Shark attacks and the stress of summer vacations
It’s shark week and I’m thinking back to my very first Huffington Post article in the summer of 2015.
There were several shark attacks that summer, the media had played them up, and people were freaking out a bit. So I wrote a blog post about the effects of that shark stress on their summer vacations! What I said might surprise you:
Enjoy the Stress!
That’s right. I said it. Stress is fun.
Worrying about shark attacks may enhance your memory of the vacation and even make it more fun! When we’re slightly anxious about something our stress hormones can actually act on the memory centers of the brain and help us to more clearly remember circumstances around that worry. Further, those stress hormones contribute to activating pleasure pathways in the brain- giving us a thrill when we do things like ride a roller coaster, make a deadline, or surf a wave.
I went on to talk about how vacations that aren’t laced with a bit of challenge can sometimes cause more stress than they alleviate. I even challenged the premise of a relaxing beach vacation! Does this mean you should cancel that beach vacation? Heck no! But here’s some food for thought from the original article I wrote…
How many of us have gone on a relaxing family vacation full of sun, fun and games, only to return home and be more stressed than ever? That stack of mail full of bills, the suitcases full of dirty laundry, the grass that looks as if it's grown a foot in a week.
It could be the fault of the vacation.
A lot of us go on vacation with the sole intent of having a stress-free week, but in a lot of ways we are setting ourselves up for even more stress when we get home. Sure, that week is fun and relaxing, but what happens when it's over? All of a sudden, we are forcing ourselves to go from zero to a hundred miles an hour. That same thing doesn't happen for families who go on alternative vacations.
Rapidly gaining in popularity, alternative vacations generally involve an element of risk or stress--climbing a mountain or hiking in the woods, for example. My research and others have shown that people who go on some alternative vacations actually come home less stressed out, even though they are facing the same laundry, grass, and bills.
That's because when we challenge our stress system, we are telling it to respond to what it needs to respond to. We are helping our brain put everything else in perspective. Spending several days hiking on a trail with your family, sleeping in tents and building fires to cook on makes mowing the grass look like the everyday task it is, rather than a heavy burden.
In fact, wilderness and adventure therapy have been used to successfully treat anxiety disorders in patients. The same principle applies: The more physical stress you subject yourself to, the more your body puts other stress and anxiety in perspective. We're doing a lot of work at Longwood University on just this subject, and we're finding that even some veterans with PTSD are able to step down on medication after engaging in this type of therapy.
What it boils down to is we have an ingrained need for that stress response; it's important. But today, non-life-threatening stressors activate the same biological systems, meaning the same physiological stress response that we use to run away from a lion on the Serengeti is activated when the mortgage bill shows up in the mail.
All of that repeated daily stress contributes to depression and exhaustion, and complicates a wide range of other health issues that many people face. It's easy enough to get that stress from work and other everyday activities, much less when you add sharks in the mix. Maybe spending your vacation time putting that stress in perspective is exactly what the doctor--and your brain--ordered.
Shark Stress Management
Now, obviously, I also included some stress management tips. People worry about sharks all the time, and especially when they hear a sensationalized news story. Regarding fears of animals and elements of our natural world- like sharks- my top tip is: education! We fear the unknown, and the ocean is full of that. Learning more about the behavior and habits of sea creatures can increase your sense of control and predictability around these animals and put your fear in perspective. Sharks make for good monster movies because most of us rarely see them and we know relatively little about them. Most sharks are smaller than dogs and cats, and are far less likely to take a nip at your fingers. While it’s true that sharks account for a handful of fatalities a year worldwide, snails are responsible for more than 10,000 human deaths each year. Perhaps we need a “snail week”?!
As a science geek and nature lover, I could rattle on for ages about shark facts, but that would perhaps distract from my key point: knowledge is power over your anxieties. If you’re nervous or fearful of something, lean in and learn more so that you can know how best to interact with that creature that you’re afraid of.
