“Emotional competence requires the capacity to feel our emotions so that we are aware when we are experiencing stress.”

Dr. Gabor Maté (Addition & Trauma Phycisian)

Are You Stressed Or Soft?

What does stress mean to you? Hopefully, you don’t think like me.

I used to look at stress as a game. A “survival of the fittest” competition.

I used to think stress is experienced by the weak, so you need to build intestinal fortitude to overcome the stresses in life. I used to think I got energized by stress, and without it, I wouldn’t get anything done.

I used to think people who wanted to de-stress were slackers, soft-willed, and lacked ambition.

How’s that for honesty?

Modern-Day Stress

I’ve come to learn that the truth is, like most things in life, nuanced.

But what is undeniable is that stress in the modern world isn’t like stress experienced by our ancestors, or even 50 years ago.

Our physiology hasn’t evolved as quickly as our lifestyles and technology to make sense of and protect us from harm. In fact, chronic stress, which is the type of stress often experienced in modern life, is not an inconvenience – it’s lethal.

So, do I still feel the same about stress as I did in the past?

Well, yes and no (I’m not just saying that as a former management consultant).

As I mentioned earlier, the topic of stress is more nuanced than “good” or “bad,” “helpful” or “harmful,” and “healthy” or “diseased.”

It’s a meaty topic and we’ll sink into some of the depth here, so this is going to be a longer-than-usual blog, but keep in mind, it’s still not meant to be exhaustive (I encourage you to also do your own research and seek a trusted medical professional if you have immediate concerns).

The Myths of Stress

1. Stress is good for survival.

YES

If we were in the wild, and came across a tiger, our reaction to that threat would impact how well we’re able to flee, attack, and/or hide.

Or if we were living off the land, and we had to relocate, that stressor would impact how well we’re able to stave off hunger and stay energized and motivated to seek out our next plot of land.

NO

Our body’s automatic response to threat is to produce chemicals to help us deal with short term stress with an endpoint (e.g. when we’ve escaped the tiger or when we’ve arrived at our destination).

Prolonged stress isn’t good for our body because we are not meant to bathe in the stress chemicals for long periods of time.

Over time, stress chemicals break down muscles, brain tissues, and bones, and wreak havoc on our mental and physical health.

SO WHAT? 

When stress is experienced in the short term, it can help us run faster, jump higher, and dig deeper into our stored mental and physical energy.

However, whenever stress is extended, especially one with no end in sight, it’s a quick way to remove ourselves from the proverbial gene pool, because we will get sick. It’s not a matter of if, but when.

Modern life stressors are often ongoing, long-term, and almost with no end in sight. We’ll talk more about that later.

2. Stress is experienced by the weak

YES

If we’re defining the “weak” by someone who is lacking in ability or resources, there is some truth in this. 

Stress is experienced when the demand exceeds our ability or resources (perceived or real). 

Say the mob extorted me for $100M by the end of the week. I will be highly stressed out for sure because I currently do not have $100M or the ability to easily acquire this fund. Now, say Jeff Bezos was extorted the same amount. His level of stress compared to mine would differ greatly because both his resources and ability, in this context, would exceed mine (for now).

Similarly, if we’re asked to solve a problem at work for which we are under-resourced, present on a topic about which we know very little, host a dinner party when we are not confident about our cooking, or perform on a test for which we are ill-prepared, we will experience stress.

In all these examples, a person would experience less stress, if given more support and resources.

NO

The top dog also experiences stress. Stress is an equal opportunity, non-discriminatory experience.

The playing field is leveled out by the protective mechanism of our brain and body. Even if we had all the resources and abilities in the world, we would still have to grapple with our evolved brains, which come with an interesting feature for survival, but that is not very helpful for happiness. This feature is called “negative bias.”

Negative bias is our brain’s tendency to focus on the negative. Our brain evolved to routinely trick us into making three mistakes: overestimating threats, underestimating opportunities, and underestimating resources (Hanson 2013). 

This likely served us in the past – to be vigilant of threats in the wild and planning for survival. It was more beneficial for our ancestors to regularly mistake a rope for a snake than to not spot the snake in the event that it’s there, even if it caused some momentary anxiety.

Fast forward to us, who have inherited these traits in the modern world. In the modern world, there are more than just snakes that can potentially harm us, and our brain is in overdrive scanning our environment for threats (virtual and IRL). You know exactly what they sound like.

So what exactly is scanning our environment? Well, there are our five senses of which we’re consciously aware (e.g., a honking horn, the smell of smoke, a look of disdain). 

We also have a hardworking system interpreting our environments for threats below our level of consciousness. 

This system is our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS), and it senses and monitors our environment 24/7, even when we’re sleeping. In fact, this is why we tend to not sleep as well when we are in a new location, because half of our mind is assessing if our new environment is safe (Tamaki et al. 2016).

