One of the things I noticed when I was conducting my own research last year, was that the 83% of the participants were suffering from high levels of stress and that some of them struggled coping with it. If we think about it, it makes sense that people who are constantly performing in front of an audience (even if it is a small audience or their own professor), feel  some sort of stress to certain extent.  

This type of stress is called social evaluative stress [7]. As Blackburn [1] states, "Anyone who tries to perform a task in front of an audience will probably feel increased stress about their performance". A constant experience of social evaluative stress together with the lack of resources to cope and respond to it, could have a strong influence on the development of Performance Anxiety [4]. If you would like to know more about Music Performance Anxiety, check out the book, The Psychology of Music Performance Anxiety by Diana T. Kenny [4].

To understand how and why experiencing stress impacts our health, I will introduce the concept of Telomeres [1]. Telomeres are repeated segments of DNA situated at the very end of our chromosomes. Recent studies [1, 5] point out that there is a relationship between the length of our telomeres and our cellular age (the longer our telomeres, the healthier our cells). This helps determine how long we are going to live and the quality of our lives. 

The good news is that Telomeres can change. We have the power to influence whether they are going to shorten early, or whether they are going to stay strong and healthy. Telomeres listen to you. The way you live, your thoughts, the food you eat, how you respond to emotional challenges, how much you exercise and the quality of your sleep. All of these factors can change the pace of cellular aging. 

It seems evident that stress may have a negative influence on your telomeres and thus forth, your health. Some studies [2, 5, 7] point out that people with chronic stress have shorter telomeres which can lead to prematurely aging immune cells,  resulting in  worse immune function. Evidently, there is an existing stress-telomere connection. Interestingly, we can influence this connection by how we respond to stress. If we perceive stress as a threat, we will probably have shorter telomeres than people who face stress with a sense of challenge [6].

A negative stress response is called the Threat Response. When you feel threatened by a challenge and feel fear combined with low coping resources, your body reacts with a strong hormonal response that involves a set of mental (fear and anxiety) and physiological (accelerated heart rate and sweating hands) reactions that can endanger your telomeres. 

People with a strong habitual threat response also tend to suffer from anticipatory worry, meaning that you feel threatened at the mere thought of the event before it has even happened. Having a large anticipatory threat response can impact your health as much as the stressful event itself.

Fortunately, there are ways to transform threat stress into a feeling of challenge.

The Challenge Response, when you feel anxious and nervous but also excited and energized, creates the psychological and physiological conditions for you to engage fully and perform at your best [3]. Isn't this what all musicians want? 

From the biological point of view, the threat response is characterized by withdrawal and defeat. Your body is preparing for wounding and shame as you anticipate a bad outcome. Over time, this response can damage your telomeres by shortening them. Nevertheless, a challenge response may help protect your telomeres from some of the worst effects of chronic stress [1]. Recent findings [1] suggests that with stress-reducing strategies  there is a possibility of lengthening them.

As we all know, stress is unavoidable. How much of it can we handle before our telomeres are damaged? Recent findings [1, 6] suggest that short-term, manageable stressors can be good for us, as they strengthen our coping muscles, developing skills and confidence to handle challenges. Yet, when stress is an enduring, defining aspect of  life, it can act as a slow drip of poison. It is important to get out of long-term, psychologically harmful situations, if possible. 

Luckily that's not the whole story. Some studies have shown that chronic stress does not inevitably lead to telomere damage if we engage with it positively. It can give us energy when perceived as a challenge instead of as a threat. 

Then the question would be: how can we develop  a challenge response in the face of stress?

The first thing to know is that our responses and emotions are not pure reactions to the world; they are our own fabricated constructions of it [1]. Once knowing this, there is a new range of choice over what we experience. 

Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the body's stress response and viewing it as harmful, try and think about it as a source of fuel that will help the brain to work quickly and efficiently [3]. Try and think of stress as helping you to get ready to perform. Maybe say to yourself, "Yes, I need this to perform!". 

When believing stress as something that will help you succeed, you will find a more powerful and focused state, giving you good energy for performance. Experiment with ways of helping yourself to reframe and change how you react to stress.

The point is, even though certain situations may be very difficult, you can re-shape stress to your benefit [1]. Stress and stressful situations are unavoidable, they are part of life, of caring, loving and taking risks but they do not have to limit our lives. There is freedom in each moment and we can have a choice about how to spend them by choosing where to place our attention in the moment. Although we cannot always choose our immediate reactions, we can shape our subsequent responses. 

In future entries I will talk about specific stress-reducing techniques and strategies to learn to use the challenge response to protect our telomeres and cells, helping us engage fully in life [1].