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There are a lot of reasons to say people are more stressed daily, more often now than at any time previously.
Stress can cause diseases of the body like heart disease and many auto-immune conditions, as well as mental conditions such as anxiety, which up to 40 million Americans struggle with, according to the National Institute of Health (nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics).
These conditions stem from an overload of stressors accumulating faster than the body and mind can process. Our ancestors on the savannah might have been battling saber-tooths or hostile tribes or navigating dangerous terrain but would typically have time to recover between events.
In modern life, it’s often repeated stressors of a less life-threatening nature, such as office politics, relationships, or even making your morning bus. Note how many times your heart quickens with anxiety in everyday conversation or reading emails, watching the news, or scrolling social media posts. Some of these things you can choose to avoid, but if it’s in a relationship you value, whether at work or at home, you may feel obliged to stay in the situation.
Why stress exists
Stress has a lot to answer for. However, it can be helpful to remember that the stress response has a purpose. As an evolved survival strategy, it can spur us to action, lift us out of indecision, prevent us from repeating negative events, and even make us healthier.
When the eyes and/or ears perceive a threat, the brain’s amygdala interprets the information based on prior experience. With enough stress, it alerts the hypothalamus, which acts as a command center, triggering faster heart rate, rising blood pressure, shallow breathing, and spiking a hormone called cortisol. (It can also cue relaxation with its distinct cascade of effects and hormones.)
The nervous system has two modes of operation, often called “rest-and-digest” or “fight-or-flight” that balance each other like a seesaw. Think of the hypothalamus as the fulcrum of the seesaw. The scientific terms for these are the parasympathetic (relaxation) and sympathetic (stress) responses. Today people are spending a significant amount of time in sympathetic mode, or fight-or-flight.
Can you imagine if we had no stress response? A woman known in psychiatry annals as “S.M.” suffered a rare condition damaging her amygdala leaving her with no fear. In studies, she voluntarily grabbed venomous snakes, and once calmly walked away from a knife-wielding man. You can imagine if people could manage to avoid stress altogether, either by all-day meditation or chemical means, they’d be relaxed, but probably wouldn’t be building the Brooklyn Bridge or the Parthenon.
Good stress
In addition to potentially saving your life in a life-threatening situation, there are several scenarios in which stress is a good thing.
Hormetic stress, producing an effect known as hormesis, could be classified as “just-enough” stress. It gets you moving, trying new things, learning, and exercising. It keeps you expanding and challenging yourself to a level that is beneficial versus anxiety-producing. Physically, examples include temperature stress, like saunas and cold exposure, diet stress like time-restricted eating, and exercise. Perhaps surprisingly, many of these, notably time-restricted eating, are linked to increased longevity. Hormesis is a great illustration of the adage, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” – applied in measured doses of course.
Mentally, entering new situations or learning a new skill can be both exciting and challenging. The key is to lean into the former over the latter. Experts say flow state, an optimal state of learning and creativity, is achieved when we are just uncomfortable enough to stay engaged and learn without giving up or stressing out. The ideal degree of difficulty is 4% above your current skill level, says Steven Kotler author of “The Art of Impossible: A Peak Performance Primer.” Doing this regularly will expand your skill levels and make your life more interesting too.
Turning it around
When you find yourself tipping into the stress response when trying a new situation, you can flip the switch from stress to relaxation if you catch it early enough. Here are several ideas – see which resonate with you.
• Before you step on stage for the presentation or a local theater club, enter the job interview or party, try taking a page from athletes. While they may be a little nervous on the starting block or walking onto the field, most are filled with anticipation. Their bodies are geared up to move but excitement is winning over fear. Try saying to yourself “Let’s go!” or “This is going to be fun!”
• If you need a physical cue, try a “power pose,” shown in studies to increase feelings of power and assertiveness, and in Amy Cuddy’s initial study at Harvard, to show hormonal effects as well. Power poses are expansive and open. Take the stance of Wonder Woman or a starfish before jumping in and see how you feel.
• Breathing is a powerful relaxation tool we take with us everywhere. There are many techniques, but the general rule is that inhaling is exciting, exhaling is relaxing. Longer exhales than inhales cue the body to relax. Slower, longer, and breathing from the belly versus the chest are all calming. Andrew Weil likes the 4-7-8 breath: inhale for a count of 4, hold for 7, exhale for 8. In box-breathing, the exhale and inhale counts are the same, but holds between each decrease the amount of time inhaling. You inhale for 4 seconds, hold 4, exhale 4, and hold • We can take control of our stress and relaxation, which can help us live longer, healthier and happier, while learning new things.