Psychology and Stress

We follow-up last week’s post on pets and health. Many pet owners play the “psychology card” to justify having their pets with them in public because they bring comfort. Whether we’re talking about an airplane, church, college, grocery store, restaurant, or apartments/condos with pet restrictions, the argument goes something like, “I need my pet with me or I can’t handle the stress of everyday living.”

There is a distinction between Service Animals (SA) and Emotional Support Animals (ESA). We have seen SAs in public for many years, and their use is guided by laws. To qualify for a trained service animal, you must have a disability, a disability-related need for the animal, and one trained to perform tasks or services to alleviate the effects of disability. Unlike SA laws, however, guidelines for the ESA are vague and easy to meet. As a result, a well-intentioned idea has hemorrhaged to the point of absurdity as people claim their pet is an ESA to circumvent pet restrictions. It is not difficult for a mental health professional to agree that the symptoms of your anxiety disorders can be ameliorated by your pet, and qualifies it as an ESA.

The justification for ESAs sounds good, but is it based on sound Psychology? Probably not. An argument can be made that an ESA is nothing more than a security blanket, and based on a misapplication of what Psychology says about how best to cope with life’s challenges. Successful coping with stress requires taking the difficult road and meeting challenges head on, not relying on emotional crutches like ESAs for protection. Unfortunately, as we often note in this blog, too often people work to avoid stressful challenges because that’s the easy thing to do. ESAs, of course, encourage avoidance because the ESA is a sign of surrender, a convenient prop to help circumvent stress and say, “I am helpless and can’t handle stress without my pet at my side.” This attitude is psychologically unhealthy. Effective coping actions are those that give you a sense of personal empowerment, and mitigate the need for security blankets like ESAs that can be intrusive to others.

Interestingly, many colleges allow resident students to bring their pet with them for emotional support. College can be a difficult time. Attending classes, meeting the expectations of professors, and keeping up a grade-point average can all take their toll. Students may find it difficult to be away from family, friends, and the lovable furry companion they’ve had for years. Colleges seem to be saying, “We will ease your transition to college by allowing you to bring Rover.” What happened to the idea that college is supposed to teach young people the value of achievement motivation and personal initiative, the ability to act independently, and how to develop critical thinking skills to solve problems? Rather than allowing ESAs, colleges should say, “If you need your pet with you, don’t go to college or at least choose one within commuting distance from home so you go home each day to mommy, daddy, and your pet. Also, remember,

that the military, and nearly all civilian jobs, will not allow you to bring your pet along.”

How did this ESA nonsense develop? As we noted in last week’s blog, some psychological research has shown the health benefits of having a pet. Extrapolating, it’s easy for some to conclude they will be better able to function in challenging situations if they have their pet with them. Similar fallacious generalizations have been made from research showing the adverse effect of being raised in an emotionally-deprived environment. “Gee, I was raised by terrible parents. My problems are their fault!” Not true! These extrapolations are gross misuses of psychological principles. The fact is, as many of our blog entries argue, being raised in a deprived environment does not release you from personal accountability and responsibility; suffering trauma does not mean someone else is to blame for your inability to face challenges imposed by the trauma; and, emotional disabilities do not entitle you to have the corners of your world padded. Those are the true messages of psychology. You must develop personal empowerment coping strategies to take on the challenges of life, and leave the dog at home.

            You may have read anecdotal stories about the effect dogs can have on people. Some programs send a pooch to a local nursing home on a regular basis because its presence, even if only for a couple of hours, seems to have a positive effect on the mood of the residents. Some hospitals maintain “comfort dogs” that regularly visit patients. Many anecdotal reports have been verified in correlational research on owning pets in general, not just dogs. Elderly folks who have pets, for instance, appear to make fewer physician visits; pet owners show better survival rates following heart attacks; and those with pets tend to have lower blood pressure and other measures of cardiac stress.

            These findings seem to establish a link between pet contact and good health. A link, however, does not establish causation. With this limitation in mind, Karen Allen and her colleagues at the State University of New York at Buffalo conducted a study that found having pets causes health benefits, and not simply that healthier people are more likely to take on the responsibility of pet ownership.

Allen and her colleagues chose as participants stockbrokers with high blood pressure (at least 160/100 as measured by their physicians) who were willing to adopt a pet. From this group, they randomly selected half to adopt a dog or cat for the duration of the study. The other half did not adopt. The results showed that when under stress, brokers who adopted showed a blood pressure increase less than half that of the brokers who did not adopt. Blood pressure increased under stress for all participants, but the increase was significantly smaller for the pet owners.

