This post could also be called “A reminder that stress is
good.” It is very common to hear people talk about the dangers of stress. But
we rarely talk about why we have stress and the good place it has in our lives.
The truth is that we would not be here as a species if it were not for stress.
Another way to explain stress is the fight-or-flight response. When teaching
Stress Management for Lawyers (or Professionals), I have often used the
hunter-gatherer scenario. But this week I got my own reminder of the good
stress can do in our lives.
When I was applying for the Fulbright scholarship to study
family law, I was trying to decide between applying in New Zealand and applying
in Australia. There are many reasons I chose New Zealand, but one of them was
the lack of large animals that cause significant injury. While Australia is
full of spiders and snakes and unimaginable creatures that can kill you in an
instant, New Zealand has nothing of the sort. Their spiders are friendly, and
they have no land snakes. None. Plus, they have penguins.
It was during a search for said penguins where I had my
“stress is good for you” reminder. I live in Dunedin, New Zealand, which is the
country’s fourth largest city, and it is known for rowdy students and cold
flats (that’s housing to us non-Commonwealth folk). It also is connected to the
Otago Peninsula, one of the greatest places to see penguins, fur seals, Royal
Albatross, diverse marine bird life, and sea lions. The easiest place to see
the penguins without a tour is by going to a beach inhabited by many sea lions.
I have been there twice this week.
The first time I went, the Department of Conservation volunteer
gave us the instructions, which included: stay 10 metres away from the sea
lions and 200 metres away from the penguins. She also told us what to do if for
some reason a sea lion starts charging. I heard the word run, but for the life
of me cannot remember if she said RUN or DON’T RUN!!! This is why we need to talk in
positives! Most of the time, sea lions look like logs on the beach. And
even when they are moving about, they are so used to humans they don’t do
anything but give us funny looks.
This is an example of what not to do around sea lions!
But sometimes they want to “play.” While walking down the
beach, my friend and I saw a female sea lion playing with a male sea lion. We
kept our distance and just kept walking toward the penguin viewing hide. About
30 minutes later, having not seen any penguins, we started walking back up the
beach. That’s when the female sea lion took an interest in us. That’s when she
started “playing.” I don’t know about you, but playing with a 300-pound
creature with really large teeth is just not on my list of things to do . . .
so we ran. Then we stopped and held our ground. According to my friend, I “held
my ground” while walking backwards. The sea lion kept following.
Luckily for us, there was a sand bluff, and my friend is a
runner. She ran up the bluff, and the sea lion attempted to follow her. By
then, she was already exhausted, and she just sort of collapsed. That was good
because I was not on high ground, though by then I was farther away from her.
(For the record, I did not want to leave my friend, but the sea lion managed to
get between us because I’m such a slow runner, so it was safer for us to split
up, but my friend and I could see each other the entire time.)
We both, or I should say all, escaped unharmed, but my
friend and I ran about halfway down the beach before we finally stopped (and
before she almost tripped over one of the males lying lazily on the beach
looking like a big log).
Then we got to the other side of the beach, and there was a
penguin up on the rocks (yes, they climb, and it’s really quite impressive).
There were, of course, several more sea lions near us, but they were asleep and
ignoring us. I said to my friend, “my adrenaline is coming down.” Her response
was, “mine came down awhile ago.”
And that, my friends, is stress done right. We have a stress
response to save our lives. We are supposed to fight or flight, and I have to
remember to look up which one it is for my next trip to the beach. We are
supposed to get excited and stressed at times. But the stress is also supposed
to dissipate when the problem goes away. We are supposed to come down from it.
Penguin! It's the blue/black blob to the right of the green bushes.
The problem in the modern world is that so many of us live
in a state of constant, or chronic, stress. The stress hormones never come
down. We never get a chance to come out of the stress response and back to a
state of calm. And perhaps more importantly, if we are in a constant state of
stress, what happens when the really big event occurs, and we need the benefits
of stress, but we are already so burnt out we cannot muster any more of the
good stress? That is when we end up “playing” with sea lions instead of
blogging about what is, in retrospect, a really funny experience.
How would looking at stress as a good thing change your
perspective?
Namaste!
©
Rebecca Stahl 2011, all rights reserved.
his is my first time i visit here. I found so many entertaining stuff in your blog, especially its discussion. From the tons of comments on your articles, I guess I am not the only one having all the leisure here! Keep up the excellent work.
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