You already know that stress isn’t good for your health.
Yet the writing life is often full of stress. You have to fit your writing time into your busy life, which can be stressful in itself. Then there is the additional stress of meeting deadlines, launching a book, marketing it, and over all, managing your career as a writer.
You simply can’t expect to make a go of the writing life without suffering some stress along the way. Does that mean you’re doomed to increase your risk of obesity, diabetes, infections, heart disease, and other stress-related illnesses?
Not if you know how to properly manage that stress. Research has found that in the end, the effect that stress has on your health is not really about how much stress you experience, but about how you perceive it and deal with it.
What are the secrets, then, of managing writing-related stress so it doesn’t hurt your health?
How Stress Affects Your Health
You’re supposed to get your edited manuscript to your editor in two weeks. You think you’re managing okay until the universe conspires to interfere in every way possible. First, you get the flu. Then, your car breaks down.
Next, your job makes significant changes requiring you to go in on the weekends for extra training. Then, your son’s teacher tells you that he seems to be having trouble reading, an issue she thinks is related to sight problems.
As your deadline looms, how do you feel?
When you’re under stress, the body releases cortisol, the stress hormone that inspires that “fight or flight” reaction we’re all familiar with. In short spurts, this reaction is helpful, as it allows you to run faster, think more quickly, and react to whatever danger is ahead of you. When the reaction continues as a reduced level for days and days and even weeks and months, however, it’s considered “chronic stress,” and science has linked this type of stress to a number of health problems.
Chronic stress creates wear and tear on the body. At first you may experience symptoms like fatigue, headaches, muscle aches and pains, digestive issues, and difficulty concentrating.
If the condition goes on, the effects can get worse. In a 2012 study, researchers revealed that chronic stress seemed to cause the body to lose its ability to regulate inflammation. The inflammation can then increase, which can lead to the development and progression of disease.
Scientific experiments show that people who are under chronic stress, when exposed to the common cold virus, are more likely to develop symptoms of a cold than people who are not under stress.
This is why, just when you need to be at the top of your game—before a book signing, for instance, or before giving a presentation—you’re more likely to get sick. (Great, right?)
In a recent 2017 study, researchers found that those individuals who were under chronic emotional stress, as revealed in brain scans, were at a higher risk for stroke, heart attack, and heart disease, than those who were not chronically stressed.
There are many more studies linking stress with health problems. At first, we thought the answer was to reduce the stress in our lives. This remains a healthy approach—the less stress, the better. But of course it’s difficult to live life without experiencing stress, especially the writer’s life.
Fortunately, recent research has also indicated that your approach to stress, or your attitude about it, can greatly influence its effect on you.
How You Respond to Writing Stress Matters
Scientific research helps increase our understanding of ourselves and our world, but sometimes, that knowledge can hurt us if we aren’t careful how we use it.
The knowledge that stress can be bad for your health, for example, can actually make you more vulnerable to its effects. In a 2013 study, researchers found that people who “believed” their stress was having an impact on their health were probably right, because it was these people who were at risk of suffering a heart attack.
The scientists followed over 7,000 people for 18 years, and found that those that said in a questionnaire that stress affected their health “a lot or extremely,” had double the risk of coronary death or non-fatal heart attack when compared to people who reported no effect of stress on their health.
Weird, right? I mean, we believe what the science shows us—that stress affects our health—and that simple belief can make stress even more detrimental to our health!
“This current analysis allows us to take account of individual differences in response to stress,” said lead study author Dr. Hermann Nabi.
Other studies have resulted in similar findings. In 2012, for example, researchers reviewed data from the 1998 National Health Interview Survey, and the National Death Index mortality data through 2006. They examined the factors associated with current health status and psychological distress, looking specifically at the interaction between the amount of stress and the perception that stress affects health.
Results showed that nearly 34 percent of U.S. adults thought that stress affected their health a lot or to some extent. Both higher levels of stress and the perception that stress affects health were independently associated with an increased likelihood of worse health and mental health outcomes.
