Chapter 10: Why Is Psychological Stress Stressful?

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Welcome to the Deep Dive, where we extract the most important nuggets of knowledge from fascinating research and make them immediately useful for you.

Today we're plunging into a question that's deeply personal for many of us.

Why does stress feel so overwhelming sometimes?

Why do some people seem to just sail through challenges while others get completely bogged down?

Our source for this dive is a really remarkable chapter from Robert M.

Sapolsky's famous work, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers.

Our mission today is to try and uncover how psychological factors fundamentally shape our physiological stress responses.

We want to move beyond thinking about the body as just a machine.

You see, for a long time we pictured stress as pretty simple, almost like an input -output thing, like a circuit board.

Stressor goes in, predictable response comes out.

But Sapolsky, well, his insights reveal a much, much more intricate picture.

Yeah, absolutely.

And what's fascinating about that early period is how influential that bioengineer perspective really was.

People like Sully, pioneers in stress physiology,

they genuinely viewed the body like an intricate machine.

They focused on, you know, precise input -output ratios, feedback loops, these things called servomechanisms.

Servomechanisms, like self -regulating systems.

Exactly.

Systems designed to keep things stable, maintain a particular biological state.

They applied really rigorous methods using mathematics to understand, say, a zebra's response to a lion.

We learned how the brain measures levels of key stress hormones, like glucocorticoids.

Cortisol is the one most people know.

Right.

And not just how much is there, but also the rate of change, how fast things are going up or down.

And they found these immediate responses, like adrenaline, epinephrine, or glucagon surges, often looked pretty linear, proportional to the stressor.

So like, a bigger drop in blood pressure meant a bigger hormone surge.

Pretty much.

The body's ability to measure how far and how fast it's being knocked out of homeostatic balance, its stable internal state, it's actually remarkably accurate.

Okay.

So that input -output model, it works well for a physical threat, like that lion chasing the zebra.

You can map out the hormones pretty well.

But what about our stressors?

You know, the listener might be thinking about losing a job or a big deadline, or even just a fight with someone.

Does that purely mechanical view still hold up, or did it start showing cracks pretty quickly?

That's exactly where the cracks appeared.

This mechanistic view, while really powerful for understanding immediate physical threats, it hit a wall starting around the late 1950s.

It just couldn't explain, for example, why one person gets ulcers when a factory closes and someone else in the exact same boat doesn't.

The big realization was profound, really.

Yeah.

The physiological stress response can be actively modulated by psychological factors.

Modulated, meaning turned up or down.

Turned example that really highlights it.

Imagine a child going through something painful, like a medical procedure.

The physical input, the pain itself is identical, the pain receptors firing just the same.

But, and this is key, if that child gets to cry in their mother's arms during it, their physiological stress response is significantly lower than a child who doesn't have that comfort.

Right.

Same pain, different output.

Exactly.

So what does that tell us?

It seems huge.

It tells us two incredibly important things.

First, identical physical stressors can be perceived differently.

The mother's comfort changed the experience of the pain.

And second, maybe even more strikingly, psychological factors alone can trigger a full blown stress response.

Even with zero actual physical disruption, no change in that homeostatic balance we talked about.

Wow.

So just thinking about something stressful can set off the same alarms as actually being chased by a lion.

Essentially, yes.

Now this kicked off a big debate.

You had figures like John Mason at Yale arguing, maybe a bit extremely, that all stress responses were ultimately psychological.

Sillai pushed back, pointing out that even an anesthetized animal still shows a stress response to surgery.

So it wasn't all psychology.

But the main point stood.

The psychologists had definitely earned their seat at the table.

Okay, so they're at the table.

The big question then comes, if psychology can tweak the stress response or even flick the switch,

what are these critical psychological variables?

What are the mind's levers?

That's what researchers started nailing down.

And the first one is something we can all relate to, I think.

Having outlets for frustration.

Ah, like needing to punch something.

Or maybe just vent.

Kind of.

Jay Weiss, a physiologist, showed this really clearly with rats.

Picture this.

One rat gets mild electric shocks.

Predictably, it gets stressed, higher heart rate, more glucocorticoids, likely develops ulcers.

Now a second rat gets the exact same shocks.