Now, take into the context of our modern living, where the norms are:

• Hyper-accelerated pace of life
• Inability to fully disconnect from work
• Constant financial pressures
• Dating/relationship pressures
• Constantly connected devices
• Addictive apps and social media
• Data overload (it is said that we consume more data in one day than a person from the 15th century consumed in a lifetime!)
• Late nights, blue lights, disrupted sleep and circadian rhythm
• Lack of sun exposure
• Lack of access to nature
• Frequent flying and radiation exposure
• Lack of connection to a community
• Exposure to pesticides and other harmful chemicals
• Conveniences of processed foods, trans fats, GMOs, and sugar at our fingertips…just to name a few.

We’re constantly looking for “threats” that could disturb our sense of peace, safety, and ego.

The sensing of a threat activates our sympathetic nervous systems (SNS), which results in a stress response.

The Sympathetic Nervous System: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn

The SNS is responsible for preparing us for activities to keep us safe. This protective system is often referred to as “fight or flight.” But it also helps to know that “freeze” and “fawn” are also automatic responses to keep us safe.

When the SNS receives the message that we are under threat (perceived or real), it releases chemicals to help us get out of danger.

The HPA axis, which consists of the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and the adrenal glands, is the network responsible for releasing stress chemicals. As long as our brain is still receiving messages of threat, our HPA axis will keep its “foot on the gas pedal” (Seyle, 1950). Over time, this messes with our hormones and creates a downward spiral on our health. Unfortunately, in our modern world, most of our stressors are ongoing because it’s now our way of life.

If you’re feeling your SNS responding to this section of the article, go ahead and take three deep breaths through your nose, filling your belly with air, keeping your exhale a second or two longer than your inhale, and tell yourself you’re safe and not in danger (this will activate your parasympathetic nervous system to chill; you’re welcome).

SO WHAT? 

Everyone experiences stress, not just the weak. Some people experience stress very consciously, but everyone is experiencing stress on a subconscious or unconscious level as well.

If health and wellness are important to us, we must identify our contributors of stress, monitor our levels of stress throughout the day, and work on supporting our stress response system.

We are most vulnerable to the ailments of stress when we think we are not impacted or don’t take efforts to de-stress.

A side note about sustaining stress:

According to Hans Selye, father of stress research, our bodies respond to stress in three stages: 1) Alarm 2) Resistance 3) Exhaustion. When we are in stage two, our body is pushing down the “gas pedal” of our stress chemicals to maintain our ability to escape danger. Individuals vary on the length they can sustain stage two. During this period, we might not be feeling awesome, but we’re getting things done, so we believe we’re coping just fine. However, the gas will eventually run out and we’ll dip into stage three, where we become susceptible to serious illnesses. Unfortunately, many (including me) learned this lesson the hard way – when we wake up one day mentally and physically burnt out or learn that our health has been seriously compromised.

3. Stress is energizing and productive

YES

Our brain needs to be a little bit challenged and our interest piqued for us to access the creative area of our brain.

Our prefrontal cortex (PFC) is the most evolved region of our brain, and is responsible for things like decision making, expression, innovation, and insight.

A neuroscience perspective is that in order to access our PFC, we need to be in a sweet spot that generates eustress, or “good stress,” which is between being completely bored out of our minds and overwhelmed.

Eustress is not determined by the type of stressor, but how one perceives the stressor, which means everyone’s “sweet spot” is going to be different.

When we are out of range of eustress, we rely heavily on our basal ganglia, which is the part of the brain responsible for our “working memory” – think frying an egg or driving or riding a bike, where we don’t really have to think a whole lot (Fabritius, 2018).

We know we’re experiencing eustress when the stress (Seyle, 1974):

• Motivates and energizes
• Feels exciting
• Drives focus 
• Is short-term
• Improves performance

NO

Bad stress or distress is unrewarding and risky to our well-being.

When our body perceives unhealthy stress, we produce a chemical called cortisol. When cortisol is released, our PFC shuts down. When we are exposed to stress, we lose our prefrontal cognitive abilities – i.e., we get stupid.

This happens automatically to help us survive. When we’re faced with a tiger, we don’t want to overthink and get philosophical about it, but rather allow our bodies to act instinctively to get us the heck out of there.

The PFC is the brain region that is most sensitive to the detrimental effects of stress – so much so that prolonged exposure to stress causes the thinking part of your brain to shrink (Arnsten 2010)!

Bad stress weakens prefrontal networks and higher cognition (Arnsten 2015). What does this mean? It means that stress can make us stupid. Stress shuts down the thinking part of the brain so that we can respond to threats instinctively and reflexively. This would have been the “smart” thing to do in the wild, when there’s no time to sit and wax philosophical. However, our ancient protective mechanism doesn’t help us out in the modern world when stress runs high. We are expected to think and refine and analyze and calculate and negotiate and present and produce creative, innovative, brilliant solutions to most modern-day problems. 

