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 TED 如何讓壓力成為你的朋友 - 英文(5)

演講者： 凱莉·麥高尼格 (健康心理學家)

But my favorite effect on the body is actually on the heart.

Your heart has receptors for this hormone, and oxytocin helps heart cells regenerate and heal from any stress-induced damage.

This stress hormone strengthens your heart, and the cool thing is that all of these physical benefits of oxytocin are enhanced by social contact and social support, so when you reach out to others under stress, either to seek support or to help someone else, you release more of this hormone, your stress response becomes healthier, and you actually recover faster from stress.

I find this amazing, that your stress response has a built-in mechanism for stress resilience, and that mechanism is human connection.

I want to finish by telling you about one more study.

And listen up, because this study could also save a life.

This study tracked about 1,000 adults in the United States, and they ranged in age from 34 to 93, and they started the study by asking, “How much stress have you experienced in the last year?”

They also asked, “ How much time have you spent helping out friends, neighbors, people in your community?”

And then they used public records for the next five years to find out who died.

Okay, so the bad news first:” For every major stressful life experience, like financial difficulties or family crisis, that increased the risk of dying by 30 percent.”

But – and I hope you are expecting a but L know bit that was not true for everyone.

People who spent time caring for others showed absolutely no stress-related increase in dying. Zero.

Caring created resilience.

And so we see once again that the harmful effects of stress on your health are not inevitable.

How you think and how you act can transform your experience of stress.

When you choose to view your stress response as helpful, you create the biology of courage.

And when you choose to connect with others under stress, you can create resilience.

Now I would not necessarily ask for more stressful experiences in my life, but this science has given me a whole new appreciation for stress.

Stress gives us access to our hearts.

The compassionate heart that finds joy and meaning in connecting with others, and yes, your pounding physical heart, working so hard to give you strength and energy and when you choose to view stress in this way, you are not just getting better at stress, you are actually a pretty profound statement.

You are saying that you can trust yourself to handle life’s challenges, and you are remembering that you do not have to face them alone.

Thank you .

(Applause)