But whenever it gets shocked, it has a wooden bar it can gnaw on.

Does the gnawing help?

Massively.

That rat is far less likely to get an ulcer.

The simple act of doing something, anything, to release that pent -up energy, even though it doesn't stop the shocks, it buffers the impact.

That's fascinating.

So it's not just about stopping the stressor, it's about having some kind of action.

Even if it's just biting wood.

Precisely.

It's about having an outlet for the frustration the stressor causes.

Other things work too for the rats, like getting to eat, or drink, or run on a wheel during the stress.

And for humans.

We see this too, right?

Punching a wall, maybe going for a hard run, or diving into a hobby.

Sapolsky mentions even imagined outlets helping, like a POW meticulously planning a fantasy golf game, or someone ill mapping imaginary mountains.

Exactly.

That perceived agency, that sense you can do something, even symbolic, it changes the physiology.

A variation on Weiss's experiment revealed another less pleasant outlet, displacement of aggression.

Displacement, meaning taking it out on someone else.

You got it.

If that shocked rat, instead of the wood, could bite another rat.

That also worked wonders for minimizing its own stress response.

Oh boy.

So the classic kick the cat scenario actually.

Works.

Physiologically speaking, for the kicker.

Physiologically, for the immediate stress response of the aggressor, yes.

Sapolsky notes this is kind of a primate specialty.

You see it in baboons.

A male loses a fight, turns around, and takes it out on a lower ranking individual.

It ripples down the hierarchy.

Right.

You hear that phrase, he doesn't get ulcers, he gives them.

It sounds like there's a biological basis for that, however uncomfortable.

There is.

But it's crucial, as you hinted, to distinguish the immediate physiological relief for the aggressor from the, let's say, broader consequences.

It's not a healthy coping strategy overall.

Definitely not sustainable or good for anyone, really.

Which leads us to something much more positive and, frankly, powerful.

Social support networks.

Ah, yes.

This one is incredibly important, and the evidence is just overwhelming.

Take an infant primate, subject it to something unpleasant, it shows a clear stress response.

But if friendly, familiar primates are nearby, that stress response goes way down.

Okay, so company helps.

But here's the twist.

If stranger primates are present, the stress response actually gets worse.

Worse, wow.

So not just having bodies around, it's about having real supportive connections.

People, or primates, you trust.

Exactly.

True.

Supportive connections.

We see it in humans constantly.

Patients facing scary procedures, like cardiac catheterization.

The ones who actually talked to the doctors about their fears showed smaller glucocorticoid responses than the ones who tried to be stoic and keep it all in.

Just talking about it helped.

It seemed so.

Sharing vulnerability, getting understanding.

It makes a physiological difference.

Sapolsky's own work with wild baboons drives this home.

He found low -ranking males who had strong social ties, friends they groomed, sexual partners had significantly lower baseline glucocorticoid levels than other low -ranking males who were more isolated.

Even being low -status, having friends buffered the stress.

It absolutely did.

And even simple physical contact helps.

Holding hands can lower the cardiovascular stress response in both primates and humans.

We know people with spouses, close friends, they tend to live longer.

And the health risks, tragically, skyrocket when a spouse dies.

Social connection is fundamental to our well -being.

Okay, so we have outlets, we have social support.

What about just knowing what's coming, even if it's bad news?

Let's talk about predictability.

Right.

Back to VICE's rats for a moment.

Remember the rat getting shocks.

If, instead of random shocks, it gets a warning bell just before each one, it develops far fewer ulcers.

Why?

The shocks are the same?

Because the warning tells the rat when the shock is coming.

And crucially, it also tells the rat when it's safe.

When the bell isn't ringing, the rat can relax.

Without the warning, it's always tense, always anticipating.

Is it now?

Is it now?

That constant vigilance is incredibly stressful.

So uncertainty is a huge stressor in itself.

A massive one.

Familiar, predictable stressors, even if unpleasant, tend to generate smaller stress responses over time as we habituate.

And the loss of predictability can be a potent stressor.

They did studies where rats got the same total amount of food over an hour, but at random, unpredictable times, their glucocorticoids went up.

Just from the uncertainty, even though they weren't hungry.

That reminds me of what Sapolsky wrote about the 1989 San Francisco earthquake.