This happens automatically to help us survive. When we’re faced with a tiger, we don’t want to overthink and get philosophical about it, but rather allow our bodies to act instinctively to get us the heck out of there.

SO WHAT? 

Some short-term good stress is good for us.

We need to be aware of the eustress and distress in our lives to keep check of the type of stress we are taking on. Too much stress is harmful to our cognitive ability. In fact, not only do our PFCs shrink with stress, our amygdala, the part of our brain that detects danger and reacts with fear, anxiety, and aggression, actually increases in size as it works overtime. So the more anxious and stressed out we are, the more anxious and stressed out we become! (Kaufer et al., 2014)

4. People who can’t handle stress lack grit and ambition

YES

Our society definitely depicts people who can’t handle stress as lacking in will or perseverance.

We see this in movie characters and perhaps even some people throughout our lives.

It begins with the child who can’t resist or wait to eat the marshmallow and will eat it immediately upon being given one. Then the teenager who struggles with the test and gives up completing it only halfway. As an adult, it’s the person who lets “that’s too difficult” become the driver of their decision-making. 

It is entirely possible that all of these individuals lack grit and ambition because they can’t handle stress. But more likely, there’s something else going on here. 

NO

There are a few concepts that can easily get conflated with not being able to handle stress:

1. Unclear vision or goal
2. Lack of passion or purpose
3. Lack of belief or confidence
4. Inability to delay gratification

There are many reasons why people don’t persevere, and many of them have nothing to do with the ability to cope with stress. 

In fact, when we have a clear vision and purpose, coupled with skills to boost our confidence, we naturally prioritize what we want to do and realize our goals.

It has been shown that when individuals are taught how to delay gratification for a more positive outcome, crystallize their vision and purpose, and increase their confidence with training or new tools, the same individuals will charge forward with newfound energy and direction. 

As mentioned previously, there is good stress and toxic stress. Good stress challenges us to grow, and if we do it well, we are rewarded to our satisfaction.

Toxic stress is prolonged with an unclear “finish line,” where the challenges and difficulties are mostly out of our control with lack of/uncertain rewards.

Once we see and recognize toxic stress in our lives, the choice becomes ours as to how we want to respond. I’ll go as far as to say that I believe it’s a form of self-harm to push on and do nothing to alleviate ourselves from toxic stress. So one can say people who opt-out won’t or “can’t” handle long-term stress are practicing a form of self-care.

SO WHAT? 

There are definite benefits to developing “intestinal fortitude,” “thick skin,” and other strategies, such as social support, presence/mindfulness techniques, and other skills to make us more resilient to life’s ups and downs.

The reality is, many of us will experience a pointin our lives when we’re overwhelmed by stress, to the point that it impacts our well-being. In those moments, we need to be reminded to take care of ourselves so that we can offer our best to the world, because that’s what will make us happy. 

We need to recognize when we are enduring something toxic and stop the self-abuse.

High-performance athletes (LeBron James among others) are known to spend millions of dollars on self-care and performance recovery annually. These athletes invest deeply in relaxation and stress management because they understand the value. By detoxing and replenishing their minds and bodies, they will thrive and outperform themselves in the long run.

Impacts of Long-term Stress On Human

According to stress experts like Dr. Hans Selyes (“Father” of Stress Research), Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky (Professor of Biology and Neurology at Stanford University), Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk (PTSD and Neuroscience Researcher), Dr. Gabor Maté (Addiction and Trauma physician) and others, here are some physiological impacts of chronic stress on our bodies::

• Suppresses immune system – makes us vulnerable to diseases (including autoimmune and allergies) and suppresses our ability to heal
• Unravels chromosomes – speeds rapid aging and makes us more vulnerable to cancer and other ailments
• Shrinks hippocampus – impedes learning and memory
• Grows amygdala – increases the ability to experience fear, anxiety, and aggression
• Makes us fat – inhibits the ability to burn fat and redistributes fat to gather around our middle
• Builds plaque in arteries – increases risk of heart disease
• Disrupts the nervous system – disrupts sleep and ability to relax, disrupts hormones and ability to digest, heal, grow, and recover
• Clouds thinking – compromises capacity for creativity and decision making
• Creates emotional dysregulation – makes us irritable, anxious, depressed, and harms social connections and overall well-being

Why This Long Blog About Stress?

A part of me wishes I’d known more about the causes and impacts of stress on my personal well-being in past years. I might have reprioritized and changed many life decisions.

My intention here is to pass on my learning and experience with you so that you may make a more informed decision about how you want to live your life.

What’s next? Read this if you’re looking for ways to de-stress.

If you benefited from this article, please consider sharing it with someone else.