Stress: It it hurting or helping?
Alice Mexter is a UKCP registered psychotherapist & Peel Psychological Consultancy. In this blog for National Stress Awareness Month, she explores stress and its disadvantages & advantages.
Stress hurts
As our sympathetic nervous system experiences arousal, we feel a variety of unpleasant sensations - clenching of the jaw, tightness in the chest, the turn of the stomach or coldness in fingers and toes, to name but a few.
Stress, at its worst, pillages our sleep, ravages our diet and obliterates our joy.
Acute stress can lead to PTSD, while chronic stress increases the risk of peptic ulcers, heart disease, sleep disorders and serious mental health problems. Unbearable levels of stress require intervention - such as time off work or study potentially combined with medication, therapy, improved self-care and lifestyle changes.
Too little stress?
Stress can be viewed as simply our body’s response to life. A stressless life, therefore, can also pose problems.
In 2018, Frenchman Frédéric Desnard took his employer to court because his job was so undemanding that he experienced it as a ‘descent into hell’. A manager in a perfume company, M. Desnard claimed that he had been ‘mis en placard’ or ‘placed in a cupboard’, which meant he was given mundane or menial tasks for years on end. He ended up winning 40,000 euros in compensation.
Being unchallenged or unstimulated can be as deleterious to our mental and physical well-being as being pushed to the limit. We are evolutionarily designed to be in danger and respond to that danger. ’Bore out’ proves as painful as ‘burn-out.’
Stress reappraisal
Stress management includes spending time in nature, relaxation, breathing techniques and connecting with friends and family.
More novel methods of dealing with stress include ‘stress reappraisal’. Psychologists at Rochester University found that students who reframed stress as the excitement, for instance, of meeting the challenge of an exam, had lower levels of cortisol, higher levels of testosterone and better marks in the exam, compared to a control (www.rochester.edu).
Positive effects of stress?
Stress, whether chronic or acute, is treatable and the vast majority of people will make a good recovery. People who have been through a stressful event or period in their life consistently report that they have experienced some benefits. They feel stronger, more capable, and more connected to others (Updegraff and Taylor 2000). Every day stress seems to increase motivation, sharpen memory and improve performance (Kaufer 2015).
Stress is life
Since there is no life without stress, stress is to be managed rather than avoided. We all experience stress differently, depending on our genetics and environment and will need accordingly different coping strategies. There is no panacea.
Stress helps us bond to each other and achieve beyond our normal limits. Awful though stress may be, it is an essential component of our survival.
