31–40 of 132 posts
My body also changes due to stress. I get rashes on my hand if I get stressed for more than 2 days at a stretch.
Paul Tough's book, "How Children Succeed" [1] has a great section on how mother rats (called dams) can significantly counteract the stress of their offspring (called pups): "Scientists in rat labs are always picking up baby rats to examine them or weigh them, and one day about ten years ago, researchers in Meaney’s lab noticed a curious thing: When they put the pups back in the cages after handling them, some dams wo…
The problem was that _I_ always refused affection as a kid. I never came for hugs or kisses or anything, and when my parents tried to hug me it always felt really awkward for me. The only thing I'd come to my parents for would be back scratches, which I loved. I didn't get a feeling of affection from the scratches, they just felt physically pleasant and relaxing.
I wonder how, if at all, kids who refuse affection are impacted later in life. I _think_ I grew up to be a fairly well adjusted person. If I try to find something 'wrong' with me the only thing I can point to is some difficulty in relating to negative emotions in others. I guess I'd be very curious to see any studies about the flip-side - eg how many baby rats are resistant to the 'licking and grooming' offered by their mothers, and how are they impacted later in life?
I worry if the type of person who seeks out stimulating work and having that become a source of stress is risking damaging their health in the longer term -- I always vaguely assumed thinking hard about problems was a net positive for my brain & would keep me mentally active, but perhaps it's worth thinking about finding ways to keep doing this kind of work and at the same time minimizing the impact of the stress it causes.
Maybe aiming to work only when feeling well-rested, or working without deadlines could be things to consider along these lines -- I don't really have a central thesis or solution to stress-free & stimulating work, but these kinds of ideas have been on my mind.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same, dyshidrotic eczema is the closest thing I've found to what mine looks like.
is it like a bunch of purplish splines that cover the arms and chest?
I've been thinking lately about the line between feeling "stimulated" and feeling "stressed" by intellectual work. I certainly crave challenging problems but I feel sometimes like that inherently brushes up against stress -- thinking hard about a problem and hitting frustrating roadblocks along the way is more stressful than laying on the beach, but also to me feels much more meaningful. I worry if the type of person…
And I learned a thing or two about stress when I studied psychology.
Here are my thoughts (without sources and a bit worse editing as I am on my phone).
> I certainly crave challenging problems.
When crave something I always wonder how it is different vs a cocaine addict craving cocaine. I crave mental stimulation as well, so here are my observations:
1. Psychological addiction is possible.
2. Craving too much mental stimulation could weaken your social ties depending on how you seek it out.
3. You become intellectually sharper at whatever it is you’re stimulated by but in almost all cases not sharper in other areas, even when skills are transferable (unless the areas are really close).
4. As almost always, following a chronic crave does not make you happier. Like scratching an itch doesn’t make you happier.
Being frustrated is not an issue in my opinion. Frustration results from not achieving your goal while you believe you should still be able to progress but somehow you don’t. There is no stress there as you can simply do something else. Take the option of doing something else away and then you do have stress (e.g. this wasn’t a frustrating hobby problem in your free time but a problem on your job that is making your company lose $10k per hour).
> I worry if the type of person who seeks out stimulating work and having that become a source of stress is risking damaging their health in the longer term
Only if it is chronic. Read about the HPA axis. It proposes a biological explanation for depression through stress. Also, burnout is symptomatically very similar to depression (I am on mobile cannot find the source now, but any decent search engine can help).
> I always vaguely assumed thinking hard about problems was a net positive for my brain & would keep me mentally active
In this particular case the exercise analogy works. If you do anything physical (or mental) that is beyond your capacity or stamina but you somehow are forced to go through with it, then you will experience stress.
In closing only chronic stress is a bad thing since we can recuperate from temporary stress. Aka we simply need the ability to rest and the ability to recover.
On a short-term basis, stress is a good motivator to some.
Related to all of this (in an unusual way) is the self-determination theory of motivation. What you may see here is that in my examples people have little to no autonomy and that results in stress.
Am busy doing the Win Hof method. From what I understand, norepinephrine and particularly epinephrine release are desired goals of the cold exposure part his method as they suppress release of pro inflammatory cytokines.
*Wim, for those who might want to google.
I've been thinking lately about the line between feeling "stimulated" and feeling "stressed" by intellectual work. I certainly crave challenging problems but I feel sometimes like that inherently brushes up against stress -- thinking hard about a problem and hitting frustrating roadblocks along the way is more stressful than laying on the beach, but also to me feels much more meaningful. I worry if the type of person…
I thought quite a bit on the topic of craving and frustration. I wrote an article about it that I could email to you if you would like. And I learned a thing or two about stress when I studied psychology. Here are my thoughts (without sources and a bit worse editing as I am on my phone). > I certainly crave challenging problems. When crave something I always wonder how it is different vs a cocaine addict craving coca…
Lately, I've been trying to give myself plenty of boredom time. I still fail at it a lot, but I try to do most things with purpose now: I don't listen to music just because, for example, instead I decide I want to listen to music and then sit down to do just that. I feel I enjoy it a lot more this way! I also don't idly listen while travelling or walking anymore. I go for walks almost every day now and I enjoy the quiet as much as the exercise. I also try not to idly read stuff online (especially on my phone). I definitely still fail at this, but slowly I'm improving. Its better to spend half an hour bored than mindlessly reading stuff. There's been plenty of articles here about how boredom is good for your brain, after all.
Having said that, I do find it very difficult to do work that isn't mentally stimulating.
> On a short-term basis, stress is a good motivator to some.
When I was in my early twenties, I worked very very well under stress. Having a lot of pressure pushed me harder and I got a lot done in a short space of time. As I get older, though, I find that the stress bleeds over to the rest of my life and I'm less able to just shrug it off or channel it to get work done, so now too much stress slows me down instead, and seems to negatively effect my life and health in other ways instead. A small bit of stress is fine, of course, but chronic stress is, I believe, very unhealthy.
Anecdotally, I had a ton of health issues a few years ago that I believe (and the doctors said its possible when I asked about it) that they were all a side effect of my few years as a startup founder. Again, anecdotally, I've known other startup founders (including my current boss) who have had probably-stress-induced health problems. Its an aspect of startups people rarely talk about or warn you about.
Muscles contract causing all kinds of insuline problems, your hormones become a mess, and all this is raising stress levels more because you don't know what is going on in your body.
And then an anxiety disorder is right around the corner.
And when everything is ok again your brain produces stress hormones when you hear a sound that would trigger you earlier or just a smell or a color.
I think this is the most difficult part to get back to normal:
The brain brings you in stress mode for no obvious reason. Then you have to reason about it so the stress goes away and you will slowly reset your brain.
But I doubt the paths in the brain will ever go away. It will be like a overgrown path in the end but it is still there.