The Effects of Kindness on Stress

Both positive and negative feelings can be induced in a real situation or an imagined one. Just as your brain doesn't distinguish between a real, stressful event and an imagined one, it's the same with kindness. Your brain will produce kindness hormons when you're being kind, witnessing an act of kindness, imagining one, or even recalling one. As a consequence, thinking of things that annoy us feels feelings of stress, and subsequently the physiology of stress. Thinking kind things about people, which generates kind feelings, can be a simple way to reduce stress.