The Stress Recovery Effect
Powerful Tools to Reduce Anxiety, Stress Less and Perform Your Best
by Nick Hall and Dick Tibbits
Rather than viewing all stress as detrimental, the authors of The Stress Recovery Effect argue that there is an optimal zone that helps keep us motivated, engaged and creative—too little stress and we’re bored and dissatisfied, too much and we become overwhelmed and ill. We’re invited to think like athletes and train our response to stress to spend more time in the optimal zone. No longer seeking to merely minimise our exposure to stress, we learn to become more resilient in it—and to thrive.
Authors Nick Hall and Dick Tibbits came together through a collaboration between AdventHealth—one of the largest healthcare systems in the United States—and Disney in Florida. Dr Hall is a medical scientist with a PhD in neuroendocrinology, whose research has been featured in media including the Emmy Award–winning program Healing and the Mind. Dr Tibbits has a PhD in psychotherapy and is an ordained Adventist pastor, a licensed professional mental health counsellor and a hospital administrator. He is also author of the well-known Forgive to Live. The pair have proven the strategies in this book through their research at AdventHealth and, beyond this, through Dr Hall’s work with the FBI and his experiences as an alligator wrestler and endurance athlete, and Dr Tibbits’ work as a performance coach of executives and motorsports champions. Needless to say, they have some tales to tell!
The Stress Recovery Effect presents seven strategies for responding to stress when you’re in the thick of it (response strategies). These are followed by another seven strategies to help you spend more time in the optimal zone—and to bounce back to it more quickly when stressful circumstances arise (lifestyle strategies). The authors describe these intervention and prevention tools simply, ground them in research and illustrate them with attention-grabbing stories.
Enjoyable to read and practical in approach, The Stress Recovery Effect is not only for those feeling spent, but also for those who want to be proactive about developing resilience to the stresses that are an unavoidable part of life. It is also an ideal resource or give-away for churches running health programs for their communities.
The Stress Recovery Effect is available from Adventist bookshops in Australia and New Zealand, or online at https://adventistbookcentre.com.au/the-stress-recovery-effect.html.
Lauren Webb is an assistant book editor at Signs Publishing
