

Very stressful.

Yeah, I bet.

Some were given lots of information beforehand, choices about the moving day, how to decorate their new room again, elements of control and predictability.

They had significantly fewer medical problems related to the move compared to residents who were moved with less information and control.

It really buffers the stress.

But there was a downside mentioned too, right?

About helping too much.

Ah, yes.

Infantilization.

In some nursing home settings, when staff were maybe too helpful, doing things for residents that they could still potentially do for themselves.

Trying to be nice, perhaps.

Probably.

But the effect was negative.

The residents' performance and sense of well -being actually declined.

Taking away their agency, even with good intentions, was harmful.

It underscores how important that sense of competence and control is.

Definitely.

But there's a really important warning label that comes with control and predictability.

Sapolsky highlights this student visitor study in a nursing home.

What happened there?

Students were assigned to visit residents regularly.

Some residents were given control over when the students visited, predictably.

And just like the other studies, their health and mood improved during the visits.

Okay, sounds good so far.

But here's the catch.

The study had a set end date.

When the visits stopped completely,

the residents who had been given control, the ones who had improved the most, they ended up declining even further than they were before the study began.

Worse than the residents who never had the visits or the control.

Oh, wow.

So having control and predictability and then having it yanked away was worse than never having it.

That's what it suggests.

Sapolsky quotes someone saying, hope given and then taken away capriciously can be incredibly damaging.

It shows how potent our perception of things getting worse can be.

It's a really delicate balance.

It really is.

So these coping tools, control, predictability, social support, they're powerful, but you have to use them carefully.

Extremely carefully.

Sapolsky really emphasizes this.

It's definitely not a simple case of more is always better.

Okay, let's unpack why.

What are the caveats?

Let's start with social affiliation.

Good to have friends, right?

Generally, yes.

But not all social contact is good.

He notes that for some animals, like isolated primates, suddenly introducing them into a complex new social group can be massively stressful long term.

Right.

Not all social interaction is supportive.

And for humans, think about bad relationships.

Studies have shown that being in a distressed marriage can actually suppress your immune system function.

So you need true affiliation, genuine support, not just being physically near people or superficial interactions with strangers.

Quality over quantity.

Makes sense.

What about predictability and information?

Isn't knowing what's coming usually good?

Often, but not always.

Think about it.

Is information helpful if it's about something awful that's absolutely inevitable and you can do nothing about it?

Probably not.

Just makes you dread it longer.

Exactly.

Or what about information about something really, really rare?

Probably not useful.

Might just cause needless anxiety.

Also, the timing matters.

Information that comes way too early before you can process it or way too late after you needed it.

Not helpful.

And information that's overwhelmingly negative and super vague, like someone telling you, oh, this upcoming review is going to be really tough on you.

They're going to grill you.

But I don't know exactly how or why.

That can just ramp up anxiety, not reduce it.

Right.

Leaves you imagining the worst.

And sometimes just getting too much information, even if it's accurate, can be stressful in itself.

Information overload.

It can make you feel overwhelmed out of control.

Okay, so information needs to be timely,

specific,

actionable, and not overwhelming.

Got it.

Now, what about control?

You said that was most double -edged.

Yeah, this one's particularly tricky.

First, there's the danger of illusory control.

Believing you have control when you actually don't.

Precisely.

And this can be psychologically crippling.

Sapolsky gives a couple of stark examples.

One is a story, maybe apocryphal, about a medical student being hazed.

They're tricked into thinking they have this absolutely critical life or death role in a surgery, but it's actually impossible for them to manage.

The burden is immense.

Oh, that's cool.

And a real -world example.

Sir Cyril Radcliffe, the British lawyer, given just seven weeks to draw the partition line between India and Pakistan in 1947.

An impossible task with catastrophic consequences no matter what he did.

Believing he had meaningful control over that unmanageable situation likely caused immense psychological distress.

It's not comforting to feel responsible for the uncontrollable.

Yeah, that sounds like a recipe for burnout or breakdown.

Absolutely.

And another downside of perceived control relates to blame.

If something terrible happens and you believed you were in control— You blame yourself.

That's all my fault.

Exactly.

What a disaster.

And I could have, should have prevented it.

