Dr Paul Wood shares some lessons on stress from his time as a prison inmate
Although I'm from Wellington, I served part of my prison sentence in New Zealand’s toughest facility, Paremoremo Prison in Auckland. Eventually, I discovered that I had been transferred there in contravention of a regulation that stipulates that inmates should do their time in a facility close to their family. When I pointed out the breach, I was transferred back to Rimutaka Prison near Wellington.
Initially this came as an enormous relief, but it was short-lived. It seemed that no sooner had the door to my cell at Rimutaka been locked than it was pounded with heavy kicks. Three faces covered with gang tattoos loomed in the inspection hatch.
"Wait till unlock!" a voice yelled. "We’re gonna f**k you up!"
I spent the night planning how to tactically defend myself against multiple, determined, possibly armed attackers. I focused on thinking about the exact tactics I would employ to use their numbers against them, inflict maximum damage and survive. I would mount my defence in the doorway, which would act as a bottleneck, and use a ballpoint pen to stab them in the eyes.
I now know that the approach I used intuitively to cope with the anticipation of this attack is called ‘instructional visualisation’. It is one of the ‘big four’ mental skills Special Forces and other soldiers are trained to use in order to remain effective under stress and pressure.
You may not have experienced anything quite like this, but you’ll know the feeling.
You might be sitting in the noisy, cramped interior of a small aircraft, fiddling with the chin strap of your helmet, when a light goes on, indicating that you’re five minutes from the drop zone on your first skydive …Or, you’re third from point as your patrol makes its way through light jungle. The man in front raises a hand to signal a halt. His next hand signal indicates that he has eyes on the enemy …Or, you’re taken aside by the coach at the end of training. You were brought into the national squad as injury cover, and now the coach is telling you that the injured player has failed a fitness test. You’re in the starting line-up for Friday night’s must-win game …
No, no, no, you’re saying. That’s not me. I’ve never been skydiving, or in a combat situation. I’m not an elite athlete, and I’ve never lain awake in a prison cell expecting an assault. I wouldn’t have a clue what any of those situations would feel like.
Well, try these instead.
You’re startled awake at three in the morning. The phone’s ringing. Your teenage daughter borrowed the car the night before to go to a party …
The phone rings at nine in the morning, just after you arrive at the office. It’s the CEO of a company to which you applied for a job. You believe you’re way underqualified for the role, but you allowed your friends to convince you to put your hand up on the nothing-ventured, nothing-gained principle. It takes you a few moments to realise that you’re being offered the position …
You’re sitting in a hall with a couple of hundred other people. There’s an exam script face-down on the desk in front of you. The examiner glances at her watch and says: ‘You may turn over your papers and begin’ …
You and your girlfriend arrive at the beach just before sunset. It’s exactly the kind of evening you were hoping for, and you’ve got a picnic hamper and a blanket. There’s a small box burning a hole in your pocket, and in that box there’s an engagement ring …
You’re standing beside the chairperson as she nears the end of her introduction. There are a hundred people in the auditorium. You’ve spent your life avoiding public speaking, but the chairperson, in her wisdom, has decided that you are the best person to speak to the issue …
In all of the above scenarios you will feel the same things, to a greater or lesser degree. The reluctant public speaker will experience exactly the same response as a soldier in combat, or the exam candidate, or the netballer about to play above her grade, or the skydiver about to make their first jump. And in every case, the response is exactly the same as the one our remote ancestors would have experienced when confronted by challenges in their long-ago world.
What you’re experiencing is stress.
"Stress" was coined by Hungarian scientist Hans Selye in the 1930s. He borrowed the word from physics, where ‘stress’ is the internal process that a material undergoes when external forces act upon it. Selye was building on a field of research into what is known as homeostasis — the tendency of organisms to exist in a kind of ‘systems-normal’ state, and to seek to return to it if disturbed.
You can think of homeostasis as your mental and bodily comfort zone. Biological homeostasis involves physiological factors such as body temperature and hydration, and there are mechanisms by which the body tells us what it needs so that we can take the appropriate action to return them to balance. We all know how these work, as the signals are fairly unambiguous. If our hydration is less than optimal, we feel thirsty: we drink, and our thirst is quenched. If our energy reserves drop, we feel hungry: we eat, and we feel full and energised.
But there’s also a psychological component to homeostasis, and we’re less adept at interpreting these signals. Partly, it’s because we’re not evolved to cope with many of the stressors to which we’re exposed in modern life. But partly it’s also because we have become conditioned to believe that psychological discomfort is necessarily bad.
Put simply, stress is the mechanism by which our bodies and minds respond to a challenge. The sensation of psychological stress is no different to thirst or hunger: it’s there to encourage you to take the action that’s necessary to respond to the challenge, prevail and then return to your comfort zone.
Taken from the self-help best-seller Mental Fitness: Build Your Mind for Strength and Resilience Every Day by Paul Wood (HarperCollins, $35), available in bookstores nationwide.
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