Lesson 20: Stress and Illness: Slide 15





Memories Can Reduce Stress
- Unfamiliar surroundings bring on anxiety such as when you first arrive at a new job, or arrive at rehab
- Repeated exposure to surroundings and time helps make things familiar and helps decrease the anxiety of the unknown by building a memory and a sense of peace
- With time, a memory of an object or person in its surroundings is created
- Brain pathways that are activated by loss connect to pathways that activate the stress response
- The anxiety and loss that accompany change can trigger all the hormones and nerve responses that alter the immune responses
- So change can result in you becoming sick
Notes:
Pg 122,127, Sternberg, Esther M., 2001, “The Balance Within,” W.H. Freeman and Company, New York.