Stress is a natural reaction to specific demands and events, but ongoing stress can affect a person’s health and wellbeing. Tips for managing stress include exercise, setting priorities, counseling, and more.

(if you’d like more information on managing stress, I’d love to chat with you! You can also find free resources on my website under resources. Or I hope that you are participating in my Thermostat vs, Thermometer Challenge – April 2024)

Demands can come from work (or lack of work), relationships (or lack of relationships), financial pressures, dysfunctional families, and other situations; but anything that poses a real or perceived challenge or threat to a person’s well-being can cause stress.

Stress can be a motivator, and it can even be essential to survival. The body’s fight-or-flight mechanism tells you when and how to respond to danger or a perceived threat. However, when the body becomes triggered too easily, or there are too many stressors at one time, it can undermine a person’s mental and physical health and become harmful. The ability to regulate emotions, manage stress and use effective coping tools is vital to your health. That’s why stress management is one of the 5 foundational behaviors for improving health and listed as one of the 6 pillars of health by the ACLM. You can get a free download from the ACLM with more information on the 6 pillars of health by clicking here.

American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) 6 pillars of health diagram.

What is stress?

“A person with stress may experience increased blood pressure”- this slant of negativity is no longer how stress should be viewed, I am quoting this to make you aware of the negative bias here from (The Effects of Stress on Your Body (healthline.com)

What do you experience with a stressful situation?

People who experience stress will also experience increased respirations, increased blood flow to the brain for alertness, increased cardioprotective hormones…Stress stimulates the immune system, which can be a plus for immediate situations. This stimulation can help you avoid infections and heal wounds. Your muscles tense up to protect themselves from injury when you’re stressed. Under stress, your liver produces extra blood sugar (glucose) to give you a boost of energy. During the stress response, you breathe faster in an effort to quickly distribute oxygen-rich blood to your body

Healthline also says: “Stress is a natural physical and mental reaction to life experiences. Everyone expresses stress from time to time. Anything from everyday responsibilities like work and family to serious life events such as a new diagnosis, war, or the death of a loved one can trigger stress. For immediate, short-term situations, stress can be beneficial to your health. It can help you cope with potentially serious situations. Your body responds to stress by releasing hormones that increase your heart and breathing rates and ready your muscles to respond.”

Stress is the body’s natural defense against predators and danger. It causes the body to flood with hormones that prepare its systems to evade or confront danger. People commonly refer to this as the fight-or-flight mechanism. (this is old thinking – “predators and danger”, stress helps us with daily life!, watch this TED talk and get the facts of stress and what it does to prepare our bodies to act and do!

Please catch yourself when the media or others who are not knowledgeable try to tell you all stress is bad, CHRONIC stress is hazardous to your health, but I am talking about stress, plain old stress, or anxiety. We all will experience these emotions and it is normal and good!

It’s like chocolate, some is good, but too much is not!

I know I was taught that stress is harmful and best avoided, but The Upside of Stress aims to prove otherwise. Kelly McGonigal argues that stress isn’t the enemy it’s typically made out to be—rather, it’s an ally we should embrace. By changing your mindset on stress, McGonigal claims you can transform it into a resource that leads to enhanced health, greater success, and a more meaningful life. I have done research and totally agree with Kelly and other scientists who tout the amazing physiological affects of stress and how it helps us deal with life.

To get more in depth, read her book The Upside of Stress! Great read!

McGonigal argues that our fear of stress is largely based on irrelevant research. She claims that most theories describing the negative effects of stress on human health are informed by extremely stressful animal studies (mostly involving rats) whose results aren’t applicable to humans. God gave us the ability to handle stress, He created our physiological systems to rev up and go! It’s when we fail to act, and push stress down and don’t manage it and our emotions that stress becomes a chronic stress that is harmful to the body. It’s all about semantics people – if you are referring to the negative effects of stress – say Chronic Stress. Stress is a positive thing if you view it that way. Science backs this up!

When humans face a challenge or threat, they have a partly physical response. The body activates resources that help people either stay and confront the challenge or get to safety as fast as possible.

