“We are not passive recipients of stress,” Jamieson explains. “We are active agents in creating our own stress response.”
Jamieson says the stress we feel during challenging situations can give us fuel to address the demands we face. For example, as your heart rate increases, it can help deliver more oxygen to your brain and muscles.
“Oxygen is very good at helping us process information quickly,” Jamieson explains. It can also help people perform.
Humans have long faced threats from predators, and our fight-or-flight response evolved to help us survive these dangers. But the types of stressors we face today have changed. In modern times, some of our stress comes from challenges that Jamieson says can be seen as “opportunities for growth.” The job interview, the presentation, the television appearance.
“To really innovate and do difficult things, your stress response is there to optimize your performance,” he says.
When it comes to stress, “context matters,” says researcher Wendy Berry Mendes, a psychology professor at Yale University. There are different types of stress responses and different types of stress.
She points to studies done in Scandinavia, going back decades, that found that stress hormones are linked to better performance in students taking tests.
“A greater increase in catecholamines, (including) epinephrine and norepinephrine, on the morning of the test was associated with better performance on that test,” he says.
But here’s the challenge: not everyone responds to stressors the same way. Test anxiety is real for some people and can affect your performance. Part of the equation is how well they know the material or how well prepared they are to take the exam. Another part is how they perceive stress.
Jamieson points to evidence that people can be taught to “reappraise” stress. He and his collaborators studied community college students who were preparing for a mathematics exam. When students were given information about the “functional benefits” of stress before the test, they performed better.
“By educating people about the benefits of stress responses in these environments, they latched onto the idea that I can harness my stress,” Jamieson says, and use it to help do important things.
Students who were taught to “re-evaluate their stress as a resource” not only performed better but had less anxiety about texts.
When good stress turns bad
So when stress arises from a challenge or opportunity, it can be helpful in the moment. But, when your stress response remains activated at times when you don’t need it, this becomes problematic.
Let’s say you have a great presentation, but you’re still three days away. You have finished the preparations, but anticipatory stress appears. Just imagining giving the presentation makes you nervous. You may feel the stress response increase.
Your breathing is shallow or you feel nervous or irritated. If you use a wearable device, such as an Oura ring or an Apple Watch, it may show a low level of heart rate variability, indicating more time in stress mode.
“Your body revs up before you need it,” Mendes says. And this can deplete your physiological system. “Imagine if you were running across the savanna, trying to get away from a lion,” Mendes says, but the lion doesn’t show up for three days! That is not sustainable.
It also doesn’t help to worry about a performance once it’s over. “Your body no longer needs to be in overdrive,” Mendes says, but worry keeps the stress response activated.
This can lead to fatigue, low mood, and exhaustion. Chronic stress can make you feel like you are continually under attack. It’s linked to everything from increased risk of heart disease to depression, headaches, and sleep problems.
All of this suggests that stress management strategies are key. We can’t avoid the difficult situations that life throws at us, but we can learn skills that improve our ability to manage and even recover and thrive.
The editors of Stress Less are Carmel Wroth and Jane Greenhalgh.