            In another experiment, Allen measured women’s blood pressure while they performed difficult mental calculations. Each woman was randomly assigned to one of three conditions: alone; in the presence of a female friend; or in the presence of their dog. Compared to blood pressure in the alone condition, when friends were present the women had higher blood pressure when doing the task; when the dog was present, however, there was no such increase. In a follow-up study, Allen used the same procedure, but pitted the dog against a spouse-present condition. In the study, when men and women worked on math problems in the presence of their spouse, blood pressure went from 120/80 to 155/100. However, when they worked in the presence of their pet, the math task took blood pressure to an average of only 125/83.

            The math results lend themselves to several interpretations. One simple explanation is that the participants felt a lot of pressure when doing the math problems, and they didn’t want a friend or their spouse to get the impression that they were unable to do the problems. When the dog was present, he’s licking their leg saying, “You’re wondering whether to give me the chicken or beef dinner tonight, right?” The math procedure is probably like trying to make a basketball shot in the presence of your friend, spouse, or your dog. Miss the shot and those humans will know you’re lousy (even though they’ll give you the old “good try” comment). The dog? He’ll run after the ball yelling “Throw it to me again! This is fun!”

            Are we saying that the key to good physical and psychological health is to run out and get a dog or cat? Absolutely not. First of all, not all studies find health benefits of having a pet. Second, remember that when it comes to effective coping, one size rarely fits all. But if having a pet fits your lifestyle, and if you’re willing to invest your time and effort toward its welfare, the benefits may well be worth your time. Only you can decide.     

We often change our minds about things, sometimes because of the indoctrinating influence of others. Throughout the 1960s there were a variety of conspiracy theories that some people accepted. Marylyn Monroe died in 1962 of a drug overdose, but a few believed she was murdered by the government because of her ties to Jack and Robert Kennedy. Another belief grew that because of the counterculture, antigovernment movement of the 1960s, the government flooded the food and water supply with LSD to pacify the population. Among the current theories: the government is manipulating the weather; there were three or four doubles who filled in for Biden because he slept most of the time; the 2020 election was rigged; vaccinations cause autism.

From a psychological perspective, what’s fascinating about people who come to accept a conspiracy theory, no matter how bizarre or irrational, is how they hang on to the new belief in the face of contradictory evidence. Once they make a decision, they are resistant to changing their mind because they want to see themselves as consistent, and appear that way to others. Also, the more emotional involvement they have in the decision, the more resistant they are to changing their mind because their identity becomes tied-up with the belief. It is truly remarkable how people can justify and rationalize just about any decision, and do so without feeling guilt, regret, shame, or remorse, even if circumstances suggest they made a bad decision. Social psychologist Albert Bandura called this process Moral Disengagement. People can justify virtually any decision or action they take, even self-destructive actions that are also hurtful to others. Shame is irrelevant. You may think that shaming someone will encourage them to change their belief, but it won’t. In fact, it is likely to raise their defensive shields more strongly to resist facts that speak against their belief.

Challenging someone’s irrational beliefs—Democrats are communists; Jews are conspiring to replace white Americans and Europeans with Asians and Africans—can also lead them to verbal, even physical, violence. Imagine this conversation: “Sir, why did you hit that school board member?” “Because she voted to require my kids to wear a mask in school. She is evil and trying to harm my kids.” “But, sir, she says she wants to protect the children.” No matter what the attacker replies, he is thinking, “She is evil because I’m attacking her. I only attack evil people who threaten me and my family.” Note how he merges his belief and identity with his actions. The board member is evil because, “I am threatening her.”

Moral disengagement is a lousy way to cope with stress because the process ignores the importance of personal values in the coping process. When you divorce what you say, do, and believe from the ethics, standards, and morals of society, your stability, social conscience, and autonomy are sacrificed. The damage to self-empowerment and your ability to cope with your stressors is significant. You discard critical thinking, ignore the advice of experts, and blindly follow the misinformed herd. Your honor, dignity, self-esteem, autonomy, and self-sufficiency are all sacrificed on an altar of dependency on others. You must constantly live in a world of denial to avoid facing your inability to control how you live; you are now vulnerable to feelings of helplessness, followed by depression, followed by chronic self-damaging actions that rob you of your ability to cope with your stressors—all because your life is not guided by a stable set of personal values, which you have cast aside to cover up your inadequacies and insecurities.