The body produces larger quantities of the chemical’s cortisol, epinephrine, and norepinephrine. These trigger the following physical reactions:

increased blood pressure – blood flow to the brain, this is good!
heightened muscle preparedness – getting us amped up to act and do!
Sweating
Alertness – our senses our heightened and you become more focused

These factors (and so many more that I have added above) all improve a person’s ability to respond to a potentially hazardous or challenging situation. Norepinephrine and epinephrine also cause a faster heart rate. When the stressor is removed or dealt with the hypothalamus tells the body to get back to normal and the “fight or flight” is turned off. Crisis averted, why? Because you didn’t avoid it, you had the ability to regulate your emotions and use the physiological response for your good, and you view stress as a motivator to act and do, which is a positive thing.

Environmental factors that trigger can trigger a flight or fight response are called stressors. Examples include noises, aggressive behavior, a speeding car, scary moments in movies, or even going out on a first date. Feelings of stress tend to increase in tandem with the number of stressors. (That is why a healthy view of stress and stress management tools to build resilience as well as lower set point are vital for good health and well-being) That is why it is important to identify your stressors and have the tools to manage your stress when it arises. Tools that you practice daily to lower your set point and relieve stress. You have trained your brain that when a stressor comes, you don’t fly off the handle, you revert to tools you have used like deep breathing, pray or exercise to get your mind right/positive and you face the stressor, not magnifying it to larger than life, not dwelling on it causing anxiety to become worry, you use the revved up system to tackle the stress and move on.

According to the American Psychological Association (APA)’s annual stress survey in 2018, average stress levels in the United States were 4.9 on a scale from 1 to 10. The survey found that the most common stressors were employment and money.

When I checked the same survey in 2023, this is what I found, “Stress in America 2023: A Nation Recovering from Collective Trauma examines the lasting psychological impacts of this combination of era-defining crises. An inspection of pre- and post-pandemic mental and physical health reveals signs of collective trauma among all age cohorts.

The data suggests the long-term stress sustained since the COVID-19 pandemic began has had a significant impact on well-being, evidenced by an increase in chronic illnesses—especially among those between the ages of 35 and 44, which increased from 48% reported in 2019 to 58% in 2023. Adults ages 35 to 44 also experienced the highest increase in mental health diagnoses—from 31% reported in 2019 to 45% in 2023—though adults ages 18 to 34 still reported the highest rate of mental illnesses at 50% in 2023.

The APA also says, “The data also shows a tendency among respondents to downplay stress; around two-thirds of adults (67%) reported feeling like their problems are not “bad enough” to be stressed about, because they know others have it worse. Other top reasons adults reported they or a family member may give for not seeking treatment included the belief that therapy doesn’t work (40%), lack of time (39%), or lack of insurance (37%).”

“When it comes to stress management, many are struggling to cope and are bearing the burden alone. Around three in five adults (62%) said they don’t talk about their stress overall because they don’t want to burden others. Although finances are a top stressor, talking about them is off the table. In fact, only 52% of adults said they are comfortable talking with others about money/finances, and more than two in five adults (45%) said they feel embarrassed talking about money or their financial situation with others.”

Stress is here to stay, let’s raise awareness about it’s positive effects as well as get the tools to manage it effectively into the hands of our friends and family. Not everyone is going to reach out to a professional, so reach out in your sphere on influence and make a difference!

Make the difference in someone’s life that you know can use some help with stress management tools.

If you need help, please reach out, I’d love to get you some resources on managing stress or work with you 1:1 and develop a customized toolbox of effective coping tools.

Sources:

The Effects of Stress on Your Body (healthline.com)

The Upside of Stress by Kelly McGonigal (book)

Stress: Why does it happen and how can we manage it? (medicalnewstoday.com)

Ted Talk Make Stress Your Friend by Kelly McGonigal

Switch on Your Brain Dr. Caroline Leaf

American Psychological Association (APA) 2018 annual stress survey

Stress in America 2023: A nation recovering from collective trauma (apa.org)