Feeling Stressed Out? What Are You Feeding Your Brain?

According to the American Psychological Association, stress has reached epidemic proportions.  An APA survey found the top three concerns for Americans:

1. Current events happening around the world (67%)
2. Keeping myself or my family safe (62%)
3. Paying my bills or expenses (61%)

Those findings may not be new or surprising to you, but this might be:

What you feed your brain can reduce your stress.

Stress management has been around for years. Stress reduction often includes prescriptions of activities like meditation, exercise, deep breathing, participating in hobbies that you enjoy, and socializing. I have no intention of casting shade on these very useful strategies to reduce stress. There is simply a new tool in our arsenal: the media we consume.

This research, by lead author Robin Nabi from the Department of Communication, UC Santa Barbara, broke more than 1,000 participants into five groups. Each group was instructed to watch videos provided by the researchers for five days in one the following areas:

1. Group 1 watched inspirational videos.
2. Group 2 watched comedy.
3. Group 3 watched guided meditations.
4. Group 4 was instructed to scroll through their phone.
5. Group 5 received no media instructions.

The Findings

People who watched the inspirational videos or guided meditations reported feeling significantly more hopeful during those five days compared with the other groups. That hope predicted lower stress levels up to 10 days later after the study was completed. While those who watched comedy or scrolled through their phones reported laughing and being entertained, those experiences did not affect stress levels later.

The Takeaway: Hope Reduces Stress

It has been said that hope is not a strategy, but it serves as fuel for all of us to persist through adversity in a stressful world.

People are uncertain. We are worried about many things, from world events, to our own and our families’ safety, to making ends meet. We are all occupying the same world, yet we take different things from it and draw different conclusions. This study demonstrates that the media we consume matters. Many of us are told to stay away from or consume less media. It’s not our consumption of media that is the problem. It’s the type of media we consume. 

Just as we can choose to consume healthy or unhealthy food, the same is true of our consumption of media. If you are consuming media that makes you angry, fearful or cynical, I would offer that those are emotional responses that resemble an unhealthy “sugar high”— intense, short lived, unless you feed on more of the same type of media. However, based on this research, if you nourish your brain with content that gives you hope for the future, even in the face of adversity and struggle, that hope will not only reduce stress, but will serve as your fuel to keep moving forward.

There is a wide range of media available to you. What you feed your brain is your choice.  Choose wisely.

I’d love to hear your questions and comments. If you would like to discuss this topic further, just drop me a note.