In 1964 Davitz and Beldoch talked about cognitiveintelligence as different from emotionalintelligence. They linked the former to mental abilities, but tied the latter to emotional effectiveness in social communication, especially the ability to empathize with others. In the context of coping with stress, high emotional intelligence would describe those who are “secure in their own skin.” These folks have healthy levels of self-esteem and feel empowered to be autonomous, independent, confident, and optimistic as they confront the challenges of daily life. Individuals with high emotional intelligence are good at accepting reality, taking responsibility for their actions, setting priorities, persisting in the face of failure, and navigating their way through the maze of stressors that regularly confront them.

But even emotional intelligence is not the whole story when it comes to coping effectively with stress. Many people high in emotional intelligence may be confident and secure as they tend to their needs. Unfortunately, however, they may leave a trail of human psychological carnage in their wake as they focus on an egotistical coping strategy that puts them at the center of it all. In their own minds they are coping well, but they do so with a lot of deception, manipulation, lying, cheating, and bullying that serve themselves, but bring anxiety and suffering to others. We would not, of course, say that such people are coping well. “OK,” you ask, “if emotional intelligence by itself is no guarantee of effectively coping, what’s missing? What other traits are needed to help me use my emotional intelligence to cope in positive ways?” The answer to that question involves an intelligence that supplements emotional: Moral Intelligence.

Coping with everyday life will be most effective when emotional intelligence is joined by moral intelligence. How would we describe people with high moral intelligence? They have values, standards, and a social conscience, which means they weigh their coping actions against the needs of others. “Embezzling money may be good for me financially, but others are going to suffer, so I choose not to embezzle.” That’s moral intelligence! If you have low moral intelligence, you will not value others as dignified and worthy of courtesy and respect, and you will have no problem cheating and manipulating them to satisfy your own greed. Moral intelligence means having empathy for others, being able to understand how they are feeling. “If I insult and disparage others in the presence of their children, I may feel good, but I also show my total disregard for the pain I inflict on their offspring. As much as I dislike them, I will not disrespect them in the presence of their family.”

What we are saying is simple: You may have high emotional intelligence and feel great about yourself. But if you have low moral intelligence and can only focus on you, if you must include yourself as the primary ingredient in your coping recipe, ultimately your coping efforts will fail because you will leave behind a legacy of inflicting pain on others, and making them feel bad about themselves. Your legacy will be others who scowl at the very mention of your name.

It seems like we are surrounded these days by irrational thinking. Monitor your thinking now and then. Is your thinking unrealistic, maybe even irrational? Are you denying the reality of your situation? If you’re not sure, share your thoughts with someone you trust and see what they think; another set of “eyes” can help put problems in a more realistic light.

Accept the fact that living is stressful for you and everyone else. You are not alone, you are not weird, and you are not helpless. These are irrational thoughts, just like believing that feeling emotions makes you inferior to others. Write those words on an index card and read the card regularly. Teach yourself this acceptance.

            We bet there have been times you have told yourself, “I should not be so anxious (or afraid, angry, sad, etc.) in this situation.” Maybe so, but your self-criticism misses the point that you are emotionally tied in knots and you need to do something about it. Anxiety, grief, anger, sadness, and other emotions can be crippling and a major cause of avoiding facing challenges in your life. You can, however, learn to put emotions to good use.

            Doesn’t it make sense that your emotions are quite natural? Shouldn’t it be normal to be anxious about being evaluated, grief-stricken when losing a loved one, fearful when confronting danger, or sad after being rejected? Is it also not unreasonable to assume that normal emotional states can be used to your advantage? For example, anxiety can motivate you to prepare for tests and emergencies, bring you closer to significant others, confront criticism, work harder to improve performance, and a host of other effective actions.

            Suppose you find yourself in a dead-end job but are afraid to look for a new one because you feel you will be anxious during the job interview and just experience rejection. The safe thing, of course, is to stop looking for a new job, avoiding the interview threat and all the other stresses that go along with a job search. This is an emotion-focused strategy. In the long run, this strategy does not adequately deal with your problem because it puts your life on hold.

            Instead of quitting the job search, you could be empowering yourself by developing strategies that focus on the problem, not the emotion, and practicing actions to prepare yourself for interviews. This would be a problem-solving strategy; the problem, not the emotion, becomes the focus. You need to remember that you have no control over the interviewer and the types of questions you will be asked. That being the case, it’s reasonable for you to assume and accept that you will probably be anxious during any interview. So, prepare! Learn about the new company and develop knowledgeable questions to ask during the interview. Evaluate how your skills will mesh with the stated job requirements. Prepare to be honest if you fall short in some areas, but also prepare to describe how you can compensate. And remember, your anxiety is a natural emotional state that can be a positive motivator for you. It need not be your enemy.          

