What is stress?
Have you ever stopped to think about what stress actually is? It’s become more and more of a key term used on social media or news headlines, like: “Top 5 ways to de-stress through self-care”. But, what does that actually mean?
Scientifically speaking, stress is the body’s response to any mental, emotional or physical disturbance.
Is stress always a bad thing?
The simple answer is no. Stress can actually be something useful, that catches your attention and helps you problem solve, in the moment. What’s important here, is that, to be useful, the stress response has to be temporary.
Imagine, you have a big presentation at work Friday morning. It’s Tuesday afternoon and you start feeling stressed that your slide deck isn’t complete yet. Your heart rate increases thinking about the presentation, your palms are sweaty and your body is releasing stress hormones. You take a deep breath and your feelings of stress give you the motivation you need to buckle down and complete the slide deck over the next 2 hours. When you finish, you feel relieved and accomplished, ready to practice the presentation.
This is called a “positive stress response” because the temporary stress, helped you focus your attention and take action. Furthermore, you were able to complete the stress response and return to a normal, calm state.
What if the stress isn’t positive, but isn’t extreme either?
Some situations that cause a stress response are more serious than a presentation at work. This is a kind of situation that is pretty serious, but can still be overcome with the support of others and being equipped with the right tools.
Imagine, you’re at your Sunday night soccer league game, you receive a pass from a teammate. You’re running toward the net, about to score, when a player on the other team comes at you, viciously grabbing the ball and tripping you. You sprain your ankle. In the moment, you might experience a huge stress response that includes crying, high heart rate, sweaty palms and increased body temperature. This situation is more stressful than the work presentation—it lasts longer, is physically painful, but it is still temporary in the grand scheme of things.
Injuries like this, usually elicit what is known as the “tolerable stress response”. With the help and support of your partner and friends, you are able to rearrange child drop-off, off-load home tasks and overcome this stressful situation eventually turning down the stress response, returning to a normal, calm state.
What about chronically stressful situations?
Chronic, unmanaged, intense situations like recurrent financial strain, domestic violence, unrelenting health problems and traumatic events can lead to a “toxic stress response”. In these situations, the stress response is always active, individuals may experience chronically high heart rate, high levels of stress hormones and they are always on high-alert. In these situations, the stress response never really ends and the individual is not able to return to a normal, calm state because the stressor, doesn’t end.
Toxic stress can have long-lasting effects on the body and brain, however, there are ways to improve and reverse the effects, it just takes work, support and lifestyle changes.
How can stress be managed?
Regardless of the type of stress you may be experiencing, there are healthy coping mechanisms that can be adopted to help mediate the negative effects of stress.
- There is a growing body of evidence that encourages the implementation of mindfulness practices. When your thoughts keep thinking of the future (which leads to stress), practicing mindfulness allows you to bring your thoughts back to the present moment. Read more here.
- Improve your emotion regulation skills so you are better prepared to manage your emotions in stressful situations. You can learn more here. If you need help building your toolkit, join our Reflective Parenting Club here.
- Make lifestyle changes if you can, seek support to leave situations that expose your to toxic stress such as domestic violence. Here are resources for Canada and USA, or globally.
Take a moment to reflect on what you just learned by listening to this audio:
To learn more about the toxic stress response in children and how to help them through it, read the next Curious Neuron article in this series, where we have a Q&A with expert Dr. Nicole Letourneau.
