Shadowing Practice: TED 中英雙語字幕: 如何讓壓力成為你的朋友 - Learn English Speaking with Video

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I have

a confession to make, but first, I want you to make a little confession to me.

In the past year, I want you to just raise your hand if you've experienced relatively little stress.

Anyone?

How about a moderate amount of stress?

Who's experienced a lot of stress?

Yeah, me too.

But that is not my confession.

My confession is this.

I am a health psychologist, and my mission is to help people be happier and healthier. But I fear

that something I've been teaching for the last 10 years is doing more harm than good

and it has to do with stress

for years I've been telling people stress makes you sick it

increases the risk of everything from the common cold to cardiovascular disease basically I've turned stress into the enemy

but I've changed my mind about stress

and today I want to change yours let me start with the study that made me rethink my whole approach to stress.

This study tracked 30 ,000 adults in the United States for eight years, and they started by asking people,

how much stress have you experienced in the last year?

They also asked, do you believe that stress is harmful for your health?

And then they used public death records to find out who died.

Okay, some bad news first.

People who experienced a lot of stress in the previous year had a 43 % increased risk of dying.

But that was only true for the people who also believed that stress is harmful for your health.

People who experienced a lot of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more likely to die.

In fact, they had the lowest risk of dying of anyone in the study, including people who had relatively little stress.

Now, the researchers estimated that over the eight years they were tracking deaths, 182 ,000 Americans died prematurely not from stress,

but from the belief that stress is bad for you.

That is over 20 ,000 deaths a year now if

that estimate is correct

that would make believing stress is bad for you the 15th

largest cause of death in the United States last year killing more people than skin cancer HIV AIDS

and homicide you can see why the study freaked me out here I've been spending

so much energy telling people stress is bad for your health.

So this study got me wondering, can changing how you think about stress make you healthier?

And here the science says yes.

When you change your mind about stress, you can change your body's response to stress.

Now to explain how this works, I want you all to pretend that you are participants in a study designed to stress you out.

It's called the social stress test.

You come into the laboratory

and you're told you have to give a five -minute impromptu

speech on your personal weaknesses to a panel of expert evaluators sitting right in front of you

and to make sure you feel the pressure there are bright lights

and a camera in your face kind of like this

and the evaluators have been trained to give you discouraging nonverbal feedback like this

Now that you're sufficiently demoralized, time for part two, a math test.

And, unbeknownst to you, the experimenter has been trained to harass you during it.

Now, we're going to all do this together.

It's going to be fun. For me.

Okay.

I want you all to count backwards from 996 in increments of seven.

You're going to do this out loud as fast as you can, starting with 996.

Go.

996. Go faster.

Faster, please.

You're going too slow.

Stop.

That guy made a mistake.

We're going to have to start all over again.

You're not very good at this, are you?

Okay, so you get the idea.

Now, if you were actually in this study, you'd probably be a little stressed out.

Your heart might be pounding you might be breathing faster, maybe breaking out into a sweat.

And normally, we interpret these physical changes as anxiety or signs that we aren't coping very well with the pressure.

But what if you viewed them instead as signs that your body was energized, was preparing you to meet this challenge?

Now, that is exactly what participants were told in a study conducted at Harvard University.

Before they went through the social stress test, they were taught to rethink their stress response as helpful.

That pounding heart is preparing you for action.

If you're breathing faster, it's no problem.

It's getting more oxygen to your brain.

And participants who learned to view the stress response as helpful for their performance, well, they were less stressed out, less anxious, more confident.

But the most fascinating finding to me was how their physical stress response changed.

Now, in a typical stress response, your heart rate goes up and your blood vessels constrict like this.

And this is one of the reasons that chronic stress is sometimes associated with cardiovascular disease.

It's not really healthy to be in this state all the time.

But in the study, when participants viewed their stress response as helpful, their blood vessels stayed relaxed like this.

Their heart was still pounding, but this is a much healthier cardiovascular profile it actually looks a lot like what happens in moments of joy

and courage over a lifetime of stressful experiences this one biological

change could be the difference between a stress -induced heart attack at age 50

and living well into your 90s

and this is really what the new science of stress reveals that how you think about stress matters.