            The same can be said about other emotions. How about intense grief after the loss of a loved one? Depending on the circumstances of the death, you can become quite debilitated as a result of grief. Usually, however, intense grief signals how important others were to you, and how much they taught you about living. Wouldn’t the best way to honor their memory be to demonstrate that they left you with an inner strength that allows you to honor them in positive ways? So, seek out those positives that will allow you to honor them: Share with others what they taught you; establish a memorial to them; write about them; find their influence manifest in your life. Again, develop a problem-solving strategy, and don’t get wrapped around the emotion.

Roy is 62 years old and is finishing up his annual physical. His physician says, “Roy, everything looks great. Your blood work, vitals, weight, lifestyle…everything is in normal and healthy ranges.” Roy smiled and said, “That’s always good to hear!” The physician looked at him and added, “Of course you understand that I can’t guarantee you’ll live to 80 or even 70.”

Roy, still smiling, nods and says, “Sure I understand that. But trying to live a long life is not why I exercise, keep my weight down, and all that other healthy stuff. I just want to feel good today! Isn’t that about the best we can do?” Even though the staying-healthy odds are in his favor, Roy could easily suffer a health crisis at any time, even the next day. And here’s the coping question I want to pose: If it happens, will he be prepared for the crisis?  Any unexpected event could bring drastic changes to his life and arouses intense emotions that threaten to overwhelm him. Will he be able to keep his emotional head above water? Will he be prepared to have a “crisis conversation” with life?

How about you? Are you prepared to maintain your coping conversations with life in the face of crises? Here are some things to consider when faced with events so intense that you feel you could very easily spiral out of control. To organize your crisis plan, ask yourself some basic “what if” questions. The idea is not to make up a precise list of steps to take, like a family might do to prepare for a flooding river, tornado, hurricane, or some other natural threat. No, the idea is to formulate a general conceptual plan to follow when suddenly confronted with unexpected coping challenges, such as when a loved one dies, sickness occurs, or there is a vital threat to your financial security.

First of all, assess the crisis by determining what features are under your control. A crisis tends to bring out strong emotional reactions, which put you at risk for blindly reacting and trying to influence events that really are far out of your control. Second, remind yourself to be proactive using your intellectual abilities and not relying solely on sudden emotional tendencies. Fear, frustration, jealousy, anger and other emotions will tell you to run, avoid, and hide, and such avoidance is a sure recipe for devastation. A more rational approach will focus on how you can use your emotions to your advantage, not on how you can deny the presence of your unwanted emotions. Third, bring in your trusted friends, your social network, to help. Communication is essential here, but again, it must not be based on panic and fear. Rationality, objectivity, and a willingness to listen to proactive suggestions from others is essential if your communication is to be productive. Fourth, do not blame others for your crisis. Doing so will distract you from the task at hand. Convincing yourself that evil others are responsible for your travails will only elicit derisive laughs from life. Even your social network will recoil from your displaced blame because you will sound defensive and unwilling to move forward.

Bottom line? Be psychologically and mentally prepared for when a “what if” question becomes real.

As we noted last week, anger is an important emotion to manage and channel because it can be dangerous to self when bottled up or released, but constructive when funneled into positive energy. For instance, in these situations, should you withdraw, or confront your anger more constructively: a co-worker made you angry and you want to tell him to go to hell; a misbehaving child made you angry and you want to smack him. Ask yourself these questions: When I want to lash out in anger am I simply trying to get rid of anger so I don’t have to deal with it? Am I trying to make myself feel better in the short run, but really only teaching myself to resolve problems by lashing out? Am I really only angry at myself for making a mistake and taking my flub out on others? These questions may help you decide that it would be better for you to seek more constructive solutions to the problem. For instance, it might be better for your social interactions when you know how to transform your anger into actions like assertiveness, determination, competitiveness, working harder to achieve a goal, or persisting even when confronted with hurdles. Or, instead of aggressive actions toward others, alternatives like walking, running, yoga, and weightlifting might also be better for you. These activities can produce natural endorphin highs, a sense of personal control and pride, distraction from what is bothering you, and better health. They are also more appropriate than convenient and simple “middle-finger” actions that, at best, are childish, waste energy, and increase the likelihood of violence.

