Can You Catch Stress?

Wave goodbye to second-hand stress with these simple strategies.

Just as colds, flu and other bugs are passed from person to person, everyday stress can spread, too.

Thanks to friends, family, colleagues and even strangers, second-hand stress, a relatively new phenomenon, is on the rise. ‘Second-hand stress is the stress we experience from being around other people who are stressed. Seeing others in distress triggers our body’s own stress response,’ says clinical NLP practitioner and life coach Lisa Bardell (Lisabardellcoaching.co.uk). We’re built to empathise with others and mimic behaviour, and our brain cells are hardwired to imitate actions or emotions.

‘The amygdala in the brain sends signals to the body, and we produce the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline. This second-hand stress becomes a physiological state through our system at a cellular level,’ adds Lisa.

In recent years, second-hand stress has become a worrying epidemic. ‘People do not have effective management strategies, and the neurology of stress – literally the neural pathways in the brain and body that put us into stress – becomes so well used that it becomes etched like a neurological groove,’ says Lisa.

According to a recent study by Germany’s Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, seeing someone in a difficult situation is enough to bring us to meltdown, sparking anxiety reactions in our own bodies – even if we’re not experiencing it directly. ‘We’re creating stress with our thoughts. Until we learn new strategies en masse, we’ll all continue to feel frazzled and will “catch” the stress of others,’ continues Lisa.