He said it felt uniquely stressful because earthquakes are so utterly unpredictable.

Unlike, say, a hurricane where you might get some warning.

Exactly.

That unpredictability creates a deeper anxiety.

And history shows this too.

During the London Blitz in World War II, people in the suburbs who faced infrequent, unpredictable bombing raids actually developed more ulcers than people in central London who were bombed predictably almost every night.

That seems counterintuitive.

More bombing equals less stress.

Because the Londoners knew it was coming.

They could prepare mentally, take shelter, and importantly, they knew when it wasn't happening, allowing periods of relative calm.

The predictability, even of something awful, offered a strange kind of psychological foothold.

People awaiting execution have even expressed relief when the date is finally set.

The uncertainty is its own form of torture.

That perceived foothold leads nicely into the next big factor, doesn't it?

Control.

Or maybe, more accurately, the feeling of control.

Yes.

Perceived control is critical.

It's often not about whether you actually have control, but whether you believe you do.

Another rat study.

Train a rat to press a lever to avoid shocks.

It learns.

Now take the lever away.

Shocks become unavoidable.

The rat's stress response goes through the roof.

It knows what should work, but now it can't do it.

Okay, that makes sense.

Loss of control is stressful.

But here's the kicker.

Put the lever back, but disconnect it.

It does nothing.

The rat presses it, still gets shocked just as often.

But its stress response is lower than when the lever was completely gone.

The belief, the illusion that it's doing something useful, provides a buffer.

Especially if it remembers a time when pressing the lever did reduce the shocks.

Wow.

That really hits home.

Think about flying versus driving.

Most of us know flying is statistically safer, right?

Right.

But so many people are afraid of flying, not driving.

Why?

Because in the car, we feel like we're in control or holding the wheel.

On a plane, we feel we have zero control.

It's that perception, that illusion, that makes all the difference to our stress levels.

Precisely.

And this desire for control seems pretty deep -seated.

Studies show even pigeons and rats, if the task isn't overly difficult, prefer to work for their food, like pecking a key rather than just have it delivered freely.

There's an intrinsic value in feeling like you're making something happen.

Okay, one more major psychological factor.

Our perspective.

How we frame things.

This is about the perception of things getting better or worse.

Yeah, this is about the trajectory.

Imagine two rats again.

Rat A goes from getting 10 shocks an hour up to 25.

Rat B goes from getting 50 shocks an hour down to 25.

Objectively, both are now getting 25 shocks an hour.

But who's more stressed?

I'm guessing rat A, the one whose situation got worse.

Exactly.

Rat A is way more stressed.

Rat B, even though 25 shocks isn't pleasant, perceives it as an improvement compared to 50.

Its stress response is much lower.

It's all about the perceived trend line.

And we see this in people too.

Absolutely.

Sapolsky gives the example of parents being told their child has cancer, but there's a 25 % chance of remission.

Their glucocorticoid levels only rise moderately.

Why?

Because just moments before, they might have thought the odds were practically zero.

25 % feels like a massive improvement, a miracle even.

His Bamoon research shows it too.

In unstable hierarchies, it wasn't just the low -ranking males who were stressed.

It was the males whose ranks were actively dropping.

The ones whose ranks were rising, even amidst chaos, showed lower stress levels.

Direction matters.

Okay, so we've got these key psychological levers.

Outlets, social support, predictability, control, and perception of improvement.

It sounds like the roadmap to managing stress is just

maximize all of those, right?

Get more control, make things predictable.

If only it were that simple.

As with most things in biology, and definitely psychology, there are nuances.

It's more complicated than just more is always better.

Okay, how so?

Where do these factors get tricky?

Well, take predictability again.

Warnings don't help much for very rare events.

You don't stress less about a meteor hitting your car just because someone warns you it's technically possible.

And they don't help much for very frequent, almost constant things either, like your daily crowded commute.

You already know it's coming.

Right.

A warning for that would just be annoying.

Exactly.

Timing is also key.

A warning five seconds before you plunge your hand into ice water.

Not enough time to mentally prepare.

A warning 11 years in advance.

Doesn't really help with the immediate anticipation.

And vague information someone in this building might get laid off soon that can actually increase anxiety compared to knowing nothing or knowing specifics.

