Secondhand Stress?

I have heard of secondhand smoke and the dangers of that, but I had never heard of secondhand stress until hearing about it this evening on World News With Diane Saywer.  You can see the story here.  Apparently, secondhand stress is a stress response you get from being around someone else, who is stressed out.  Not only does secondhand stress exist but it's actually contagious.  

This weekend I drove to Gainesville to pick up my son and move him home for the summer.  My husband was away due to a death in the family, so my sister volunteered to come with me and help, with the move.  While we were driving up, we made a pit stop and when we were getting back on the highway, I got in the wrong lane. When I realized that, I tried to see if anyone would let me in. They wouldn't and my sister was passenger seat driving and telling me to go, I didn't see a way in, or anyone slowing down so I decided to just go up further and make a u-turn. No big deal.  My sister on the other hand was outraged that no one would let me in and proceeded to roll the window down and throw her hands out the window and yell at the people.  

This brought up a conversation between the two of us about stress. My opinion was that it is not worth it to get so upset and that stressing out like that doesn't harm anyone but yourself. Stress increases your blood pressure, prematurely ages you and has a negative impact on your health. My sister feels that in yelling at other drivers, she is showing them that she is not going to take anything from anybody, and is therefore empowering herself.  I told her that if someone rolls down their window and yells at me, the only message I am getting from them, is that they are mentally unstable.  But according to a recent study at Saint Louis University, acting in a stressed out manner, actually causes other people to feel stressed out as well. So I guess she may be having a negative effect on those other drivers after all.    

The researchers measured the heart rates and cortisol levels of people observing strangers under stress and were surprised to find out out that the observers heart rates and cortisol levels also went up. The researches found that stress can be passed on through things like facial expressions voice frequency odor and touch. 

A similar study was conducted at the University of California. In this study mothers were put in stressful situations and then reunited with their small children who were playing happily in another room. Both mothers and children were hooked up to sensors to monitor their heart rates and other indicators of stress. Once reunited, all of the children of the stressed mothers had an equally elevated heart rate showing they had actually "caught" their Mom's stress. 

I found both of these studies really interesting.  I already knew that being around stressed out people is stressful.  I was surprised however, that strangers can stress out other strangers so easily, and that children can feel their parents stress. This makes me feel really bad about how stressed out I got when my son was little. I wasn't as good back then about controlling my stress. I thought I was doing a good job at hiding it though, apparently not. I personally don't want to spread stress around and will work even harder on finding ways to keep it at bay. I will try to help my sister too. Maybe she could try yoga?