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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