So too close, too far, too vague.

Predictability isn't a magic bullet.

No.

And for truly awful, unavoidable things, like knowing you have a terminal illness or a severe injury knowing it's coming, doesn't necessarily make the experience less stressful.

Sometimes ignorance might be bliss, or at least less acutely painful in the anticipation phase.

Predictability works best for stressors that are moderately frequent, where the warning comes within a useful time frame and gives specific information.

That makes sense.

It gives you time to brace yourself, use coping strategies.

Like when the dentist says, okay, just two more drills.

You can kind of grit your teeth and think, I can handle two more.

Precisely.

And control has similar subtleties.

That artificial sense of control, like the rat with the disconnected lever, it helps most when you can easily imagine things being worse.

You think, wow, that was bad.

But thank goodness I was pressing that lever.

It could have been terrible.

You can rationalize it, give yourself credit, even if it wasn't real.

Right.

But if the stressor is truly awful, truly unavoidable, that same artificial sense of control can backfire badly.

It can lead to terrible self -blame.

This horrible thing happened, and it must be my fault because I thought I had control.

It makes people feel responsible for tragedies they had no power over.

Like blaming victims.

Exactly.

Blaming victims of assault.

Or parents whose child develops a condition like schizophrenia.

It's a misplaced and harmful application of the desire for control when something is genuinely outside anyone's influence.

This complexity around control, it makes me think about that old idea of the executive stress syndrome.

The notion that people at the top, the bosses, with all the control, are the ones getting ulcers.

Is there any truth to that?

Ah, yes.

The executive monkey studies.

That idea came largely from a famous 1958 study by Joseph Brady.

He had these executive monkeys who could press a bar to delay electric shocks for themselves, and a paired yoked monkey.

And he found the executive monkeys, the ones seemingly in control, developed more ulcers.

So more control equals more stress.

That was the headline, and it really stuck in popular culture.

But the study had some major problems.

For one, the stressor setup might have been one of those situations where control is detrimental.

Maybe the shocks were too frequent or unavoidable despite the lever.

But more importantly, the monkeys weren't assigned randomly.

The executives were specifically chosen because they learned to press the bar quickly in pilot tests.

Meaning they might have just been more twitchy to begin with.

Exactly.

They were likely just more emotionally reactive, more prone to stress responses and ulcers regardless of the lever.

Later research, much more rigorous research, has pretty thoroughly debunked the idea.

The general consensus now is that people with more control and predictability in their work and lives, typically those higher up the chain, generally experience less stress -related illness.

It's usually the lack of control, not the abundance of it, that drives stress.

Executives are more likely to give ulcers than get them, as the saying goes.

Okay, that clears that up.

Let's try and pull this all together.

Okay.

So the big takeaway from this deep dive into Sapolsky's work is that our physiological stress responses aren't just simple mechanical reactions.

They are profoundly shaped, modulated, and sometimes even fully triggered by psychological factors.

Right.

Things like having outlets for frustration.

Or displacing aggression, though that's problematic.

Having strong social support.

Knowing what's coming, that predictability.

Having a sense of control, even just perceived control.

And feeling like things are generally improving rather than getting worse.

Exactly.

These psychological filters are a huge part of why different people react so differently to the same objective stressors, and why some of us are more vulnerable to stress -related diseases than others.

It goes way beyond just our basic physiology.

So you see, it really isn't just about what happens to you.

It's so much about how you perceive it, how you interpret it.

Do you have an outlet?

Do you have friends?

Do you have some sense of what's next?

Or a belief you can influence things.

It's this complex interplay.

And understanding these psychological factors, these filters, it's really key to navigating the stressors that life inevitably throws our way.

This deep dive, I think, gives us a much more nuanced blueprint for thinking about stress.

And maybe the answer isn't as simple as just get more control.

But understanding these variables, it's a really powerful starting point for managing stress better.

Thank you so much for joining us on this deep dive into the intricate world of psychological stress, drawing from Robert Sapolsky's Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers.

We really hope this gave you some valuable insights to think about.

Maybe even reflect on which of these factors you could cultivate a bit more in your own life.

Yeah, thanks for diving in with us.

It's fascinating stuff, and we look forward to exploring more with you next time.