Is Stress Really What We Think?

Hans Selye, the Hungarian Canadian endocrinologist who’s often hailed as the father of stress, later had serious second thoughts about his choice of terminology. He felt the term "stress" was too muddled, blending cause and effect, stimulus and response under one confusing umbrella. But the concept took off and morphed into a negative buzzword that now fuels a billion-dollar industry dedicated to outplaying, outlasting, and outsmarting stress.

Selye’s provocative remark, “The opposite of stress is death,” suggests that stress is an inherent part of life’s adaptations. Our heartbeat, muscle responses, digestion, and even breathing are all forms of stress when we consider the biological perspective. In essence, stress is just life in action; zero response means we’re dead.

So, is stress real, then? Or is it a boogeyman created by pop culture?

Recent scientific studies have investigated the concept of stress arousal reappraisal—fancy language for rethinking your stress. They demonstrate that with a few simple tweaks in how we perceive stress, we can dramatically boost our performance under pressure. To do this, we must see stress differently.

See things as a threat and you will respond in a threatened manner.

But what if you were able to perceive the circumstance as a challenge instead? Or better yet, an adventure? In that case, your physical and mental response would be very different. The entire experience shifts with one word, revealing that stress might be an optical illusion after all.

Try this next time you find yourself in a stress cycle: immediately stop referring to the problem as a “problem” and use the word adventure or challenge instead. Go all in on it and see what happens.

Our interpretations of the world precipitate our responses. Developing flexibility in this area, or at least maintaining awareness of when we have automatically slipped into a stressful reaction, is key. The narratives we tell about events and people in our life are more than stories. They are predictive mechanisms we act out.

All it takes is one powerful word to change how we interact with stress and finally kick our dependency on its drama to the curb.