Constructive ways of converting anger into productive actions can also include activities like writing, painting, hanging out with friends, reading, and many others. Any action that is positively distracting and can buy you time to calm down and reset, is valuable in directing a mature response. Doing so helps keep you away from acting impulsively and inappropriately, which becomes much more likely when you are tired, under the influence of drugs and alcohol, or have not slept well. As for alcohol, the irony is that most people use this substance to relax and escape temporarily. However, this coping style can lead to self-sabotage with aggression or some other acting-out behavior that damages relationships, causes employment problems, and increases stress levels by making the situation worse. Bottom line? When angry, resist impulses to lash out aggressively, and seek constructive ways to cope with it.

Anger is an important emotion to manage and channel. It can be dangerous to self when bottled up or released, but constructive when channeled into positive energy. The latter is especially important when angry people do not need anger management, but need to address relationship problems that cause them to use anger to intimidate and bully others.

Society provides little opportunity for people to get angry. We are not supposed to get angry at school, in public, or in the workplace. Many children are not allowed to express their anger at home, and they do not learn how to express it; they also grow up to be adults who think it is wrong to be angry. Society generally encourages us to deny anger: It is not polite or appropriate to be angry; anger makes others uneasy, even if only talking about it; others treat us like we’re irrational if we are angry, even if our feelings are legitimate; professionals are even afraid to confront us and tell us we have an anger problem, worried they might lose us as a client or patient.  

We need to teach children it is natural to be angry sometimes, and that there are appropriate ways to express anger, such as by being assertive. Also, there are times when we just need to accept that our anger will dissipate eventually, just like grief and other emotions. We also need to realize that anger must be released in appropriate ways. For instance, research teaches us that the release of anger through aggression makes future aggression more likely. That is, the aggressive release of anger may amplify future aggressive behavior, not provide a catharsis that will reduce it.

We have anti-depressants, anti-anxiety agents, and anti-psychotics. But when was the last time you saw an ad for an anti-anger medication? It is only in clever and subtle ways that physicians treat anger; they use that other stuff, the mood stabilizers, the anti-anxiety pills, anti-psychotics, and anti-depressants.  Physicians rarely tell patients they are getting medicated for their anger.

Prohibitions in society against anger make us mask our anger with other emotions, particularly guilt. Many angry clients have not really done anything wrong, but they complain about feeling guilty. It sounds better for them to say they have regrets or guilt feelings than to complain about being angry. Others respond more politely to guilt than to anger. Here is an important coping lesson to remember: Coping effectively with anger requires you to remember that, like all emotions, anger provides you with information. You must use that information to determine the best direction your actions should take. We will look more closely at those directions next week.

A colleague recently noted a trend in society that has metastasized in recent years into extreme levels of self-absorption. She said, “I find the general level of self-preoccupation in society today absolutely startling.” What’s sad about this obsessive fixation with self is that it is interferes with coping with the stressors in your life. A coping plan that revolves around you, to the exclusion of others, is destined to fail. You will never be sensitive to your true inner self if you cannot be sensitive to the needs of others.

I often wonder how we might view things if, when we correspond or speak with someone, or post something on social media, instead of using words like “Republican” or “Liberal,” we substituted the phrase, “Those who agree with me,” or, “Those who disagree with me.” For instance, suppose someone says, “The country is falling apart with the Republicans in office. If Democrats take over, we’re back on the road to sanity.” Inflammatory words, right? But what if the person said, “The country is falling apart with those who disagree with me in office. If those who agree with me can take over, we’re back on the road to recovery.” Hmm. Less emotionally inciting, perhaps? Less a condemnation of others? More an admission of your responsibility for the conflict, an admission of your self-preoccupation? Maybe.

 If you resolved to use only the phrasing, “Those who agree/disagree with me,” would you begin to realize that you have been operating from a self-absorbed, egocentric point of view that encourages conflict? Would you begin to understand that you have created an artificial dichotomy between “us” and “them” that is based on the uniqueness and superiority of “me”?  Might you begin to appreciate that saying “those who agree/disagree with me” puts “us” and “them” on an equal plane, where the opposing positions just might both be valid? Could you conclude, “I have an opinion, others have an opinion, and the resolution to the conflict just might be somewhere in the middle”? Maybe.

One thing for certain: When you see yourself as the only enlightened one, you will never successfully cope with your stressors because you are operating in emotional mode, not problem-solving mode. The emotional mode incites, inflames, and provokes, which can lead to depression and self-sabotaging actions. Why? Because reality dictates that you are not the center of it all, and reality has a way of popping up again, and again, and again.