Mindset, Anxiety, and Stress
One of my favorite quotes comes from J.K. Rowling’s Book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Harry asks Professor Dumbeldore, “is this all happening inside my head?” To which Dumbeldore replies, “Of course it is happening inside your head Harry. But why on earth should that mean it is not real?” The reason I love this scene so much is because it emphasize the idea that thoughts and ideas that swirl around in our mind have real power to that individual experiencing them. Even though thoughts are not tangible and an observer may not be able to see the inner workings of your mind, it does not make each individual’s experience any less real.
In Jamieson et. al, they discuss how a person’s mindset around stress can affect how stressful something feels to an individual.
The way I think about stress has affected me in my personal and my professional life. I have dealt with anxiety from the time I was four. Of course my anxiety has been very challenging and difficult to deal with during parts of my life. I also have chosen to accept it as a part of me and instead of trying to push it away, I have learned to deal with it and work with it. I now see that my anxiety has given me many super powers. It has given me empathy and has given me the ability to stay present and attentive during emergencies or outside stressful situations. It has pushed me in my career and given met tools to take on challenges I once thought I couldn’t handle. This could be what Jamieson et. al considers a “stress is enhancing mindset”. By viewing these stressful occurrences as opportunities to learn, it has helped channel this stress into being a better strength coach, and a better friend and partner.
In my professional life as a strength coach, each individual I work with comes with their own set of variables. When someone is dealing with or recovering from an injury how they associate with their injury, their body, and their abilities can all have a great effect on their recovery. In the Jamieson et. al article, they discuss the Biopsychosocial model. This model applies to injury recovery as well. (Mescouto et. al 2020) A very classic example is someone who has dealt with a back injury that occurred when doing a deadlift. During their recovery, there comes a time when they are brought to deadlifting again. Before the word even fully escapes my lips, the individual may appraise fear, potential for pain and start to reject the idea that they are capable of completing this movement without pain. My goal, is to then help them re-associate with how they think about this movement. We can start with an unweighted hinge, then a light weight or a smaller range of motion. This slowly builds up their belief in themselves and changes their association.
Down the line, if the individual starts to feel sensations in their low back again, the BPS model can come into play again. That individual may sense a threat and feel that this sensation means they will encounter the same injury again. This can bring that individual in a spiral of fear which can feed into increasing cortisol levels and tensing the body up in an unhelpful way. In order to help re-associate with that sensation, we have the individual remind themselves that just because they feel this way now, does not mean you will have the same experience in the future. This is a signal to change form or shift the weight or volume of the movement.
These techniques have been extremely helpful in the way myself, and my clients associate with movements they once feared. It creates more confidence, self-efficacy in one’s body and allows individuals to handle increased physical stress on their body .
Overall, the way an individual perceives stress is extremely important in how a person deals with stress. I look at our minds ability to deal with stress in a similar way that our body responds to weight training. If you go to heavy too quickly, you are going to get hurt and injured. If you increase weights slowly but steadily, you will get stronger. I believe the same to be true with stress. If you pile on a large amount of stressful events to an individual, it has the potential to be damaging and very hurtful. But if a person takes on a growing amount of stress throughout their life, it can strengthen their mindset and their perception of stress.
