Gratitude, mindfulness, and reframing are to stress management what cilantro once was to restaurant food — ubiquitous to the point of overuse and not to everyone’s taste. Darlene Mininni, PhD, a health psychologist and creator of the undergraduate well-being LifeSkills course at the University of California in Los Angeles, knows what we mean. “Even as I advocate for these approaches,” Dr. Mininni says, “I understand the periodic temptation to dismiss them when they’re recommended yet again as effective practices.”
And they are effective, she says, if you understand what they actually are and why they work. Everyday Health sat down with Mininni to learn just that — as well as why we should consider adding them to our stress-management tool kits.
Everyday Health: Admittedly, gratitude, mindfulness, and reframing are only three of the many strategies or practices we can learn to protect us from experiencing chronic, toxic stress.
Darlene Mininni: Yes, and they are very popular. That’s why discussing them — clarifying what they really are and how to best apply them in your life — is an opportunity to show everyone that we have more power over our well-being than we may realize.
Sonja Lyubomirsky, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of California in Riverside, offers data suggesting that our well-being — a word she uses interchangeably with happiness — isn’t determined by our genes alone. It’s also rooted in our environment and circumstances, and to a large extent in our own actions and attitudes. What this says to me is that we can foster our own well-being during stressful times by learning to be more stress hardy, more stress resilient.
EH: Supposedly, gratitude is one way to do that. But the concept sounds like we’re supposed to ignore the bad things happening in our lives; maybe be grateful for the bad not being worse. Is that right?
DM: You bring up a common misconception. That’s why I’m not a big fan of the word “gratitude,” because for many people it implies that we should dismiss whatever pain we’re feeling in favor of looking at the bright side. But I believe there can be value in noticing both the good and the bad in our lives. To understand the concept, let me tell you a story that deeply affected the way I view the idea of gratitude.
When I was in a counselor training program, our teacher told us about her friend, Joyce. After learning that she had breast cancer, Joyce underwent a single mastectomy. Her many friends came to visit during her recovery period and tried to sincerely help Joyce by saying things like, “You should be grateful you’re still alive,” and “At least it was only one breast and not two.” But when my teacher went to visit Joyce, she said, “This is a very difficult thing, and I’m so sorry it happened to you.”
RELATED: The United States of Stress: You'll Never Think About Stress the Same Way Again
It was exactly what Joyce needed to hear, because she felt seen and heard; because it acknowledged as legitimate the pain she was in.
Now we know that there is value — both physiologically and emotionally — in people being seen and heard. Your parasympathetic nervous system kicks in, inducing what is commonly called the “relaxation response.”
It can be difficult to move forward and manage the stressors in our lives if we don’t validate where we are to begin with — maybe in pain, experiencing relationship or financial problems, whatever we’re going through. It’s helpful to acknowledge that first, before gratitude or appreciation or what we could even call “noticing” begins.
When it does begin, what we’re really asking you to do is not to dismiss your pain, but to notice that in the middle of your pain, there is goodness, too; that pain and goodness can exist at the same time. For Joyce, while she sees her struggle, perhaps she can also notice the good — that she has friends who love her, for example, and that she is a strong person. Noticing the good can pull her forward.
EH: How do we learn to notice the good, when it seems easier to notice the bad?
DM: You're right, it is easier to notice the bad. That’s because humans evolved with a negativity bias, a tendency to notice negative events more easily than positive ones. This was great for helping our primitive ancestors survive a dangerous world of predators, but not so great for helping us manage our environment today. The good news is that you can train your brain to notice what is good, what is going well, through practice.
One way to do this is to use the “Three Good Things” exercise. Developed by Martin Seligman, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and leader in the field of positive psychology, this exercise builds the habit of noticing the good in your life. Here’s how it works: Every night, think about three things that went well for you that day. Write about them and reflect deeply on these experiences. Studies have found that when people do this, after just one week, they reported being happier than before, and that feeling of happiness keeps increasing over succeeding months.
EH: Why are we advised to practice gratitude journaling? Is there something special about writing down the good things that we see?
DM: Yes, there’s benefit to all kinds of writing in helping us manage our stress. To begin with, it enables you to pause and process the positive elements of your day. James Pennebaker, PhD, psychology professor at the University of Texas in Austin and a pioneer of expressive writing, suggests that writing can also help your body release the tension of holding onto your feelings. And there is evidence that this is true.
Dr. Pennebaker asked a group of college students to write about the most upsetting experiences in their lives and another group to write about their dorm rooms, each for 15 minutes daily for three to four days. He was shocked by the traumatic things he read and worried that he might have traumatized these students a second time by asking them to recall those memories. Although some students reported feeling worse for a few hours after their writing, emotionally they felt better. Up to four months later, those who wrote about their upsetting experiences were less depressed, less anxious, and more positive about life than the other group.
This is why I recommend that people try writing as a potentially useful stress management tool. For those interested in this process, when you’re stressed, write about your feelings for several days. Once on paper, explore your thoughts and feelings with questions such as, “How can I deal with this challenge?” or “What have I learned from this?” You can also write about what you’re grateful for in light of your experiences.
