Its only 18 pages long and from 1989, so if your doctor doesn't know about this they are spectacularly incompetent. My opinion only, you can come up with your own opinion of your doctor.
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1215&context=psychfacpub
From W. B. Cannon’s identification of adrenaline with “
fight or flight” to modern views of stress, negative views of peripheral physiological arousal predominate. Sympathetic nervous system (SNS) arousal is associated with anxiety, neuroticism, the Type A personal-
ity, cardiovascular disease, and immune system suppression; illness susceptibility is associated with life events requiring adjustments.
“Stress control” has become almost synonymous with arousal reduction. A contrary positive view of peripheral arousal follows from
studies of subjects exposed to intermittent stressors. Such exposure leads to low SNS arousal base rates, but to strong and responsive
challenge- or stress-induced SNS-adrenal-medullary arousal, with resistance to brain catecholamine depletion and with suppression of
pituitary adrenal-cortical responses. That pattern of arousal defines physiological toughness and, in interaction with psychological coping, corresponds with positive performance in even complex tasks, with emotional stability, and with immune system enhancement.
The toughness concept suggests an opposition between effective short- and long-term coping, with implications for effective therapies andstress-inoculating life-styles.
Confrontations with stressors and challenges evoke central
and peripheral physiological arousal. Characterizations of that
peripheral arousal traditionally have been negative, but some mo-
dem views are more positive. After providing some definitions, I
discuss the apparent contradictions between literatures whose ba-
sis is an assumption of the harmfulness of peripheral physiological arousal and those whose basis is not.
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