Not All Stress is Bad
This seems like a trick, right? How can the perpetual stress in everyday life have any sort of positive affect? It doesn’t. That’s stress overload, but when you don’t experience enough stress you’re virtually sedentary and bored out of your mind (See Figure A).
Stress does not always mean stressed out. Stress does not always cause overwhelm. Stress is a necessary part of life. It’s stressful to learn a new language, to start a workout regimen, to move, start a new job, be in a relationship, etc., but if we just avoided all stress we would never grow, evolve, learn, mature, or any of it. Stress makes us resilient and motivates us to be productive, to be better.
When stress exceeds the optimum level, the overwhelm and anxiety kick in. The chronic stress of comparison that scrolling social media may cause is too much. The inability to disconnect from your job because your phone won’t stop pinging is exhausting. The constant barrage of terrible events happening around the world is more information than you were ever meant to process.
Burn out happens as the elevated stress level persists. There’s no break. When you’re over the optimum stress level and you’re just using avoidance or escape techniques to manage your stress levels, they don’t go away. You can drink coffee for exhaustion and take medication for anxiety symptoms, but the source of the stress is still there.
Figure A
The solution is not to eliminate stress from your life. The solution is to learn how to manage your stress levels and use them to your advantage instead of allowing them to cause you harm. There are several things you can do to keep stress from bursting over that threshold from optimum to sickness.
Don’t try to drastically change your behavior in a day. That will only add to your current stress levels. Small changes are the most sustainable, so maybe take a ten minute walk today. Or close your eyes and connect with your breath for five minutes. Grab a (decaf) coffee with a friend and spend an hour reconnecting. Or write your thoughts down for a couple minutes. You got this.
