How to get stress on-side with science (& the 3 As of befriending stress)

Apr 5

Apr 5 How to get stress on-side with science (& the 3 As of befriending stress)

We all know that stress can have a negative effect on our mental and physical health, but what if stress isn’t all bad? In fact, what if we told you that stress, in some forms, is actually good for you? And that our perception of stress may actually be the thing stressing us out the most.

“Stress is bad”. It’s a pretty clear message we get from the media given the studies showing the negative health impacts of stress and increasing mental health challenges we face. So naturally, we assume it’s something to be avoided at all costs, leading many of us to invest our time and resources in eradicating the stress from our lives.

We dream of a smooth, challenge-free life that doesn’t include any of our daily stressors and inconveniences. If we could just meditate more, or get a different job, or plan our downtime better, we could finally live out our dreams. Sadly, the dream of a stress-free life is just that — a dream.

Stress is an inevitable part of life. Challenges happen. Life isn’t fair. And no amount of meditation, yoga, or any other valid self-care practices will ever change that.

In fact, our resistance to stress, and the hopes that we can overcome it, ends up being a large, and potentially dangerous, contributor to our stress.

Luckily, working towards a better understanding and acceptance of stress as a regular part of life can help you find more ease. It also leads to some surprising health benefits. So, as it turns out, stress isn’t all bad.

Not All Stress is Created Equal

Stress is a physical and emotional reaction that you experience as you encounter challenges in life. Especially if you feel an imbalance between the challenge and the resources you have available to meet it. We tend to think of stress as a blanket term for all the struggles in our life, but not all stress is the same. In fact, stress can be broken down into three types:

1 | Acute Stress: This is a short-lived stressor associated with a protective response to keep us safe. It’s like when you swerve quickly if a car cuts you off, move faster if you’re about to miss your train, or stop abruptly if a motorbike veering towards the crosswalk.

That jolt of panic which pushes us into action is a sign of acute stress. When the danger or challenge has passed, the stress dissipates if we’re able to relax and allow our body to come back into balance. Of course, in more severe circumstances, the stress response can linger leading to…

2 | Chronic Stress: This is a long-lasting experience of stress that occurs when we repeatedly face stressors that take a toll on us (and often feel inescapable). For example, a stressful job, an unhappy home, or financial insecurity.

Because we often don’t get a chance to relax and recover from this on-going stress, and our bodies aren’t made to stay in the heightened state, we experience negative side effects physically and mentally.

3 | Eustress: Eustress is known as a positive stressor, which typically occurs when you’re moving towards something you haven’t yet achieved, like applying for a new job or promotion, buying a house, or going on a first date.

This type of stress is usually coupled with feelings of excitement and a belief that you can get there (versus a feeling of falling short or feeling scared by the challenge). And the physical responses of this stress help to propel us forward into that action, boosting our motivation, focus and drive.

So while it’s true that stress can have many negative side effects for our health and well-being, it’s also true that stress can keep us safe and support our growth.

The Benefits of “Good Stress”

Think about the biggest and most meaningful personal or professional accomplishments in your life. Maybe completing school or a training program, finishing a creative project or athletic competition, growing your business, or starting a family.

Now think about what motivated you during these processes. What helped you learn and grow in order to complete these tasks? Chances are it included a little (or a lot of) stress, which acted as fuel to get what needed to get done, done. Because stress is usually an opportunity to evolve.

The things we’re most proud of, and bring the most meaning to our lives, are usually a challenge we work towards over time. And the stress-filled journey that pushes us to stretch towards that accomplishment is deeply intertwined with the meaning the accomplishment brings to our lives. So, if we erased all of the stress in our lives, we’d also erase a ton of meaning from our existence too.

A big step towards the acceptance of stress is the understanding that it serves a valuable purpose in our lives. It even has benefits for us. In fact, with the right mindset, stress can enhance our lives, making us smarter, stronger, and happier people.

Not convinced? Here are some of the benefits of “good stress”:

🔷 Improves cognitive function + sharpens you senses

Athletes talk about the pressure of competition helping them perform in games, and actors say they channel their nerves into an stellar performance. Turns out there’s a scientific reason for this.

Studies have shown that the right amount of acute or “eustress” primes the brain for optimal performance. It can make us sharper, more alert and aware of our surroundings, boost our motivation, and even improve our memory. It’s no surprise that all of this improves our productivity and performance. You can track this for yourself on a day when you’re experiencing a higher amount of acute stress at work. Do you notice you are more productive than on less-stressful days?

🔷 Keeps you healthy

The elevated “fight or flight” response that comes up when we feel stressed is designed to protect us from the physical threat we see around us (moving vehicle, wild animal, etc.) but that brief surge of stress hormones can also boost our immune system, protecting us from infection and illness (whereas chronic or “bad” stress weakens the immune system and increases inflammation).

🔷 Builds resilience + encourages growth

Most of us don’t love the feeling of stress, but walking through the stressful times in our life (despite our discomfort) does make us more resilient. Why?

