You Need Stress…No Really, You Do

You know that feel­ing when you’re all caught up at work, the house is clean, the laun­dry is done, your eye­brows are per­fect­ly shaped, the bills are paid, the lawn is mowed, no one is whin­ing, the sun is shin­ing, and all is right with the world?

If you are human, and I sus­pect that some of you are, you have no idea what I’m talk­ing about. You might be start­ing to sweat a lit­tle or breathe faster because what I just described sounds exact­ly like nir­vana but you’ve nev­er actu­al­ly expe­ri­enced it so now you’re think­ing there must be some­thing wrong with you.

First of all, relax. Take a slow breath in, hold it for a few sec­onds, now exhale even slow­er. Repeat as needed.

Sec­ond, that run-on sen­tence? The one with­out all the stress? That was a work of fic­tion. A fairy tale. While we may fan­ta­size about that degree of stress­less­ness on a reg­u­lar basis, we will very rarely expe­ri­ence it. In fact, ​“stress­less­ness” isn’t even a word because it’s not a thing. The clos­est con­cept we have in the Eng­lish lan­guage is ​“all-inclu­sive resort.”

What is stress and what does it do for us?

There are sev­er­al def­i­n­i­tions of the word ​“stress” but what we’re talk­ing about here is men­tal or emo­tion­al ten­sion cre­at­ed by a chal­leng­ing or demand­ing cir­cum­stance or sit­u­a­tion. Stress can be pos­i­tive (hav­ing a baby, start­ing a new job, going on vaca­tion) or neg­a­tive (a sig­nif­i­cant loss, finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties, con­flict with a part­ner). Life is full of both kinds.

Stress is also rel­a­tive. Things that stress out teenagers (los­ing a Snap streak, get­ting a low grade on a chem­istry test) are very dif­fer­ent from the things that stress their par­ents (not know­ing what a Snap streak is, argu­men­ta­tive teens).

I like to think of it as one of our most basic needs: Food, water, oxy­gen, and con­stant stress. That might sound like a bad thing because stress has the rep­u­ta­tion of being a ter­ri­ble, hor­ri­ble ene­my that we must all ban­ish from our lives. But stress is our friend, not our foe. We may not always enjoy feel­ing stressed, how­ev­er it is absolute­ly, pos­i­tive­ly crit­i­cal to our growth and development.

But why? Why can’t life be rain­bows and uni­corns and long walks on the beach every day?

1. Stress keeps us safe.

Let’s say you are being chased by a bear. I’m guess­ing that doesn’t hap­pen to you on a reg­u­lar basis, but for the sake of exam­ple go with me on this. You would prob­a­bly feel much dis­tress in that sit­u­a­tion. That feel­ing would ini­ti­ate your body’s ​“flight or fight” response which would help you to quick­ly seek safe­ty. If you instead felt the urge to cud­dle with him or her, the result would most cer­tain­ly be dis­as­trous. Stress makes it pos­si­ble for us to rec­og­nize poten­tial threats, react in emer­gen­cies, and pro­tect our­selves and oth­ers from danger.

2. Stress moti­vates us to do nec­es­sary and often unpleas­ant tasks.

With­out stress, we’d pret­ty much just lie around in our under­wear wait­ing for noth­ing to hap­pen. Well, I would. I don’t know what you’d do, but it wouldn’t be much. Each stres­sor we face, cre­ates an inter­nal ten­sion that makes us take action or keep try­ing even when a task is dif­fi­cult. Would you study for a test if you weren’t con­cerned about your grade? Would you go to work if hav­ing mon­ey to pay for things didn’t mat­ter to you? The feel­ing you have when you get behind on the laun­dry – STRESS (and maybe a lit­tle bit of heart­burn) – is what moti­vates you to tack­le Mt. Laun­dru­vi­ous. Because we all know you’d rather veg out on the couch and watch a cou­ple (twelve) episodes of Orange Is the New Black.

3. Stress leads to the devel­op­ment of nec­es­sary skills and strengths.

Basi­cal­ly you’re born and then for the rest of your life, you face chal­lenge after daunt­ing chal­lenge, each one designed to make you strong enough for the next. We start out with devel­op­men­tal chal­lenges like breath­ing on our own, learn­ing to suck, hold­ing up our own heads, sit­ting, and walk­ing. Then we grad­u­ate to things like talk­ing, social skills, read­ing, and math. We over­come some stres­sors or chal­lenges more eas­i­ly than oth­ers, as those of us who can’t cal­cu­late a tip to save our lives under­stand very well, but each stress we face teach­es us a skill we need in order to face future challenges.

Too much of a good thing?

Stress is good for you. Until it’s not. There is a very fine line between just the right amount and too much. Just like cake, stress is harm­ful in large quan­ti­ties. An over­abun­dance of stress in your life can lead to a vari­ety of phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al symp­toms, such as:

• Headaches

• Anx­i­ety

• Depres­sion

• Sleep prob­lems

• Irri­tabil­i­ty

• Feel­ing dis­tract­ed and overwhelmed

• Changes in eat­ing habits

• Stom­ach problems

When it comes to stress, we need just enough to moti­vate us to do nec­es­sary things, stay safe from dan­ger­ous things, and keep learn­ing to do new things. But if we cross the line, our health takes a hit. Next week’s post will include sim­ple but real­is­tic tips for main­tain­ing that balance.

Until then,

Nik­ki

*The con­tent in this blog should nev­er be con­sid­ered an alter­na­tive to qual­i­ty med­ical or men­tal health care and is intend­ed to be a source of infor­ma­tion only.