EH: What about mindfulness? Now there is a word that seems to be in every psychologist’s vocabulary — usually in conjunction with meditation.
DM: Mindfulness, at its most basic level, is paying attention to the present moment without judgment. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. Most of us don’t pay attention to what we’re experiencing in the present moment. As a matter of fact, a Harvard study found 47 percent of people are thinking about something else other than what they’re actually doing right now. Why does that matter? Because when we’re not focused on the present, our minds often wander to scenarios about the future or the past. If we think about the future and what could go wrong, we can create anxiety. If we think about the past and what should’ve been, we can create sadness. Focusing on the present — what we are doing or experiencing in this moment — is being mindful, and that can create a calmer nervous system, an improved perspective, and a greater sense of well-being.
EH: How can you be more mindful during, say, a typical workday?
DM: Imagine you’re given a report to write in a week. You might recall a similar situation when you failed to complete a different report on time. You could futurize and stress about the deadline coming too soon. Or you could anchor yourself in the present and reduce your stress by focusing on what’s in front of you: “I’ve been given this report to write. Here is when it’s due. I will put together an outline first. Then I’ll start with the introduction.” And so on. Every time your mind wanders — to thoughts like, “What if I can’t get this done?” — you bring your focus back to the task at hand, writing your report, one step at a time.
EH: Sounds like a valuable skill, but one you need to practice.
DM: Yes, and with practice you can, again, train your brain — this time to be more focused on the present moment. One way to develop the skill of mindfulness is with mindfulness meditation. Just as you might lift weights to train your muscles to be stronger, mindfulness meditation trains your focus to be stronger. You can start by paying attention to your breathing. Notice the sensations as you breathe in and out. When your mind wanders, as it will, notice that and return to your breath. Practice for a few minutes a day, working your way up to 10 minutes daily.
Another mindful breathing practice that has been popular with my students is 3-3-6 breathing, where you breathe in through your nose to the count of 3, hold for the count of 3, and exhale through your mouth to the count of 6. Do this as many times as is comfortable for you. My students have said this has been an excellent de-stressing practice for them.
EH: Looking at reframing, this seems to call for straining to look on the bright side of life. Is that what reframing actually entails?
DM: Actually, reframing isn’t about positive thinking or looking on the bright side. It’s about realistic thinking, that is, looking at things as they are, but not worse than they are. I call this thought-shifting. And it can be a challenge, because we often believe our feelings are facts. If it feels true, it must be true. If I feel incompetent, then I must be incompetent, right? And if I have an upsetting thought, it must be true, or I wouldn’t think it! So the first step is to notice your thoughts and question them. Imagine you’re a lawyer and you put your thoughts on trial. How do you know your thoughts are true? What proof do you have?
Let me give you an example. I worked with a woman who had recurring thoughts that she was a loser. She was treating her thoughts as if they were facts, an easy thing to do. Like a lawyer looking for evidence, I asked whether she had ever done anything in life where she wasn’t a loser? She said yes: She raised a wonderful son, and was good at her job. Where, then, did she get the idea that she’s a loser? Turns out her stepfather called her a loser and his words had now become her own.
Continuing to question her thought, I asked if her stepfather knew her deepest self, and she said he did not. And was her stepfather ever wrong? Yes, she said he was wrong quite often. Could he have been wrong when he called her a loser? After a pause, she said that yes, he may have been wrong.
You see how you can test a thought, put it on trial? The goal of this type of reframing is to look at the thought very differently, and create new thoughts that that you can believe. That’s important. In this case, she isn’t going to suddenly believe, “Oh, I’m not a loser. I’m a winner!” But every time she has the thought in her head that she’s a loser, she can tell herself, “That’s my stepfather’s voice, not mine.” That’s the truth she can believe.
EH: You’ve written in The Emotional Toolkit: 7 Power-Skills to Nail Your Bad Feelings about a strategy for practicing thought-shifting. Can you distill that strategy for us?
DM: Yes, there are four steps that you can apply in potentially stressful situations. Just remember that the goal isn’t to think happy thoughts all the time — a state that I think is not possible or helpful. Instead, the goal is to examine your thinking so that you can see things as they really are, and not worse than they are. This can limit your levels of toxic, chronic stress.
The four steps to thought-shifting are:
- Become aware of your negative self-talk. We often have a running dialogue in our heads that we don’t even notice. Begin to pay attention.
- Directly examine and challenge your negative assumptions. Put your thoughts on trial and look for proof.
- Generate new and realistic messages that you create. Replace the old toxic thoughts with new ones that you can fully believe.
- Develop an action plan. Mobilize the appropriate tools in your tool kit to de-stress and problem solve.
Everyone needs to find the stress-reducing approaches that work best for them, but just knowing that we have the power to influence our well-being is important. Equally important, I think, is working together — within our companies, our communities, and as a society — to change the conditions that stress us out in the first place.