Stress forces us to problem solve, which encourages skill-building that we can use in the future, and grows our confidence in a way that proves that we can show up for ourselves when stress comes back around. This confidence helps us feel less threatened and more in control of our lives, which boosts our ability to cope. Plus, the brain releases dopamine during stressful times which further reinforces the resilience being built.

🔷 Supports connection

Strangely enough, stress makes us more social, and it starts in your brain. Oxytocin, the feel-good hormone that promotes connection and those wonderful warm fuzzy feelings, is actually a stress hormone that gets released during the stress response. This can motivate you to seek support, share how you’re feeling, and surround yourself with people who care. And our relationships are strengthened when we support each other through hard times, which subsequently improves our mental and physical health.

Getting Stressed About Stress

Given all these benefits of stress, you may be wondering, where does it all go wrong? Beyond the very real challenges of chronic stress in some people's lives (when you feel out of control and paralyzed by stress), one of the biggest ways our “good stress” goes bad is due to our reaction to it. So often, just the presence of stress stresses us out. We hear about how bad stress is on the body and worry about the physical and mental impact it might have.

Similar to a phenomenon called “meta-worry” (worrying that worry will spiral out of control and do us harm) that is shown to drive the vicious cycle of anxiety, this “meta-stress” (the stress we feel about feeling stressed and the harm it’ll do us) is shown to be more harmful than the stress itself. So in a way, when we see our stress as “bad”, it becomes “bad”.

Reframing Stress

Knowing this you may be thinking, “Ok, I’ll just stop thinking that”, but suppressing our thoughts and feelings doesn't work and can actually increase stress and anxiety. However, reframing how you think about stress can bring about meaningful change in your life.

Researchers have found that individuals who adopt a “stress is enhancing” mindset perform better at work and have fewer negative health symptoms than those who have a “stress is debilitating” mindset.

There is, of course, personal discernment necessary when it comes to chronic stress. But in general, if we can embrace stress as a powerful and natural tool that helps us overcome the inevitable challenges of life, we open ourselves to deeper learning, growth and connection with ourselves and those around us. When you change your mind about stress, you can change your body's response to stress.

In her book The Stress Prescription, Elissa Epel PhD uses the animal kingdom to clearly outline the distinction between good and bad stress, and how we can change our mindset. Picture a lion hunting a gazelle. The terrified gazelle is sprinting for its life in fight-or-flight mode, while the lion is energized, anticipating its hard-fought meal.

What’s interesting is that both animals are technically experiencing stress. Their nervous systems are both activated, changing their bodies to help them respond to stress. But they are activated in different ways. The gazelle is in a threat response: fearful, tight, and restricted. Whereas the lion is in a challenge response: energetic, focused and driven. Both are stressed, but the interpretation of the stress has vastly different outcomes for the body and mind of the animals.

Fortunately, being hunted by a predator is not a natural occurrence for us in this day and age. Unfortunately, our minds are often reacting like the gazelle to everyday stressors, sending our bodies into overdrive.

So the key to stressing smarter is stepping out of the sometimes habitual threat response and into a challenge response, embodying what Epel calls, a “positive stress mindset”. Or in other words, befriending your stress.

How To Befriend Stress with a Positive Stress Mindset

If you want to start training your mind to befriend stress (and we highly recommend it), here’s where to begin.

1 | Acceptance

Stress is given in our lives. It will come up whether we like it or not. But if we can accept the fact that stress will be a part of most of our days, we won’t be so surprised by it which avoids the automatic “gazelle” response. Our acceptance helps us to see these daily stressors as expected challenges, rather than unexpected threats, which provides us a greater sense of agency and bolsters our positive stress response.

2 | Acknowledge

An important part of the positive stress mindset is to acknowledge stress when it comes up. So often we live in the extremes either of trying to deny stress or hyper-fixating on it. Instead, try to simply acknowledge the stress when it arises. You could say in your head, or even out loud, “I feel stressed about [insert your challenge]” or “[your challenge] is causing me stress.” This simple act of recognizing your stress is proven to help interrupt your visceral reaction (threat) and move into a more proactive response (challenge).

It can also be helpful to remind yourself that stress means you care. We tend to stress more intensely about the things that matter to us, and, as we all know, the most important things in life usually aren’t easy.

3 | Allow

The last step of the positive stress mindset is to allow yourself to harness the power of stress. Instead of stressing about your stress, remind yourself of the benefits of stress listed above, and that your body is stepping up to help you meet the challenge. Research has shown that this mindset will help you channel the energy to your advantage and will ease the physical effects of stress on your body.

And once the challenge has been tackled, allow the stress to fade out of the body. Luckily, our body, nervous system, and brain are all designed to bounce back from stress. And, it’s much easier for our bodies to “come down” from a challenge response versus a threat response as we spend less time ruminating and reliving a challenge than we do a threat.

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