Stress: Alleviating stress with mindfulness

FAU researchers are investigating what role the mind plays when challenging experiences lead to illness

Stress is subjective. Some people feel under pressure with the double burden of job and family, others feel stressed when they are stuck in traffic on the way to a business meeting. Dr. Johanna Janson-Schmitt from the Chair of Health Psychology at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) explains why it is not good to spend time pondering on a stressful experience and what mindfulness has to do with preventing stress from having negative repercussions on our health.

Dr. Janson-Schmitt, together with the head of the Chair of Health Psychology, Prof. Nicolas Rohleder, you are researching the effect repeated stress has on physical and emotional reactions. To date, 22 participants have taken part in two stress tests in the laboratory, one one day and one the next, for your MODSTR study. One group was instructed to mull over what they experienced, while the other group was asked to reflect with compassion and mindfulness on the fact that they were currently under a lot of pressure. You intend to test a further 120 people by 2027. What exactly do you hope to discover?

Dr. Johanna Janson-Schmitt: We are investigating the physical mechanisms that can lead to stress causing illness. Our aim is to discover what influence our mind has on these processes. In principle, it is good if our body does not always react the same way to stress, but rather adjusts over time in a process known as habituation. If biological stress reactions failed to adjust over our lifetime and we always reacted to stress in the same intensity, this could over time lead to chronic, subliminal inflammation processes. The result: illnesses such as arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s or various types of cancer. We would like to find out what the effects are on the body and inflammatory processes when people deal differently with stress.

With stress it is not a case of one size fits all, people experience situations in different ways. What can help people cope better under pressure?

Dr. Johanna Janson-Schmitt: How we experience stress starts in our central nervous system. Here we can call up memories and strategies that have helped us cope with stress in the past. If breathing or relaxation exercises helped me before a job interview in the past, then I can use them again during a stressful meeting in the office. I will probably experience the meeting as less stressful and my body will produce fewer stress hormones. As a rule, most people get used to repeated stress and begin to experience it as less of a strain over time.

Are there psychological traits that make it easier to develop a more laid back attitude to stress over the long term?

Dr. Johanna Janson-Schmitt: Yes, if you cannot stop your thoughts spiraling and you keep thinking obsessively about negative experiences you have just had, your body will adjust less well to stress. This constant train of thought also plays a role in depression. A preliminary experimental study at our chair demonstrated that the test group who was instructed to keep thinking about the stress after the fact did not feel any worse than the control group after repeated stress. However, at the physiological level, we clearly saw that the body adjusted more poorly to stressful situations after two stressful episodes in the laboratory in those participants who kept going back and thinking about the stressful situation.

Up until now, studies have focused predominantly on how the body’s stress system reacts and what quantities of cortisol and adrenalin it releases. You are now researching the body’s inflammatory system. How are you going about that?

Dr. Johanna Janson-Schmitt: In order to find out whether we can influence the body’s inflammatory system by adopting a certain attitude to stress, during stress tests in the laboratory we test the concentration of cortisol in participants’ saliva and the concentration of norepinephrine using a surrogate marker. Blood tests give us information about inflammatory levels in the body. We compare the results after the two stress tests and can determine whether there has been any change to the body’s reaction and what differences there are in these changes between the group who has been constantly thinking about their stressful experiences and the control group.

The question of whether stress makes you ill therefore crucially depends on how you cope with challenging experiences after the fact and how much understanding you have for yourself after the stressful experience. What can we do to break out of the spiral of negative thoughts?

Dr. Johanna Janson-Schmitt: Mindfulness has a major role to play. It is important to keep returning your focus to the here and now. If I feel stressed, if I feel uncomfortable and I notice that my heart rate is rising, I notice that this is the case, but I do not judge. I also observe negative thoughts without judging them. Mindfulness can help to stop your thoughts from spiraling and it therefore makes sense to practice it. Like meditation or sport, it can reduce acute stress. Until now, however, there has been no scientific proof showing that it also improves the habituation of our biological reactions towards repeated stress over the long term. It is assumed that this is the case, but we hope to prove it for the first time with our study.

How do you practice mindfulness yourself?

Dr. Johanna Janson-Schmitt: My family distracts me well from stress at work. Thinking of other things helps to alleviate stress, as do creative hobbies. In stressful situations, I also like to remind myself that it is not only me who feels stressed, other people do as well. That relieves the pressure.

Further information:

Dr. Johanna Janson-Schmitt
johanna.janson-schmitt@fau.de