That's incredibly damaging.

A sense of control seems to be most beneficial for milder, more manageable stressors.

It helps you feel buffered.

Like, okay, I handled that.

It could have been worse because I was in charge.

Not for genuine catastrophes where self -blame becomes the toxic byproduct.

So use control wisely.

Focus it on things you can actually influence.

That's the gist.

And many leading researchers in this area— Ellen Langer, David Spiegel— they all echo similar themes.

Pick your battles carefully.

Don't burden people, or yourself, with responsibility for things you can't actually control.

Avoid unrealistic anger or self -blame.

Spiegel found, for instance, that for cancer patients, feeling some control over the future course of their disease helped morale, but believing they had control over its original cause often led to damaging guilt.

And Richard Lazarus, another giant in stress research, pointed out that sometimes, when there's truly nothing constructive you can do, a bit of denial might actually be the healthiest option temporarily.

It's about finding the right tool for the right situation, isn't it?

It really is.

Okay,

so wrapping this section up, Martin Seligman, who originally studied learned helplessness, later shifted focus to learned optimism.

How does that fit in?

Seligman started studying people who are naturally resilient to stress and helplessness.

He found a lot of it comes down to their attributional style.

How they explain good and bad events to themselves.

Exactly.

So when good things happen, psychologically healthy people tend to attribute it to their own efforts or qualities, internal, and they see it as likely to affect other areas of their life, pervasive, and last for a while, permanent.

I aced the test because I'm smart and studied hard, and this means I'll probably do well in other classes too.

Something like that, yeah.

But critically, when bad things happen, they do the opposite.

They attribute it to external factors.

The test was unusually hard.

See it as specific to that one situation, isolated.

It doesn't mean I'm bad at everything and view it as temporary.

I'll do better next time.

Ah, so they don't let setbacks define them or generalize.

Right.

They contain the negativity.

And Seligman argues, we can learn to adopt this more optimistic attributional style.

Okay.

So putting all these pieces together, the baboon traits, the human studies, the caveats, what are Sapolsky's overall practical strategies for managing stress better?

He boils it down to a few key areas.

First, find outlets for frustration.

Something you can do regularly that works for you and importantly, doesn't cause distress to others.

Could be sports, meditation, prayer, hobbies, talking to a friend.

Find your outlet.

Got it.

Release the pressure valve safely.

Second, manage hope and realism.

For truly awful, uncontrollable situations, maybe temporary denial is needed just to stay sane.

For more manageable problems, cultivate hope, but do it rationally.

Be optimistic, but maybe keep a small part of your mind prepared for things not working out perfectly.

Protective pessimism almost.

Balance optimism with pragmatism.

Third, use strategic control.

Focus your energy on seeking control over current.

It's not just about eliminating stress because we probably can't, right?

It's about how we relate to it.

Exactly.

It's about understanding the nuances, understanding ourselves and using these psychological tools, control, predictability, outlets, social support, strategically and wisely.

We do have to acknowledge though, as Sapolsky does, that some things like severe illnesses or major disasters are beyond just psychological coping.

They need medical intervention, practical aid.

Absolutely.

Psychology isn't magic, but for a huge range of stressors, especially the ones common in our modern lives, a significant chunk of our well -being really is sensitive to what he calls the quality of our minds, our thoughts, our emotions, how we react.

And that feels like a really empowering message, actually.

Because think about it, so many of our modern stressors are psychological or social.

Traffic, deadlines,

social media pressure,

financial worries.

We've kind of invented a lot of them.

We have.

So as Sapolsky's work shows, even a rat can fundamentally change its long -term health trajectory just by how it perceives and interacts with its early world.

Surely we, with our capacity for reflection and wisdom,

can learn to lessen the grip these self -generated pressures have on us.

That is the hopeful implication, isn't it?

Which leads beautifully into maybe a final thought for you, the listener, to take away from this.

Yeah.

Just reflect for a moment how much of the stress you feel day to day is truly down to unavoidable external circumstances.

And how much might be shaped by the internal lens, the thoughts, the assumptions, the reactions through which you're viewing and processing your world.

And maybe, just maybe, what's one small strategic shift you could try making in that lens starting today?