Monday, October 29, 2012

Stress vs. arousal

I sometimes feel anxiety, the word I use for when I am on edge because I know I am about to do something important, as defined by having a potentially disproportionate or lasting effect on my life. It's not that I feel afraid, per se, or even stressed by things, but the stress of feeling on edge can take its toll on my body -- like too many late nights and too much caffeine will do. But I found this interesting article that not only describes the difference between interpreting your body's reactions to important performance situations as either stress or arousal, it also provides hope that everyone could train themselves and their bodies to have a reaction of arousal instead of stress. From Wray Herbert, author of On Second Though (and potential sociopath?).

Imagine that you are at the top of a ski slope, about to make a run. It’s a challenging slope, black diamond—steep and narrow, lots of trees. Plus it’s windy, and there’s that treacherous drop-off on the right. You’re an inexperienced skier, not a novice but not at all confident that you belong in such extreme terrain. Your heart is pounding and your gut is tight.

Now imagine that you’re on top of the very same slope, but you are a skilled downhill racer, an Olympic contender. You’re sure you know how to attack this slope—you’ve done it many times before—but even so, your heart is pounding and butterflies are fluttering in your gut.

Both of these hypothetical skiers are under stress, and feeling the arousal that comes with stress. But one is experiencing good stress, the other bad stress. They are both looking at the same slope, but one sees it as a threat, the other as a challenge. The expert knows that his skills are more than sufficient for the situation. The nervous learner has no such confidence.
***
Is it possible that stress is not all that bad, that in fact it may be tonic at times?

The key is how we think about stress and arousal. Those two skiers are in fact experiencing different bodily changes. Though both are feeling activation of the sympathetic nervous system, the fearful skier is feeling constriction of the vessels, which makes the heart work harder. The expert is actually experiencing more sympathetic arousal as he contemplates the challenge ahead, but the blood vessels are dilating, increasing cardiac efficiency. But they don’t know or care what’s going on inside them. They both simply feel edgy and aroused.

How to do it yourself?


Just prior to this event, some were instructed about the value of human stress response in high-level performance. They were encouraged to interpret any signs of arousal as a positive thing, a tool that would aid them in making a confident speech. The others were told to ignore their stress arousal, or they were told nothing at all.

The findings were clear. During the speech, those instructed in reappraisal were much more like the Olympian skier, showing what Jamieson calls “physiological toughness”: They experienced less blood vessel constriction and more cardiac output, as if they were attacking the slope. What’s more, immediately after the speech, these volunteers were less vigilant. In other words, they felt confident, not threatened.


Sunday, October 28, 2012

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Sociopaths in poetry


On the nature of understanding
Say you hoped to
tame something
wild and stayed
calm and inched up
day by day. Or even
not tame it but
meet it halfway.
Things went along.
You made progress,
understanding
it would be a
lengthy process,
sensing changes
in your hair and nails. So it’s
strange when it
attacks: you thought
you had a deal.

Kay Ryan, The New Yorker July 25, 2011


Friday, October 26, 2012

Famous sociopaths: Louise Nevelson


American sculptress Louise Nevelson (1899-1988): "I knew I was going to become somebody very special. No . . . that I was somebody very special." The article notes that the actress who was playing Nevelson was able to "suggest Nevelson's chilliness as much as her charm, her dead heart as well as the life of her mind."

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Sociopaths the conspiracy theory

From a reader:


It's been a long time. There's a lot going on in my life right now, and I realized that I kind of missed your blog.

I was looking through some articles on the Tikkun Magazine website, and I was surprised to see no less than two articles about the psychopathic percent of the population on the front page. I'm not sure what your perspective would be, so I suggest you take a look for yourself:

http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/sociopaths-rule

http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/dealing-with-psychopaths

It was an interesting experience to read them for me. While the second article, at least, is less alarmist than most such narratives, the mention of 'containing' psychopathic behavior, as opposed, presumably, to working with it, coming up over and over again is rather telling. It seems that in both articles antisocial thinking is something not attributed to people the reader may know, but to some mysterious class of demi-human way out there in the economic wilderness. Apparently, both the article-writers seem to be thinking that while possibly 1% of the population has antisocial tendencies, those tendencies couldn't possibly be attributed to the reader or anyone the reader knows personally and has contact with on a regular basis. It's subtle, but I found it intriguing.

I think this sort of thing has become a kind of elephant in the room in society at large. There's a lot of talk about sociopaths, but not really much examination of them as ordinary citizens. Do you get an impression like that?


Both articles are interesting in different ways. The first one seems to equate sociopathy with a list of social ills, without much proof. The second is more thoughtful but is also alarmingly alarmist. But I agree that sociopathic traits are not exclusive to sociopaths.
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