FAU researchers investigate what our psyche has to do with when challenging experiences make us ill
Erlangen/Germany, March 31, 2025 Stress is subjective. For some, the double burden of job and family puts them under pressure, others find it stressful when they are stuck in a traffic jam on the way to work appointments. Dr Johanna Janson-Schmitt from the Chair of Health Psychology at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) explains why it is not good to brood over a stressful experience for a long time and what mindfulness has to do with preventing stress from making you ill.
Dr Janson-Schmitt, together with the Head of the Chair of Health Psychology, Prof Nicolas Rohleder, you are investigating how physical and emotional reactions change with repeated stress. For the MODSTR study, you have so far subjected 22 test subjects to a stress test in the laboratory twice, one day apart. One group was then instructed to reflect on the experience, while in the other group the participants were asked to be understanding and mindful of the fact that they had just been under a lot of stress. You want to test another 120 people by 2027. What exactly do you want to find out?
Dr Johanna Janson-Schmitt: We are investigating the physical mechanisms that can lead to stress causing illness. Our aim is to find out what influence our psyche has on these processes. Basically, it’s good if our body doesn’t always react to stress in the same way, but adapts instead – we call this habituation. Because if our biological stress reactions do not adapt over the course of our lives and we always react to stress with the same intensity, chronic, subliminal inflammatory processes can develop in the long term. This can result in diseases such as arteriosclerosis, high blood pressure, Alzheimer’s or various types of cancer. We want to find out what effects it has on the body and the inflammatory processes when people deal with stress in different ways.
Not all stress is the same; people experience situations differently. What can help us to cope better with pressure?
Dr Johanna Janson-Schmitt: The experience of stress takes place in the central nervous system. This is also where memories can be recalled and strategies that we have already experienced to be good for us under stress. If breathing or relaxation exercises helped me before a job interview, I can use them again during a stressful meeting in the office. I will probably find the meeting less challenging and my body will produce fewer stress hormones.
In fact, most people get used to repeated stress and perceive it as less stressful.
Are there psychological characteristics that make it easier to develop more composure under stress in the long term?
Dr Johanna Janson-Schmitt: Yes, if you keep slipping into thought spirals and obsessively think about negative events that you have just experienced, your body will adapt less well to stress. This persistent ruminating also plays a role in depressive disorders. A preliminary experimental study by our department has shown that the test group of ruminators did not feel worse than the comparison group after repeated stress. However, on a physiological level, we have clearly seen that after two episodes of stress in the laboratory, the body adapts less well to stressful situations if we think a lot.
So far, studies have mainly looked at how the body’s stress system reacts and in what quantities it releases cortisol and adrenaline. You are now investigating the inflammatory system in the body. How are you doing that?
Dr Johanna Janson-Schmitt: In order to find out whether we can also influence the body’s inflammatory system through a certain attitude to stress, we measure the concentration of cortisol in the saliva of the test subjects during the stress tests in the laboratory and the concentration of noradrenaline using a surrogate marker. Blood samples tell us something about the inflammation levels in the body. We compare the results after the two stress tests and can thus recognise whether the body’s reaction has changed and how these changes differ between the ruminators and the comparison group.
Whether stress makes you ill therefore depends very much on how you deal with challenging experiences afterwards and also how understanding you are of yourself after the stressful experience. What can you do to break out of the spiral of negative thoughts?
Dr Johanna Janson-Schmitt: Mindfulness is a very important keyword. It’s good to keep focussing your attention on the here and now. If I’m experiencing inner stress, don’t feel well and realise that my heart is beating faster, I notice it mindfully without judging it. I also observe negative thoughts without judging them. Mindfulness can prevent rumination and that’s why it’s good to practise it. Just like meditation or sport, it alleviates acute stress. However, it has not yet been scientifically proven that it also improves the long-term habituation of our biological reactions to repeated stress. This is assumed, but we are trying to prove this for the first time with our study.
How do you implement mindfulness in your everyday life?
Dr Johanna Janson-Schmitt: My family is a good distraction from my stressful working day. Mental distractions alleviate stress, as do creative hobbies. I also like to imagine that it’s not just me who is tense in a stressful situation, but that other people feel the same way. That takes the pressure off.
Further information:
(https://www.fau.de/2025/03/news/mit-achtsamkeit-aus-der-stressfalle/)
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