Vivian and her adult daughter, Alicia, talk on the phone every day. Though they live across the country from each other—Vivian in San Francisco and Alicia in New York—they are quite close. Alicia often dwells on how well things had been going that day before the incident. She has a favorite phrase she always deploys at the end of these tales of plans gone awry: “It’s always something!” Vivian is baffled by this. “Well, of course it is,” she always says. “Why would you expect anything different?” But now she wondered—had she given Alicia the impression that the world could be controlled, predicted, made to fit her plans and expectations? In washing away some of the difficulties she faced, had she failed to set her daughter up for the way life actually unfolded? Vivian expected detours and construction; Alicia expected straight routes, green lights, and smooth sailing. Vivian is a friend—not a study participant. I’ve never pulled her into the lab to draw her blood, review her stress surveys, or peer into her cells. But if I did, and if I compared them with her daughter’s, I wonder what I would see. It’s possible that as Vivian and Alicia move along through the years, their calendar age staying stable at 32 years apart, their biological age is actually closing the gap. Vivian, who rolls with the kicks and punches her days throw at her, doesn’t seem to mount a stress response when faced with an unexpected detour. Alicia has a completely different physiological response to that road-closed sign. Her sympathetic nervous system whooshes into action, ready to fight this threat. And if that’s happening a lot—all day, every day—that’s not good. When things go awry, we tend to react with a stress response. In Buddhism, this is thought of as the second arrow problem: Anytime something bad happens, it’s like we’re being hit by two arrows. The first arrow is the painful thing that happened; the second is our reaction to that bad thing. In other words, problems (the first arrow) are inevitable, but suffering (the second arrow) is optional. The events will happen. The first arrows fall on everyone. But if we suffer about the suffering, we are throwing a second arrow at ourselves, and it’s always a double hitter. For Alicia, this was in part because of a “violation of expectations.” Alicia thought, Why me? Vivian had a different response: Why not me? To begin, find a place to sit if you aren’t sitting already. Ideally, this is someplace quiet and comfortable, but you can do this anywhere, even on the subway or bus, or at your desk at work. (If you can, put earbuds in to block out distractions or listen to calming music.) Next, follow the steps below: Adapted from an excerpt from THE STRESS PRESCRIPTION by Elissa Epel, published by Penguin Life, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022 by Elissa Epel.
