The Power of Stress-Reducing, Sleep-Enhancing Attitudes and Beliefs (Part II)

By Dr. Gregg D. Jacobs

As I discussed in a previous focus article, emerging research suggests that a variety of attitudes and beliefs can be powerful stress-reducers that minimize stress and its deleterious effects on sleep, stress symptoms, and health. Awareness of these stress-reducing attitudes and beliefs can not only improve your sleep; they may actually extend your life.

This focus article will review emerging research on three attitudes and beliefs that can improve your sleep by reducing stress: stress hardiness, altruism, and social support. Specific techniques for developing these attitudes and beliefs in daily life can be found in my books Say Good Night to Insomnia and The Ancestral Mind.

Stress Hardiness

Stress-resistant individuals possess a kind of feeling about themselves and their life, which has been termed "stress hardiness." The stress-hardy personality is characterized by three beliefs: Control, Commitment, and Challenge. Stress-hardy individuals have a sense of control over events in their lives, a strong commitment to something outside of themselves, and an ability to view stress and change as challenges and opportunities instead of threats.

Because stress-hardy people are committed to something larger than themselves, they take better advantage of social support, and are deeply involved in their work and families. Stress-hardy people view change as normal and challenging. They are curious about their environment and interested in new experiences, even seemingly stressful ones, which they view as integral to growth, reintegration, and personal transformation. They also are optimistic by nature.

But of the three components of stress hardiness, it may be that the most important is a sense of control. Studies have demonstrated that, with a sense of control, even the illusion of control, people can tolerate extreme stress. Those who feel a high sense of control rather than a belief in fate, or luck, or their own helplessness, not only cope better with stress, they do better in life and live more happily by a number of important measures.

Individuals exposed to stress that they view as uncontrollable, such as the care of a relative with a debilitating illness such as Alzheimer's disease, have been shown to exhibit poorer immunological functioning; they are also at greater risk for developing major depression.

Altruism

Helping others doesn't just feel good, and it doesn't just give life greater meaning. Studies show that altruism can reduce the effects of stress and dramatically improve the health of the helper. In one major study of 2,700 residents in Tecumseh, Michigan, researchers found that men who volunteered for community organizations were two and half times less likely to die (from any cause) than men who did not volunteer. Studies also indicate that helping is associated with boosted immune functioning, fewer colds and headaches, and relief from pain and insomnia.

Too much preoccupation with ourselves can lead to anxiety and depression by increasing concentration on problems; altruism reduces the focus on ourselves and serves as a distraction from problems and worries.

Altruism also provides these other benefits:

Improved positive emotions such as caring
Improved attitudes and feelings of greater contentment with what we have
Increased self-esteem and sense of well-being by strengthening belief in our own skills and strengths
Reduction in anger and social isolation and bolstering of social support

Allan Luks, author of The Healing Power of Doing Good, surveyed thousands of volunteers to document the phenomenon, called helper's high, which results from practicing altruism on a regular basis. The helper's high consists of sensations of warmth, increased energy, and euphoria, and can lead to long-term relaxation and calm. Harvard Medical School psychiatrist George Vaillant, who followed Harvard graduates for forty years, identified altruism as one of the major qualities that helped graduates cope with the stress of life.

Social Support

Do you have people you can talk to when you're troubled? Do you feel supported and cared for by other people, or do you feel isolated and lonely?

Substantial evidence indicates that people with adequate social support, defined as family, friends, community contacts, social or religious organizations, work relationships, or even a pet, are healthier, less likely to develop major and minor illnesses and mental health problems, are better able to resist communicable diseases, have a lower death rate, and cope better with various stressors.

Once serious illness strikes, individuals with social support do better medically, recover more quickly, and have lower death rates. In a review of the literature spanning several decades and almost forty thousand people, researchers concluded that lack of social support doubles the risk of morbidity and mortality.

The negative effects of social isolation hold true regardless of race, ethnic background, sex, age, or socioeconomic status. In fact, inadequate social support is as dangerous to health as lack of exercise or high cholesterol; it is as great or greater a risk factor for death than smoking!

Of course, feeling isolated is not the same as solitude. Many people who live on their own are happy and healthy. It is the subjective sense of being isolated and alone, cut off from people and having no one to confide in, that is problematic. It's also true that not all social ties are health-enhancing. Some negative relationships, most especially abusive ones, can be stress-inducing and associated with increased illness and suppression of immune functioning. In one study, marital conflict was found to weaken immune response of newlyweds and couples who had been happily married for decades.

Nonetheless, there remains a significant advantage for those who have strong, stable connections to others. Some studies show that just being married, whether satisfactorily or not, offers more protection from illness than no marriage at all. In fact, a man who marries can expect to automatically add about nine years to his life.

Widowers have been found to have death rates from three to five times higher than married men of the same age for every cause of death, and the recent death of a spouse is associated with higher death rates during the first six to twelve months of bereavement. Married people not only have a regular source of social support in their spouse; they also are better integrated into the community as a result of being married.

The positive emotions resulting from social support, including love, contentment, and warmth, reduce stress and its symptoms. Social support also exerts positive effects on health because it allows us to:

Share feelings and receive helpful suggestions
Seek solutions to problems
Reframe negative thoughts and change behavior
Develop a sense of reliability and stability in times of transition
Shift attention away from ourselves to something larger
Access physical or material assistance

Unfortunately, the conditions of modern life have led to an increase in social isolation and lack of connectedness. Throughout evolution, man lived in extended kin networks, surrounded by genetic relatives such as aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces. But in the past several decades, social ties have been disrupted by mobility, fragmentation of the nuclear and extended family, single-parent families, and separations and divorces. Few of us have parents who live nearby, and few enjoy the same close-knit communities that existed in previous generations. Life-long friendships are not as common. Most of us don't just drop over to a friend's house unannounced as was the case years ago. As a population, we are more likely to live alone, remain unmarried, and far less likely to belong to a social organization.

One of the great ironies of modern life may be that, despite being surrounded by many more people than our distant ancestors were, we have fewer intimate relationships and more loneliness and isolation than any other time period in human history.