So my goal as a health psychologist has changed.

I no longer want to get rid of your stress.

I want to make you better at stress.

And we just did a little intervention.

If you raised your hand and said you'd had a lot of stress in the last year, we could have saved your life.

Because hopefully the next time your heart is pounding from stress, you're going to remember this talk and you're going to think to yourself,

this is my body helping me rise to this challenge and

when you view stress in that way your body believes you

and your stress response becomes healthier now I said I have

over a decade of demonizing stress to redeem myself from

so we are gonna do one more intervention I want to

tell you about one of the most underappreciated aspects of the stress response

and the idea is this stress makes you social

to understand the side of stress we need to talk about a hormone oxytocin and i know

oxytocin has already gotten as much hype as a hormone can

get it even has its own cute nickname the cuddle hormone

because it's released when you hug someone but this is a very small part of what oxytocin is involved in.

100

Oxytocin is a neurohormone.

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It fine -tunes your brain's social instincts.

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It primes you to do things that strengthen close relationships.

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Oxytocin makes you crave physical contact with your friends and family.

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It enhances your empathy.

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It even makes you more willing to help and support the people you care about.

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Some people have even suggested we should snort oxytocin to become more compassionate and caring.

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But here's what most people don't understand about oxytocin.

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It's a stress hormone.

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Your pituitary gland pumps this stuff out as part of the stress response.

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It's as much a part of your stress response as the adrenaline that makes your heart pound.

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And when oxytocin is released in the stress response, it is motivating you to seek support.

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Your biological stress response is nudging you to tell someone how you feel, instead of bottling it up.

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Your stress response wants to make sure you notice when someone else in your life is struggling, so that you can support each other.

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When life is difficult, your stress response wants you to be surrounded by people who care about you.

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okay

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so how is knowing this side of stress going to make

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you healthier well oxytocin doesn't only act on your brain it also acts on your body

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and one of its main roles in your body is to

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protect your cardiovascular system from the effects of stress it's a

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natural anti -inflammatory it also helps your blood vessels stay relaxed during stress

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but my favorite effect on the body is actually on the heart.

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Your heart has receptors for this hormone.

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And oxytocin helps heart cells regenerate and heal from any stress -induced damage.

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This stress hormone strengthens your heart.

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And the cool thing is, is that all of these physical benefits of oxytocin are enhanced by social contact and social support.

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So when you reach out to others under stress, either to seek support or to help someone else, you release more of this hormone,

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your stress response becomes healthier, and you actually recover faster from stress.

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I find this amazing, that your stress response has a built -in mechanism for stress resilience.

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And that mechanism is human connection.

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I want to finish by telling you about one more study.

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And listen up, because this study could also save a life.

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this study tracked about a thousand adults in the united states and they ranged in age from 34 to 93

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and they started the study by asking how much stress have you experienced in the last year

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they also asked how much time have you spent helping out friends neighbors people in your community

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and then they use public records for the next five years to find out who died

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okay so the bad news first for every major stressful life experience like financial difficulties

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or family crisis that increased the risk of dying by 30 percent

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but and i hope you are expecting a but by now

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but that wasn't true for everyone people who spent time caring for others,

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showed absolutely no stress -related increase in dying, zero.

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Caring created resilience.

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And so we see once again that the harmful effects of stress on your health are not inevitable.

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How you think and how you act can transform your experience of stress.

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When you choose to view your stress response as helpful you create the biology of courage and

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when you choose to connect with others under stress you can

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create resilience now i wouldn't necessarily ask for more stressful experiences in my life

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but this science has given me a whole new appreciation for stress us.

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Stress gives us access to our hearts, the compassionate heart that finds joy and meaning in connecting with others.

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And yes, you're a pounding physical heart working so hard to give you strength and energy.

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And when you choose to view stress in this way, you're not just getting better at stress, you're actually making a pretty profound statement.

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You're saying that you can trust yourself to handle life's challenges.

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And you're remembering that you don't have to face them alone.

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Thank you.