In particular, those who reported experiencing a lot of stress, and who believed that stress impacted their health a lot, had a 43 percent increased risk of premature death.
“Individuals who perceived that stress affects their health and reported a large amount of stress had an increased risk of premature death,” the researchers wrote.
With these and other studies, we can see that it’s not just the stress we’re under that causes problems, but our perception of how that stress is affecting us. But this may be about more than just “belief.” In other words, you may believe that your stress is affecting you because it actually is—perhaps because you don’t have processes in place to help you deal with it.
The solution to writing-related stress, therefore, is three-fold:
- Reduce the amount of stress in your life.
- Increase those activities and skills that help you better manage stress.
- Keep a positive attitude about stress, and your ability to deal with it.
7 Tips to Manage Writing-Related Stress
Study author Dr. Nabi stated that “responses to stress or abilities to cope with stress differ greatly between individuals, depending on the resources available to them…”
The key is to think of stress management as a skill—one that you can develop. To do that, try these seven tips.
1. Identify what’s stressing you out, and look for solutions.
If someone asked you why you’re feeling stressed out, would you know how to answer? It’s important that you know what is causing your stress. Is it the pressure of a deadline, or your fear that you won’t be up to the challenge? Is it your relationship with your agent, or your fear of cutting ties with her because the relationship no longer serves you?
You may want to use a journal, or talk to a good friend to zero in on the real cause of your stress, because only when you know what’s really behind it can you come up with solutions to help.
If your agent is stressing you out, for example, nothing will change until you realize that what you really need is another agent. If you’re stressed by your deadline because you believe you’re not up to the challenge, that stress won’t go away until you take a moment to boost your confidence.
Once you understand the source of your stress, you can take action to relieve it.
2. Increase your stress-management activities.
What do you do in your daily life to deal with stress? Just like you eat well and exercise every day, so you should participate in at least one (more is better) stress-relieving activity each day.
There are a lot of options. Exercise is always good, so if you’re already doing that to take care of your health, you can count that as stress relief, too. But most of us need more. There are several options, including yoga, meditation, relaxation techniques, pet therapy, deep breathing, walks in nature, crafting, gardening, or even getting a fish tank (they’ve been found to be calming).
The important thing is to schedule these activities into your calendar. They’re important to your health, and to your ability to stay strong for your writing-related work.
3. Reduce the amount of stress in your life.
No matter how good you are at managing your stress, you may experience times in your life where there is just too much. When things pile up, the only solution is to get rid of some of it. Maybe it’s time to delegate some tasks at work, bow out of a few community activities, reduce the number of blog posts you write per month, or take some time out to care for a sick loved one.
Take a few days to write down all the things that are causing stress, then look over your list and see which items are important to you, and which you can let go. Realize that letting go can be temporary. You can always return to some of your cherished activities after the stress has passed, but be willing to sacrifice some things for your sanity and your health when you need to.
4. Realize when you’re distracting yourself.
One of the worst responses to stress is to indulge in excess behaviors like excessive alcohol use, eating too much, or parking in front of the television. Scientists believe that one of the reasons that stress is bad for our health is because we respond to it with unhealthy behaviors.
Are you turning to ice cream and brownies to drown your fear? Are you drinking too many glasses of wine each night? Are you binge watching Game of Thrones to avoid thinking about your book launch?
Take a step back and ask yourself what’s up. When these behaviors take over, there’s usually something scary underneath them. Have the courage to face what’s bothering you, and then find a solution. Maybe you need to ask for more time to finish your edits, or get a virtual assistant to help manage your writing activities. There is always something you can do to ease the pressure on yourself once you are willing to face the real issue.
5. Change how you view stress.
Because we’ve been told that stress negatively affects health, many of us now worry when we go through stressful times. Not only do we have to deal with the stress, but we have to deal with the fear that it may cause us future health problems.
Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D. health psychologist and author of The Upside of Stress, suggests seeing stress in a positive light—as something that challenges you, or brings out your best. You can think of it as your body’s way of making you aware of an issue that is important to you. Use the energy that stress creates (remember that it causes the release of adrenaline) to do something about it—use that stress to fuel your action toward a solution.
Don’t worry—you don’t have to try to fool yourself that stress is good for you. You know that it can be harmful. They key is not to focus on that. Instead, look at stress like you might look at a rejection letter—as a way to increase your strength and resolve. See stress as an opportunity to get better at managing it, for example, or as a helpful signal that something needs to change in your life.
“Stress isn’t always harmful,” said McGonigal. “Once you appreciate that going through stress makes you better at it, it can be easier to face each new challenge.”
6. Reduce stress, but don’t obsess about it.
As mentioned above, it helps to reduce the amount of stress in your life, but it also helps to realize that you can’t expect to have a stress-free life. Stressful things will come up, and if you work too hard to avoid these things, you could not only exacerbate the health effects of stress, but you could also reduce your writing opportunities.
If you’re so worried about stress and its effects, for example, you may purposely avoid stressful events like pitching your story to an agent or editor, or giving a reading at a bookstore. One study found that having a goal to avoid stress actually increased risk of long-term negative outcomes like depression and getting fired, whereas having a more positive view of stress encouraged people to increase their coping skills.
7. When you’re stressed out, get help.
One of the key factors separating people who suffer stress-related health problems from those who don’t is control. Those who feel they simply can’t control the stress in their lives are more likely to suffer from health problems because of it.
Those who feel they can make changes in their lives to cope with stress, on the other hand, fare much better. In other words, it’s not about you being superman or superwoman and having amazing powers of resilience. Instead, it’s about getting the help you need when you need it.
If you’re going through a particularly stressful time in your writing career, don’t be afraid to reach out. Talking with a good friend, meeting with a writer’s group, going to a conference, or even spending some time with a therapist can mean the difference between managing your stress and letting it defeat you.
When All Else Fails, Focus on the Work
Finally, when dealing with writing-related stress, remember to keep in mind what’s most important: the work. The marketing, the sales, the contest wins and losses, the publication agreements, and all the rest are peripheral. These are also the things that most often cause us stress.
When you return to the work—just you and your story—the stress usually disappears. As writers, we can use that to our advantage. We always have the choice to shut out the rest of the world and focus on the story. Sometimes that’s the best stress-relieving technique there is.
How do you deal with writing-related stress?
Sources
Cohen, S, et al., “Chronic stress, glucocorticoid receptor resistance, inflammation, and disease risk,” PNAS, April 17, 2012; 109(16), http://www.pnas.org/content/109/16/5995.
Ahmed Tawakol, et al., “Relation between resting amygdalar activity and cardiovascular events: a longitudinal and cohort study,” The Lancet, February 25, 2017; 389(10071):834-845, http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)31714-7/fulltext.
Hermann Nabi, et al., “Increased risk of coronary heart disease among individuals reporting adverse impact of stress on their health: The Whitehall II prospective cohort study,” European Heart Journal, September 7, 2013; 34(34):2697-2705, https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article/34/34/2697/617400.
Vanessa Loder, “Can Stress Kill You? Research Says Only if You Believe It Can,” Forbes, June 3, 2015, https://www.forbes.com/sites/vanessaloder/2015/06/03/can-stress-kill-you-research-says-only-if-you-believe-it-can/#162f8f9b682e.
Abiola Keller, et al., “Does the Perception that Stress Affects Health Matter? The Association with Health and Mortality,” Health Psychol., September 2012; 31(5):677-684, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3374921/.
Clifton B. Parker, “Embracing stress is more important than reducing stress, Stanford psychologist says,” Stanford University, News Release, May 7, 2015, https://news.stanford.edu/2015/05/07/stress-embrace-mcgonigal-050715/.