Are you stressed? Or stressed out?

It just might be time to rethink your view about stress.

It isn’t always a bad thing. Stress, we’re now learning, is part of our body’s survival system, a motivational force that helps us grow and accomplish tasks. Some researchers, in fact, maintain that it also strengthens our immune system and boosts memory.

So let’s abandon the notion that it’s always toxic. Let’s start distinguishing between good stress (known as “eustress”) and bad stress, and who better to help us change our mindset than Stanford professor Kelly McGonigal. She’s author of “The Upside of Stress” and holds degrees in psychology and humanistic medicine. Said McGonigal in an interview with goop.com:
“The most basic [notion] that’s faulty is the premise that there’s only one stress response, and that every time you experience stress you’re in a toxic state. That’s fundamentally not true. The body has a whole repertoire of stress responses. Sometimes when we experience stress we’re experiencing a state that is healthy, that makes us resilient, that makes us more caring and connected, that makes us more courageous. The experience might be physically similar in some ways to stress states that we would describe as debilitating anxiety or other negative stress states, but they are not toxic. There are a lot of different ways to experience stress.”
Stress, of course, is a neutral term (much like the word “diet” which now is associated solely with losing weight), defined by Hans Selye in 1936 as a “non-specific response of the body to any demand for change.” But over the years, McGonigal points out, it has come to be associated with “almost everything that defines what it means to be human.” Adds the Institute of Stress (yes, there is one, in Fort Worth, Texas): “Stress is not a useful term for scientists because it is such a highly subjective phenomenon.”

Harnessing Eustress
Villanova University’s Division of Student Life offers a series of solid tips for managing stress. They define stress as “the body’s way of rising to a challenge and preparing to meet a tough situation with focus, strength, stamina, and heightened alertness.” Their seven tips (which, though geared to students, might help all of us) are: 1. Avoid overscheduling, 2. Be realistic – don’t try to be perfect, no one is, 3. Get a good night’s sleep, 4. Learn to relax, 5. Treat your body well, 6. Watch what you’re thinking, and 7. Solve the little problems – learning to solve everyday problems can give you a sense of control.”
Kimberly Snyder adds five additional tips, four common ones and one that is somewhat unique: acceptance, breathe, meditate, exercise and volunteer (apparently, they’re strong research to support to notion that volunteering counteracts negative stress).

Stress and Decision Making
And how does stress affect your decision-making process? There are two major findings, according to a research study published by the National Institutes of Health, and authored by Mara Mather and Nicole Lighthall (the research was titled “Both Risk and Reward are Processed Differently in Decisions Made Under Stress”):

1. Positive vs. Negative Outcomes – When we’re feeling stressed (probably the bad kind), we tend to overemphasize the positive outcomes and minimize the negative outcomes (the authors maintain that this is “possibly due to stress-induced changes in dopamine in reward-processing brain regions”); and

2. Risky Decisions, Male vs. Female – Explained the authors: “Stress alters decision strategies – but in opposite ways for men versus women . . . Stress amplifies gender differences in strategies during risky decisions, with males taking more risk and females less risk under stress.”

Steve Ferber is author of “21 Rules to Live By.”