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I mean this is kind of amazing what you're telling us.

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It's just it seems amazing to me that a belief about stress can make so much difference to someone's life expectancy.

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How would that extend to advice like

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if someone's making a lifestyle choice between say a stressful job

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and a non -stressful job is it does it matter that

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which way they go that it's it's equally wise to go for the stressful job

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so long as you believe that you can handle it in some sense?

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Yeah and one thing we know for certain is

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that chasing meaning is better for your health than trying to avoid discomfort and

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so I would say that's really the best way to make

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decisions is go after what it is it creates meaning in your life

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and then trust yourself to handle the stress that follows thank you so much Kelly

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “TED 中英雙語字幕: 如何讓壓力成為你的朋友”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: stress, response, study, oxytocin. This video has 165 sentences and 1993 words to shadow. The speech runs for 14:17. The speaker talks at a steady 140 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
distress noun	/dɪˈstɹɛs/	Physical or emotional discomfort, suffering, or alarm, particularly of a more acute nature.
hormone noun	/ˈhoɹmoʊn/	Any substance produced by one tissue and conveyed by the bloodstream to another to effect physiological activity.
pound noun	/ˈpaʊ̯nd/	A unit of weight in various measurement systems.
stressful adjective	/ˈstɹɛsfəl/	Irritating; causing stress.
helpful adjective	/ˈhɛlp.fl̩/	Furnishing help; giving aid; useful.
harmful adjective	/ˈhɑɹmfl̩/	Causing or likely to cause harm or damage; injurious.
confession noun	/kənˈfɛʃən/	The open admittance of having done something (especially something bad).
participant noun	/pɑːɹˈtɪsəpənt/	One who participates.
cardiovascular adjective	/ˌkɑːdi.əʊˈvæskjʊlə(ɹ)/	Relating to the circulatory system, that is the heart and blood vessels.
vessel noun	/ˈvɛsəl/	Any craft designed for transportation on or in water, such as a ship, boat, or submarine.
resilience noun	/ɹɪˈzɪl.ɪ.əns/	The mental ability to recover quickly from depression, illness or misfortune.
belief noun	/bɪˈliːf/	Mental acceptance of a claim as true.
connect verb	/kəˈnɛkt/	To join (to another object): to attach, or to be intended to attach or capable of attaching, to another object.
courage noun	/ˈkʌ.ɹɪd͡ʒ/	The quality of being confident, not afraid or easily intimidated, but without being incautious or inconsiderate.
biological adjective	/ˌbaɪ.əˈlɑ.d͡ʒɪ.kəl/	Of or relating to biology.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
find out verb	To discover, as by asking or investigating.
stress out verb	To become stressed.
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
go up verb	To move upwards.
help out verb	To provide assistance.
listen up verb	To listen closely; to pay attention.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

Who's experienced a lot of stress?
We're going to have to start all over again.
You're not very good at this, are you?
If you're breathing faster, it's no problem.
It's getting more oxygen to your brain.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	I've been teaching · I've been telling · I've been spending
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	have been trained · has been trained · was energized
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	you've experienced · I've turned · I've changed
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	People who experienced · people who also · people who had

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 31 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I've, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: breathe /bɹiːð/, strengthen /ˈstɹɛŋ(k)θən/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, empathy /ˈɛmpəθi/, rethink /ɹiːˈθɪŋk/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: confession /kənˈfɛʃən/, intervention /ɪntɚˈvɛnʃən/, compassionate /kəmˈpæʃənət/, associate /əˈsoʊʃi.ət/, appreciation /əˌpɹiː.ʃiˈeɪ.ʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: participant /pɑːɹˈtɪsəpənt/, cardiovascular /ˌkɑːdi.əʊˈvæskjʊlə(ɹ)/, resilience /ɹɪˈzɪl.ɪ.əns/, biological /ˌbaɪ.əˈlɑ.d͡ʒɪ.kəl/, mechanism /ˈmɛk.ə.nɪ.zəm/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like distress, hormone, pound.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: TED 中英雙語字幕: 如何讓壓力成為你的朋友 - Learn English Speaking with Video

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