BalanceSeptember2016 - 32
FACT: Young adolescents
who attribute bad
experiences to causes inside
themselves are much more
likely to become depressed
over a five-year period than
those who have malleable
opinions about stress
H
LOBSTERS
AND
TOUGH
TIMES
We all face stressful
situations in life,
but approaching
them like a certain
crustacean can help
us develop a flexible,
tenacious mindset...
words by P RO F E S S O R
I A N RO B E RT S O N
32
BALANCE September 2016
ow do lobsters - encased as they
are in a hard, fixed shell - grow?
The answer is that the pressure
and discomfort of their soft bodies pressing
up against the unyielding inner surface
stimulates them to retreat under a rock to
safety and painfully shed the constricting
shell and grow a new, bigger one.
Occasionally they die, but in most cases
they exit comfortable in their new skin
- a process they have to repeat many times
as they get larger.
We all have to do something similar
at various points in our lives. Pressure,
discomfort and pain can be crucial
stimulators to taking action to face up to
these stresses - failure, sickness or loss for
example - and, in the process, we can find
a new direction.
'What doesn't kill me, makes me
stronger' is the famous aphorism by the
German philosopher Friederich Nietzsche.
But is this true? Isn't stress supposed
to be the great corrosive that actually saps
our mental and physical health, rather
than making us strong?
STRE SS IS RELATIVE
I had been puzzling over this statement
for many years as a clinical psychologist,
because while it seemed to hit the mark for
some, the reverse applied to others who
I had seen crumble under small stresses.
Two of my clients captured this dichotomy.
Lucy had been sent to me by her tutor.
Twenty, tall, blonde, her good looks were
spoiled by the dark smudges under tired
eyes and a downcast, nervy appearance.
She hadn't been sleeping properly
for months, she told me, and had been
losing weight because her appetite had
disappeared. Her social life at university
had dwindled to an occasional drink with
a close friend and she had been missing
lectures because she felt so exhausted in
the mornings, following sleepless nights.
After nearly two hours of talking to
Lucy, I discovered that these problems had
emerged, more or less out of the blue, six
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