Bouncing back from stress

Everyone experiences stress: traffic, monthly bills, health concerns, relationship issues. Because mind and body are so closely linked, constant worries wear on health and contribute to a host of diseases.

You cannot erase every source of stress, but you can learn to reduce it and build resilience - your ability to bounce back.

In the late 19th century, a noted philosopher-psychologist - described by the source as experiencing stress and melancholy - marveled at people he called the healthy-minded: optimistic, positive people who seemed to live happier, healthier lives. Amid the ordinary volatility everyone faces, he observed, the healthy-minded turned challenges and potential failures into opportunities and successes.

What that thinker called healthy-minded, a modern statistician and risk-management specialist has called antifragile. In his writing on the subject, he defines fragility as the tendency to be damaged by volatility and uncertainty - the very things that often create a chronic stress response.

The antifragile person, by contrast, accepts stress as the price of being alive. Cultivating antifragility helps us use our strengths to overcome challenges and come out stronger.

Elite military special-forces units are a prime example. They manage extreme stress and still function superbly: faced with life-threatening situations, they rapidly shift their focus and deal with the issue efficiently and flexibly.

The supplied source reports differences in activation of the insula among these special-forces operators, a region involved in processing stress signals. Anatomical correction: the insula is a distinct region of cerebral cortex deep in the lateral sulcus, not a prefrontal region. The underlying study has not been independently appraised here, and the report is not an individual brain assessment or a claim about every soldier or reader. The source describes at least seven characteristics of resilient people in this group:

Calm, innovative, nondogmatic thinking

The ability to act decisively

Tenacity

Interpersonal connectedness

Honesty

Self-control

Optimism and a positive perspective on life

Whether you adopt a healthy-minded outlook, cultivate antifragility, or borrow the mindset of an elite soldier, building resilience is a powerful tool against stress. People tend to treat resilience as a trait you either have or do not, but it is actually a capacity you can develop with the right approach.

Anatomy source: NCBI Bookshelf, Insular Cortex