Driving Lessons and Stress States
Earlier this week, I was in the passenger seat while my 15-year-old daughter was practicing driving to a friend’s house. Even though she has just started driving, she’s doing pretty darn well, and she sees every opportunity to practice as an exciting challenge. As we went on the route, she was following all her favorite protocols. Stopping at the stop signs, checking for oncoming traffic, keeping her speed appropriate and so on. Things were going well until we realized we couldn’t remember exactly where her friends house was… that is until we passed it. My daughter’s eyes went wide, and she gripped the steering wheel while she frantically tried to figure out what to do. While thinking, we went further and further down the road and before long we were blocks away from our original destination.
Eventually, we turned down a side road, carefully turned the car back around, and headed back towards the friend’s house. Shaking off the initial hiccup, my daughter took a deep breath and wore a face of determination as we headed toward the house once again. As we got closer, she asked me, “wait, what do I do now! How do I get over there? Where do I stop?!” It was then that I realized that although we have practiced driving, we haven’t practiced pulling over. I thought she would naturally just pull over in front of her friend’s house, but in her moment of panic we once again passed the house. Eventually she was able to pull over, but we were about 5 houses away.
So what happened here? I mean, we eventually got to the house, but the process of how it happened was a great example of different ways we can respond to acute stress.
First, let’s describe what we mean by acute stress. Acute stress happens during contained moments of high intensity – meaning there is a definite ending and beginning of this high intensity moment. Acute stress isn’t necessarily good or bad. It simply means you are in a heightened physiological state. How we feel about that stress is how we decide if it is good or bad. If we feel like we have enough resources to meet the demands of the moment, we are in what is known as a challenge state. This state often feels really good. Think of the beginning moments of a state championship game when the team is hyped and ready to take things on. Or, in my case, it’s the feeling I get right before going on stage for a live audience after months of rehearsal. It’s exciting, thrilling, and when you get the outcome you wanted, you feel amazing. It’s good enough we often chase that high over and over again.
On the flip side, however, if you’re in an acute stress situation and you don’t feel like you have enough resources to meet the demand, you’ll go into a threat state. This situation does not feel good and our heightened physiological state starts flooding us with cortisol as we go into fight, flight, or freeze mode. I have a reoccurring nightmare, for instance, that I’m on a stage, but I haven’t been to any rehearsals. I don’t know the music or the lines, but the show must go on! (All theater kids know this nightmare). If you’ve dreamed about having to take a test that you haven’t studied for, this is the feeling I’m talking about.
With my daughter, she started in a challenge state. She was excited about driving and felt that she knew enough to get on the road and do well. However, as she realized that she didn’t know all that she needed to know (i.e. she didn’t have the resources to meet the demand), she switched into a threat state. In threat state, our performance drops and we’re less likely to achieve the outcome we were hoping for.
If we’re in a threat state, however, all is not lost. We can reappraise the moment to help bring ourselves back into a challenge state. One of the easiest ways to do this is to acknowledge the resources we have and rebuild our confidence in our ability to meet the demand. For my daughter, this meant gentle coaching about how she knew the mechanics needed to pull over and a confident voice that reminded her that she was capable of doing so. We also released some pressure by allowing her more time (which is a resource) to be able to get the job done and we found wiggle room in where she could pull over that would still count as good enough (once again widening that resource pool to increase her success).
We are regularly met with moments of high intensity – some of them are intentional, some are not. When we acknowledge that we’re in those moments and call on the resources we have to meet the challenge, we can often surprise ourselves with how much we can get done. Once the moment is finished, it is important to remember to replenish the resources we may have used so that when the next high intensity moment arrives, we can meet the challenge head on instead of responding to it as a threat.
Thanks for reading with me today. I hope you are feeling abundant in your resources this week so that you take on those moments of challenge with victory.