Did you know that if you boil a pot of water and throw in a live frog that that frog will hop right out, saving his life to croak again another day (ha, ha)? If, on the other hand, you place a frog in a pot of cold water and turn the heat up slowly, that frog will stay in the pot. He will not jump out but slowly acclimate to the increasingly hot water until it boils to death. Truth or urban legend? To prove it I’d have to cook a live frog and that’s not going to happen. It sounds true and so should be because of what it teaches us.
A women comes to see me for help. She tells me her story, sighs, and then says, “Really, it’s not that bad.” Oh, yes, it is! She’s sitting in a pot of very hot water. If she had been dropped into her intolerable situation all of a sudden she’d be saying, “Holy Cow! Get me outta here!”
This happened to me when my mother and father came to live with us. My mother was undergoing chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer at Roswell Park Cancer Center. It wasn’t like I was alone, but at the time I had a full time job, two small kids and my brothers and sisters were hundreds of miles away. All four of my siblings would check in often and I’d tell them, “Really, it’s not that bad.”
One day my younger brother flew in for a visit. It didn’t take him long to sit me down and say firmly, “You’re about to drop dead and you don’t even know it. We need to talk about maybe taking a leave of absence from your job and setting up a schedule so one of us is with you from now on.” I didn’t see what he could see clearly. He was the frog that just dropped in the pot that I had been in for a while.
If you are chronically tired, stressed, anxious or feeling low, you may be a slowly cooking frog. If you think you are, talk to friends, family, a counselor. Reach out, get a reality check, ask for help as the woman who came to my office did. There’s no virtue in being a martyr frog. All you get is cooked.
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15 Comments to
“The Frog In The Pot: How Stress Creeps Up On Us”
yeah you are right, our stress levels increase until we get used to it then it increases again!!
It’s amazing how that happens. It’s so insidious.
Very cool metaphor.
Great article! It gave me a good idea for allowing people to check on their stress levels: “If someone watched what you did for a day or a week, what would they think of how you’re living your life?”
Thanks for the good idea!
Jay
Hi, Jay! I love the application. I’ll use it myself.
Dear Summer, Thanks! I’m a heavy metaphor user. It must how my brain is wired but it helps my thinking to draw a picture. I’m glad you ‘got it’ too.
Its funny how in today’s world of multi-tasking we think that we are getting a gold star for being so, very, very busy. Its easy to think that people will admire us for our ability to take so much on.
While the truth is that we are pulling our hair out, losing sleep and feeling some serious resentment while they are sipping wine and enjoying life.
This is a great article as that it reminds us that busy is fine but stressed is not!
You are totally right. And it makes sense since I burn 99 percent of everything I cook. Thanks for the thought and insight! t
I spent the last day and a half staying with my wife in the hospital because she was admitted with severe chest pains. All the heart tests came back negative. She has a very stressful job and has been dealing with the recent death of our son.
She looks terrible and recently people have been telling her she doesn’t look well at all. When the attending doctor asked her if she were under stress, she smiled and said no. He looked and me, smiled and said, “Not true, eh?”
What was the number one rule growing up for her? “Don’t complain or ever whine or I will give you something to whine about.”
Interesting I should see this article today…I have feeling especially intolerant lately.
FYI: This is line attributed to Mark Twain.
@Don D: First, please accept my sincere sympathy for your loss. Your wife is clearly overloaded. People in general seem to fall into one of two categories, the complainers and the minimizers. It’s hard for us minimizers to get out of the bad habit of denying our discomfort. Sometimes our bodies literally have to do the talking for us. I hope your wife gets referred to the right mental health professional. If there is a Life Transitions program in your community they do wonderful work for people suffering loss.
@john: Is it really? I will look this up. Do you know where? ‘The Frog Jumping Contest of Calaveras County’ perhaps?
Stress, the silent killer. It is like a ninja; silent yet deadly. It attacks when you least expect it. You slowly build up anxiety and frustration and then stress, like a patient deadly predator moves in for the kill. We live in a society in which busy is good and our human interactions are being limited to text messages and facebok. It is becoming increasingly hard to talk to people because we are all busy to really care.
This article hit the bullseye; I am a boiling frog my self and this will defenitely put some seroius thoughts into my life.
Thank you for sharing this with us.
I realized something similar when just before my vacation began, I was sure I had an ulcer. There was much pain after many months of escalating and continuing stress associated with my job.
By the 2nd day of my vacation I was feeling fine.
Tomorrow I go back. I have to figure out how to stay out of the pot of water or keep the temperature from being turned up!!
Love the article - but please update your science (and help others dispel the popular myth). Frogs will not let themselves be boiled.
I like the frog metaphor (regardless of the science).
The only question is, how do you stop being the boiling frog?
I know I’m the boiling frog. I’m so used to being the boiling from that I don’t know how NOT to be the boiling frog.
Plus, ya know, who has the time to jump out of the pot when there’s work etc.? I think society is largely designed for people to be overstretched and that is somehow supposed to be normal.
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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 21 Apr 2009
