click: sharing a love of art

Kadluboski portrayed as vigilante, good citizen

<b>First Posted:</b> 7/8/2007<br><br>By Mary Therese Biebel mbiebel@www.timesleader.comFeatures Writer 
So your boss piles on the work and never listens to your suggestions.

Your cousin feels lonely because he hasn&amp;rsquo;t found Ms. Right.
Your elderly neighbor can&amp;rsquo;t sleep because her son is in jail.
What do you feel? 
You all feel stress.
And, stress is bad, isn&amp;rsquo;t it? Stress is something to avoid, right?
Wrong, say Charles Brooks, Ph.D., and Michael Church, Ph.D., a pair of psychology professors from King&amp;rsquo;s College who have written a manuscript titled &amp;ldquo;Stress Enhancement: Making Stress Work For You.&amp;rdquo;
&amp;ldquo;Without stress, we&amp;rsquo;d be at a disadvantage,&amp;rdquo; Church said, &amp;ldquo;just as we&amp;rsquo;d be at a disadvantage without physical pain.&amp;rdquo;
So, just as a searing shock to your toes might prompt you to pull your foot out of the campfire, you might use a &amp;ldquo;negative&amp;rdquo; emotion such as anger, frustration, jealousy or guilt as motivation to improve your life in other ways.
&amp;ldquo;You can turn anger into determination, jealousy into achievement,&amp;rdquo; Brooks said. &amp;ldquo;If you&amp;rsquo;re frustrated at a mediocre job, the best thing to do might be to look for a new one.&amp;rdquo;
The two professors have a combined tenure of more than 60 years teaching experience, and Church is also a licensed clinical psychologist with a private practice. 
They decry the American tendency to &amp;ldquo;manage,&amp;rdquo; &amp;ldquo;tolerate&amp;rdquo; or &amp;ldquo;avoid&amp;rdquo; stress, and believe reaching for medication to treat such ills as &amp;ldquo;social anxiety,&amp;rdquo; insomnia and depression should not be the first course of action.
&amp;ldquo;That&amp;rsquo;s a passive way to treat the problem,&amp;rdquo; Brooks pointed out.
Instead, the professors advise a more active approach.
&amp;ldquo;We define stress enhancement as responding to changes and challenges in ways that maximize positive emotions and outcome by learning to control what we can &amp;ndash; our thoughts and behaviors,&amp;rdquo; they wrote.
&amp;ldquo;Stress enhancement involves actively turning negative situations into positive ones by resisting attempts to avoid or undo problems and hassles.&amp;rdquo; 
Their manuscript is filled with examples of individuals &amp;ndash; identities are protected of course &amp;ndash; who have done just that.
For example, there&amp;rsquo;s the young woman, plagued by doubts about her fianc&amp;#65533;, who evaluated the situation, realized they really weren&amp;rsquo;t as compatible as she had thought, and called off the engagement.
And the young man, lonely, depressed and advised by his friends to &amp;ldquo;just get over&amp;rdquo; his feelings. Rather than avoiding his emotions, he confronted them and motivated himself to enter an arena where he didn&amp;rsquo;t feel quite so shy &amp;ndash; the Internet. Eventually, he found a soul mate and married her.
 Using stress for your benefit usually involves risk &amp;ndash; trying to forge a new relationship can result in rejection, breaking off an engagement can be painful, facing any kind of job interview or test can be scary.
Nevertheless, the professors advise in their book, &amp;ldquo;Failure may be an option, but avoiding challenge is not.&amp;rdquo;
Which of these scenarios, they ask, represents the way you want to spend your life?
&amp;ldquo;It is the bottom of the ninth inning and your team is ahead 3-2. You are playing shortstop and the bases are loaded. You have a choice. You can say to yourself: &amp;lsquo;God, I hope the ball is not hit to me. I could make an error and lose the game.&amp;rsquo;
&amp;ldquo;Or, you could say to yourself: &amp;lsquo;I can&amp;rsquo;t wait for the ball to come to me. This is my opportunity to help win the game.&amp;rdquo;
&amp;ldquo;In which case,&amp;rdquo; they ask, &amp;ldquo;do you think the player will enjoy the game more and have a greater chance of success?&amp;rdquo;
The professors almost named their strategy &amp;ldquo;Serenity Prayer psychology&amp;rdquo; instead of &amp;ldquo;stress enhancement&amp;rdquo; because they emphasize, just as the author of that prayer did, that &amp;ldquo;the only things you can directly control are your own thoughts and actions.&amp;rdquo;
 So maybe a person who feels depressed in winter should stop blaming the weakness of the sun&amp;rsquo;s rays and come out from hibernation, Church said. &amp;ldquo;You&amp;rsquo;ll feel better if you&amp;rsquo;re not curled up on the sofa.&amp;rdquo;
And maybe parents who are depressed that their son is in jail have to detach themselves and remember they&amp;rsquo;re not responsible for what a grown child does, Brooks said.
Church and Brooks have designed their book to appeal to lay people, and believe it could also be used as a supplemental text for students of psychology. They&amp;rsquo;re seeking a publisher, and of course, running the risk of rejection in the process.
But facing such challenges is the way to go, they said.
&amp;ldquo;Without stress, we&amp;rsquo;d never reach our potential,&amp;rdquo; Church said.


&amp;ldquo;Without stress, we&amp;rsquo;d be at a disadvantage, just as we&amp;rsquo;d be at a disadvantage without physical pain.&amp;rdquo;


Michael Church 
Psychology professor

Sweating things out beneficial, profs say