Simply put stress is an adaptive response, which means it’s your body’s way of rising to pressure and occurs whether or not that obstacle is good or bad. Organizing and packing for a long-awaited vacation and preparing for a high-pressure presentation can both be stressful situations.
As an example, short-term stress sharpens your ability to focus and makes you less error prone, increasing your overall performance. Cortisol, one of the hormones involved in the stress response, can increase social connection, as long as the level of cortisol is below a certain threshold. Although the stress response has a bad reputation in popular media, it has many helpful effects.
The problem is not necessarily stress, it’s more about how we have learned to respond or react to it. Our stress response is shaped by our personal history, psychological processes, and hormonal responses. While we all face stress, our nervous systems will respond differently, which is why it does not really make sense to tell someone else that an event “shouldn’t” be stressful. Because it really is for them.
The Timing and Intensity of Stress
If stress is so helpful, why so much negative attention? It really comes down to timing, duration, and intensity.
Occasional acute stress, which is intense stress that is short in duration, actually has a positive effect on immune function. A single episode of acute stress doesn’t usually cause a problem for the healthy adult.
Distant stress however, relates to past experience which causes stress in the present moment, such as previous trauma. Stress during childhood, is more likely to overwhelm the child’s coping ability and have a more enduring impact. This is also true for prolonged or chronic stress in adulthood.
We’re really only meant to endure shortened periods of stress, with sufficient time to recover in between. This is problematic in our always-on-the-go-always-available society. When demand is too significant or we do not have the skills to meet the demand, we’re at-risk physically and emotionally.
Reshaping our relationship to stress
When we face a stressor we automatically assess whether the task is too demanding for us or if we actually have the ability to succeed. A quick self-assessment in this is to recognize whether or not your body constricts (tenses), which is noticeable through tight chest, upset stomach and muscle tension, when you think of the task or situation. If so, then your stress response is on high.
Dr. Daniel Goleman described “frazzle” as a point in which stress hormones flood your brain and effectively shut down functioning. Optimizing your stress response means changing how you think about stress.
Stress itself, is best when intermittent, so when demand is high you need to take a step back to regulate. This allows the hormones to process out and your brain to rest. Identifying the signals of stress in your life can mean you are taking on something meaningful or important, and that the cues of stress in your body shows that your system is helping you out.
In her book “The Growth Mindset” Carol Dweck describes how people’s underlying beliefs drive how they respond to the obstacles they face. Those with a growth mindset believe that persistence, effort, and learning from mistakes will lead to their success and tend to bring these attitudes when facing stress.
Over a lifetime it’s completely normal to be overwhelmed by stress periodically. If talking to friends and asking for help meeting the demands of your life don’t really get you to the right place, then it may be a good time to reach out for counselling services in Calgary. A lot can be done to help reduce your stress reactivity response and to learn more adaptive ways to approach and appraise stress.
Chronic stress is not something that you need to endure alone.
