The reader's edition
Par amour du stress: the summary
Par amour du stress, which translates as For the Love of Stress, is a French-language book by Sonia Lupien, founder and director of the Centre for Studies on Human Stress (Centre d'études sur le stress humain), full professor of psychiatry at Université de Montréal and a researcher who has held a Canada Research Chair on human stress. It first appeared in 2010 and returned in a new edition from Éditions Va Savoir in Québec in November 2020, with added chapters on the past decade's research. Drawing on about twenty years of research and written with humour, it covers the causes, symptoms and long-term effects of stress. Its starting point is that stress is not an illness but a response essential to survival, one that evolved for threats like a mammoth. Whether stress helps or harms depends on how it is handled, and the book explains the hormonal and nervous systems behind the response. Prolonged stress is the kind it worries about, because it raises the risk of cardiovascular disease, depression and anxiety. A review in Zone Campus, the student paper of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, found it technical and a little repetitive in places. An English translation, For the Love of Stress, has since been published by Va Savoir. Read a chapter at a time, with a printable action book at the end.
- Sonia Lupien
- 2020
- 4 chapters
- 5 min read
- 8 takeaways
This is HourLife's reading of Par amour du stress, in our own words. It is not a substitute for the book.
Chapter 01
Before you start
The book in a minute
Tap a paragraph to highlight it. Turn pages with the arrows, the arrow keys, or a swipe.
Par amour du stress, which translates as For the Love of Stress, is a French-language book by Sonia Lupien, founder and director of the Centre for Studies on Human Stress (Centre d'études sur le stress humain), full professor of psychiatry at Université de Montréal and a researcher who has held a Canada Research Chair on human stress. It first appeared in 2010 and returned in a new edition from Éditions Va Savoir in Québec in November 2020, with added chapters on the past decade's research. Drawing on about twenty years of research and written with humour, it covers the causes, symptoms and long-term effects of stress. Its starting point is that stress is not an illness but a response essential to survival, one that evolved for threats like a mammoth. Whether stress helps or harms depends on how it is handled, and the book explains the hormonal and nervous systems behind the response. Prolonged stress is the kind it worries about, because it raises the risk of cardiovascular disease, depression and anxiety. A review in Zone Campus, the student paper of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, found it technical and a little repetitive in places. An English translation, For the Love of Stress, has since been published by Va Savoir.
Below are the 8 ideas HourLife readers vote up most, each in our words with a note on what it asks of you, and then the steps that put them to work.
Chapter 02
What readers keep
The takeaways
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1
HourLife takeaway
Stress is not an illness. It is a survival system doing its job.
Lupien's starting point turns the usual framing around. The stress response is not a fault to be cured but something essential to staying alive, and treating it as the enemy misses what it is for.
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2
HourLife takeaway
Your stress response was built for mammoths, not inboxes.
The publisher's description leans on a mammoth: the response evolved for threats that called for an immediate, physical answer. The same machinery now fires for deadlines, meetings and messages that no amount of running will solve.
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3
HourLife takeaway
Stress can help or harm. What decides it is how you handle it.
The book does not sort stress into good and bad piles. The same response that sharpens you for a challenge can wear you down, and the difference lies in how it is managed.
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4
HourLife takeaway
The stress worth worrying about is the kind that never switches off.
A short burst is the system working as designed. Prolonged stress is different: the book links it with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease, depression and anxiety, which is why the duration matters as much as the cause.
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5
HourLife takeaway
Stress is less frightening once you can see the machinery.
Lupien walks through the hormonal and nervous systems behind the stress response. The Zone Campus reviewer found these passages technical, but the payoff is a body you can understand rather than one that seems to turn on you.
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6
HourLife takeaway
Ask three questions of any stress: what set it off, what is it doing to you, and what will it do if it lasts?
The publisher describes the book as covering the causes, symptoms and long-term effects of stress. Read as a checklist, those three take a vague sense of being stressed and make it something you can look at.
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7
HourLife takeaway
You can take stress seriously and still laugh at it.
The book is written with humour, which suits its argument. A response you can joke about is one you are not entirely at the mercy of.
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8
HourLife takeaway
Stress science keeps moving, and a good guide moves with it.
The 2020 edition added chapters on the decade of research since the first edition appeared in 2010. Even a book built on about twenty years of work treats its own picture as unfinished.
Chapter 03
Put it to work
Your action book
Do the setup steps once, then keep the habits going. The setup changes your week; the habits keep it changed after the first good one.
The download puts this whole reading and a printable action book in one PDF: the setup checklist, then a page of real calendar days for each habit, starting on the day you choose.
Set up once
Name this week's mammoths
Write down everything that has set off your stress response this week, big or small. Run the biggest one through the sorter on this page.
Sort spikes from sieges
Next to each item on your list, mark whether it is a short spike that will pass or something that has gone on for weeks. Give the long ones your attention first.
Find one lever per stressor
For each prolonged stressor, write one small thing that is within your control. A first step you own beats a plan you are waiting on someone else to approve.
Ask for the missing information
When not knowing is the hard part, send the one question that would make it more predictable: a date, a decision, the next step.
Keep a glossary while you read
The book goes deep into the science. Keep a page for each hormone or nervous-system term as you meet it, in your own words, so the later chapters land.
Keep it up
Close the loop after a spike
After a stressful moment passes, give your body a signal that it is over: a walk, a few slow breaths, a stretch. Recovery is part of the response, not an extra.
Hold a weekly mammoth review
Once a week, look back at your list. Which stressors came and went, and which stayed all week? The ones that stayed are where change is worth the effort.
Rehearse the new before it arrives
Before an unfamiliar situation, learn one thing about it ahead of time: visit the place, talk to someone who has done it, or walk through it once.
Chapter 04
The last word
Before you go
Pick one step from the action book and do it today. An idea from a book starts to count once it changes what one ordinary day looks like.
The mammoth was never the problem. Staying braced for it long after it has wandered off is.
That is the end of our reading. Where to go from here, or go back to the full Par amour du stress page.
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