MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Anybody feeling a little stressed out, you know, a little? Well, last fall, NPR's Stress Less series taught us some strategies to help reduce anxiety. After hearing it, thousands of people signed up to try out those skills and be part of a research study at Northwestern University. Now that the preliminary results are in, NPR's Allison Aubrey has more on what worked best.
ALLISON AUBREY, BYLINE: People who signed up were taught a series of eight skills. Among them was learning to focus on positive events and savor them. JoAnna Littau (ph) is one of the MORNING EDITION listeners who says she was all in. She's a baby boomer who lives in Anchorage, Alaska, where this time of year, melting snow can create a slushy brown grit of salt and grime around the streets.
JOANNA LITTAU: Driving around town during the day, it's cold. It's mundane. But I just, you know, lift my eyes up and look at the mountains.
AUBREY: Everywhere she looks, there's scenic views, with the snow-covered Chugach Mountains as a backdrop.
LITTAU: I rest my eyes on the mountains, and it is so soothing. Do you know the light, how it plays on the snow on the mountains? You know, it's just gorgeous.
AUBREY: The next skill she tried is called positive reappraisal. So instead of grumbling about work, she's now more focused on what she likes about her job. Part of what she does is set up banquets. And she interacts with a lot of people, which suits her personality.
LITTAU: Look at me. I have a job to go to that provides me stability, security. And I get to go to work, and others don't get to go to work, and they wish they could go to work (laughter).
AUBREY: The little ways that Littau changed her mindset is exactly what researcher Judith Moskowitz of Northwestern University had hoped for. She developed the program and conducted the study. Overall, she says people who took part had significantly more positive emotions and improved in many different ways.
JUDITH MOSKOWITZ: Less anxiety, less depression, less sleep disturbance, less social isolation and increases in positive affect.
AUBREY: She says JoAnna Littau's story illustrates how the skills can help.
MOSKOWITZ: This absolutely fits with what we saw in the numbers coming out of the study. And it's so exciting to hear people actually talk about how they're using the skills and how they're putting them into practice in their lives.
AUBREY: One of the most striking findings from the study is that participants' sense of self-efficacy increased, which means they started to believe more in their own ability to set a goal and accomplish it, which Moskowitz says can go hand in hand with feeling more positive.
MOSKOWITZ: It's an upward spiral where you maybe take the first step, you feel some progress towards your goal, which increases your positive emotion, which then feeds back and helps you take the next step.
AUBREY: Dr. Samir Sinha is a geriatrician at Sinai Health System in Toronto. He says he's not surprised that teaching these skills led to such improvements.
SAMIR SINHA: Stress reduction tools, I think, need to be thought of as an important habit. Almost the idea that you have kind of stress management hygiene tools that you can actually use.
AUBREY: A lot of the skills taught in the course are things people have heard before. Like, positive reappraisal is another way of saying turn your frown upside down, something even young children understand. Dr. Sinha says, in the swirl of demands and worries that come with adult life, especially at times of uncertainty, we tend to forget to take time to notice the good. That's why it's important to try to build these skills into habits.
SINHA: I think once people practice them and realize how much better their outlook is, it almost becomes addictive. You're almost like, wow, this is actually how I should be approaching things every day.
AUBREY: And the more you practice, the more likely this is to happen. If you missed the study, you can still learn the skills by signing up for our Stress Less newsletter at npr.org
Allison Aubrey, NPR News.
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