Stress has a bad name! We are bombarded with doom and gloom news about the catastrophic impact of stress on our mental and our physical health. We are told that stress is the new pandemic [21; 20] ‘the health epidemic of the 21^st century’ [9].

The negative effects of stress are associated with cancer, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory disease [6; 17] and linked to cognitive impairment, aggression and mental illness [18; 6; 15]. Therefore, the negative impact of stress can be life altering and ultimately deadly.

The narrative that stress is bad for you prevails, and yet there is no escaping either the physical or mental demands that will trigger our natural stress responses

So, what exactly is stress?

Medically speaking it is considered as a physiological reaction to a demand which results in higher levels of stress hormones such as cortisol. From a neurological perspective, it is activation of the amygdala, the part of the brain associated with emotional processing, and from a psychological perspective it is understood as the experience of demands (time pressures, people, resources, thoughts, emotions etc.) that interfere with our efforts to pursue desired goals resulting in both positive and negative experiences [2; 3; 6].

The good news is that, despite the fear inducing headlines, stress does not always result in a negative experience. It is not all bad. In fact, stress can have a positive effect. It can increase arousal, focus, improve performance, wellbeing and health and build resilience [8; 6; 5; 19; 1]. Think of how good you feel when you have overcome a difficult challenge or achieved something that you’ve put a lot of effort into such as gettingthe job you applied for, running your first 5km, completing a project whether work based or DIY, confronting someone in a positive way.

How can we harness the positive effects of stress more?

There is growing evidence suggesting that it is the perception of stress rather than stress itself that creates the plethora of negative effects on our health and wellbeing [14; 12; 10; 15]. The way in which people think about stress, otherwise known as stress mindset, can directly influence the positive or negative consequences of stress [4].

Researchers have identified two types of stress mindset, stress enhancing (stress is good for you) and stress debilitating (stress is bad for you). Evidence to date suggests that a stress enhancing mindset is associated with less perceived stress, lower levels of depression, less anxiety and greater levels of wellbeingthan a debilitating mindset [13; 11; 12; 4]. Therefore, our beliefs about whether stress is good or bad for us influences how much stress, anxiety and depression we experience along with our levels of wellbeing. If we wish to minimise the negative impact of stress on our health and wellbeing, we simply need to stop seeing stress as bad for us and start to think of it as being good for us.

What if I think I have a stress debilitating mindset. Can I change it?

Given the amount of consistently negative messages we get about stress, it is likely that many of us have a stress debilitating or a least a sometimes good, sometimes bad stress mindset. The good news is, we can change our mindset. Crum and her colleagues showed that participants’ mindsets could be changed from stress debilitating to stress enhancing by presenting a short video with evidence in favour of a stress enhancing mindset [4]. Even better was that this change resulted in improved work performance and reduced symptoms of anxiety and depression.

“Isn’t this just a form of toxic positivity?”, you might well be asking yourself.

Toxic positivity is the act of avoiding, suppressing or rejecting negative experiences and it occurs when encouraging statements are expected to minimise or eliminate painful emotions. It creates a pressure to be unrealistically optimistic.  I believe that holding a stress enhancing mindset does not mean you avoid, suppress or reject negative experiences, quite the opposite, you embrace them as they can be enhancing. A stress enhancing mindset does not mean you expect no discomfort from stress, it is simply a belief that stress itself is enhancing not debilitating. There is a large body of evidence that backs this up by demonstrating that positive psychological change can be experienced as a result of challenging and stressful experiences (post traumatic growth).

There is no denying that dealing with stress causes a depletion of resources. We may feel more tired, low in energy, less tolerant, hungry. Adopting a stress enhancing mindset does not mean you ignore the costs of dealing with stress. Perhaps we can change the narrative by thinking, ‘stress is good for me and it is important to look after myself by resting or refuelling after periods of intense or continued stress’. Through this approach we harness the power of a positive mindset towards stress and yet we pay attention to what it takes from us to deal with it, the energy we use to respond to the stress. This way we can replenish ourselves appropriately. 

You might be thinking, ‘this is all well and good with obvious stressors such as illness, change of job, traumatic event, but what about the daily grind of demands and stressors?” 

Think of it like a bank account. Withdrawals are the efforts that you use to deal with stress (energy, effort, time, thoughts), whether these are small daily withdrawals or large one off withdrawals. If there are too many withdrawals we are in trouble. In order to stay solvent, we need to put in deposits. This may be a large deposit like a holiday, time off, spa treatment or small deposits like a cup of tea/coffee, walk with a friend, taking a full lunch, watching a comedy. When you make a withdrawal think about how you make a resource deposit to maintain the balance.

You can also build up your resources to deal with stress in the same way as you do a bank account with savings. You can build positive habits that build your resources/energy such as physical exercise, social connection, mindfulness, good nutrition. This way you have more resources to deal with the daily stressors that eat away at your ‘stress account’. The important thing is to keep an eye on the balance so you can top it up when and how you need to.

So why not experiment for yourself? Adopt a stress enhancing (stress is good for you) mindset over the next week and observe the impact it has on how you experience stress and your overall stress levels. Do this whilst paying close attention to your resources (what you expend in dealing with the stress) and replenish those resources frequently. And let me know how you get on!

Written by Adrienne O’Hare CPsychol Chartered Coaching Psychologist and Managing Director of To Be Coaching.

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