Stress is woven into the human experience.
The older I get, the more I’ve come to expect challenges and struggles — in relationships, career and parenting — as well as health scares. On top of all that, there’s anxiety over the big things that feel out of our control, everything from climate change to the ugliness of political polarization and global conflict. It can all be a lot.
But how we manage stress is key to thriving.
Turns out, there are some simple strategies that can help reduce anxiety and increase positive feelings. And there's a lot of science to show they work.
You can think of these strategies as skills that you can practice — and get better at. And this may help you cope better amid challenging times.
If you want to build your resilience muscles, sign up for NPR’s Stress Less newsletter series. Over five weeks, we’ll introduce you to these powerful tools and strategies that have been shown to help people reduce anxiety and improve feelings of well-being.
You’ll learn skills like positive reappraisal, mindfulness and self-compassion, along with insights on the science of stress from leading experts in the fields of psychology and neuroscience.
A special opportunity: Join a resilience master class
NPR is collaborating with Northwestern University to bring an online stress-reduction course and research study to our audiences.
Stress Less draws upon the work of Judith Moskowitz, a research psychologist at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine who created the course. It teaches eight skills to boost positive feelings.
It's based on her 20-plus years of research studying people who have experienced very difficult situations, including women with Stage 4 breast cancer and people caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's. Her peer-reviewed studies point to benefits.
Her research shows that people who learn and practice these skills report feeling more joy, and less anxiety, even amid challenging times.
"We really have built a pretty large body of research showing that these skills can work for anyone, no matter what type of stress they're experiencing," Moskowitz says.
Moskowitz' latest study is open to anyone aged 18 or older living in the U.S. who wants to learn the skills — limited to the first 20,000 people who sign up. Participants will take surveys to gauge their levels of anxiety and positive emotion before and after going through the 5-week course. The course is available at no cost.
Learning these skills takes practice — people usually spend about 10-15 minutes each week to learn the skills and a few moments a day to practice them.
The Stress Less series is edited by Jane Greenhalgh and Carmel Wroth.
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