Trainers Don’t know Squat About Even the Basics of Stress
Sadly, even trainers who ought to know more about stress don’t always. While there are many good trainers in stress management, there are a lot of bad ones with superficial understanding.
Here’s an example of one trainers attempt to explain stress, and my response.
I had a couple of email questions regarding my response and I have a
spare minute or two here.
On 16 Sep at 8:07, Robert G wrote:
> In the stress reduction clinic at the University of Massachusetts,
> Worcester, Mass., they teach that we are not in control of how our body
> reacts to stress but we have complete control over how we respond.
Ok. Not only is this incorrect, but it is semantically confused.
1) “how we respond” includes our body reactions. What would be more proper or at least closer would be to say we have complete control over our voluntary behavior (of course that’s meaningless or at least redundant).
2) We are clearly able to control our body’s reactions. That’s not to say everyone can do well, or does it all the time. We know that, for example, phobias can be “extinguished” to eliminate the behavioral problem associated with a phobia AND the way our body reacts. The process of biofeedback teaches people how to control heart rate, respiration, blood pressure, stricture of surface blood vessels, and on and on. Those are all common body reactions.
Not only can we control our reactions physiologically but also change what is and is not stressful, through cognitive techniques like restructuring/reframing.
3) Bob’s message assumes there is such an objective thing as “stress” independent of the perceptions of each individual. It’s again, a great example of reification. Stress is not defined as an external event but the results of perceptions (including reactions of the body). Which of course is the reason why something YOU find stressful might be enjoyable for me. Selye defined good and bad stress decades ago.
4) Why is any of this a big deal? Why do I bother being so “rude” on occasional issues? I expect people in our profession will be responsible enough to post within their own levels of understanding as best they can. WHY? In this case, Bob’s message contained assumptions (or conclusions) about stress that are not only inaccurate but DISEMPOWERING to people.
If there’s one thing that therapies have become good at, it’s helping people learn to control their physiological reactions. It does nobody a service to tell trainers or regular people that it is impossible to control one’s internal reactions, when it IS possible to learn to do so, relatively quickly and easily.
5) Finally, even re: the question Bob asked, apart from it being what I see as a vague and impossible to answer question because it’s ill phrased. When someone prefaces a question with a context, or purported set of facts that are incorrect, how does that affect the discussion and answers?
When someone prefaces a question with a statement that clearly lacks clarity and accuracy about the thing being asked about “stress”, where do we go with it.
6) Why the rudeness? Because I do not expect Bob to care about what I have to say, and see no reason why he will, and no reason to think he should. I’ve seen reactions before like” “Well, THEY said it, not me”, or “the eminent so and so I met last week told me so”. Or, to simply shift the issue to personal attacks and ignore the substance.
The issue here, like or not, is that the statement is wrong, harmful and disempowrring. While I rarely comment, this particular statement is harmful if acted upon by trainers and others.
If anyone wants to discuss the issues related to stress, then let’s get to it (and that includes Bob).