Stress: some is good, some is bad. How can we ease up on the bad kind?

Not all stress is bad for us. Some of it has a purpose that keeps us safe, even alive. That’s the good kind. Then there’s the bad kind: the stuff that’s slowly killing us. However, there are a few things we can all do to ease it.

Stress: the good kind

Good stress is the acute kind. It came in handy for cave-dwellers when faced with a sabre-toothed tiger and it comes in handy when we jump out the way of an object we don’t want to hit us. Think every reflex action. We survive because of it. It’s quick-acting and it’s over in a second or less. 

There’s also another kind of acute stress that takes a bit longer and it’s when we call upon it to complete some task or resolve some very short-term problem. I remember back in the 1990s before the world of printing went digital and I was working at a newspaper that had a tight and specific deadline. The page layouts had to be at the printers and the taxi was booked for 6pm to get me there. The editorial team and I were often running right up against that deadline writing and rewriting stories, adding last-minute news and the clock was ticking. Were we stressed? You bet, but we worked collaboratively and often with smiles on our faces, marvelling at how good we were as a team. And as I jumped into the taxi, a sense of relief came over me, knowing we’d made it. That stress brought out creativity in spades, some quite fancy problem-solving and fortunately plenty of humour. My capacity for problem-solving and flexibility derives from that experience. More about that a bit further down.

That’s the good kind. Acute, always short-lived.

Now the bad stress

This is the chronic kind. It’s long-term, which if not dealt with becomes dangerous, even life-threatening. Chronic stress can result from high expectations at work, whether you’re a worker or the boss and anyone in between, whether in government, business, any position of power, in fact. There’s stress through family obligations, for example, parents raising children, especially one after the other and both parents holding down jobs to pay the mortgage; the challenges a single parent faces; and the mixed feelings of caregivers. There’s also the expectations from the public and corporates that artists and musicians face; and similarly for sporting people, be they player or coach. Just a few off the top of my head. There would be others. The point is the stress becomes difficult to manage and it’s ongoing; it’s longer-term.

A more recent example of chronic stress comes with the advent of social media: the constant checking of messages and reactions to posts, wading through the endless reels. Scrolling the feed the algorithms insist are especially ’suggested for you’ — and the inevitable doom scrolling that follows — are added sucks of time, contributing to that feeling there’s not enough time to fit everything in. And if we don’t keep scrolling we’ll miss out on something. Those social media companies want your eyeballs glued to the flicker in the palm of your hand. They want the conflict that often arises because the longer your fixation, the more likely you’ll see and maybe engage with the ads. (It used to be the flicker from the box in the corner of the lounge room that grabbed our eyeballs, now you carry that flicker with you everywhere.)

There are a few things we can do about it.

1 First figure out if you have a problem with chronic stress. 

That requires regular self-checking. You have to have the conversation with yourself, which means self-reflecting and developing your internal dialogue. That comes with getting out and about, away from your devices. Offline, real world situations can help you reflect on how you’re going. So, ask yourself that: how am I doing? This is especially apt after work, hanging out with a friend or friends. It’s like keeping a journal, as many do these days. You just have a conversation with yourself — in your head or it can be out loud in private. Sometimes we need to hear ourselves say what we think or feel inside. Practice it enough and you can get good at self-checking.

2 Recognise risk factors, protect yourself. 

This is on at least two levels. The most obvious is your physical and mental health: How’s your sleep? Do you have enough time to be active, to get out in the air, in nature? Enough time to relax, meditate if you do? Or just to daydream? To pursue your hobbies? Or some creativity? The other risk factor is burnout. Are you short with people, always in a rush, can’t fit everything in? This is part of self-checking. Monitoring your everyday wellbeing, for example, how work is affecting you.

3 Problem solve. 

Once you’ve figured out if there’s a problem, you can ask, for example, do I need to change what I’m doing at work or wherever? Ask for more time off, take holidays on time (no putting them off for the sake of others!)? Change work practices? Go part-time? Achieve a better a work-play balance? More working from home? Change jobs? Retrain for something else? In other words, identify the problem and take the next steps to deal with it. It’s part of being proactive. Don’t wait til the whole show comes crashing down around you and you get sick or chronically ill even. Get ahead of it.

4 When problem-solving, be flexible. 

You may not always get exactly what you want so you might have to have a fall-back position. However, you can still be proactive by having a fall-back that at least gets you part way there. You’re still in charge. Compromise isn’t necessarily win-lose, with you being the loser. Get comfortable with not getting exactly what you want. We can live to try another day. Keep that in mind, don’t lose sight of the goal and look for future opportunities to get you further along the way.

5 Develop healthier social media (SM) habits — if only because online occupies so much of people’s time nowadays.

For example, post way less about your personal life. Most people only ever post the good stuff anyway, which can create the impression that everyone is at the top of their game all the time and no one’s ever sad, lonely or depressed. We know that can’t be true. Otherwise the world would be vastly different! Everyone’s not doing well all the time. My personal approach is I don’t have a SM profile under my real name and I don’t post anything. I don’t feel compelled to tell the world about anything I’m doing. The closest I come to that is in my blogging where I will share my thoughts and personal observations, perhaps as infrequently as once a month. I am completely in charge there. I’m not particularly attention-seeking. Elsewhere, I might participate in some online debates in my local media; that’s a carryon from my lifelong activism. Again, pro-active. I mainly use SM to find out when musicians I like release new music or are performing. And for the comedy. Just a few minutes. Fortunately, laughter is healthy. That’s good to share in modest doses.

I’m not saying don’t post on social media altogether if that’s your outlet. Just limit it. Not every day, for goodness sake — literally. When you’re writing longform, as in this blog, it takes more than a few minutes! You wouldn’t want to do it every day. Perhaps post once a week or better still, when you’re compelled to say exactly what’s on your mind. Hopefully it will be something your readers will want to read. Doing it less frequently is good for you — and them!

As well, when we stop posting so much personal stuff to the world and actually spend time communicating personally with our in-real-life friends we will invariably have better one-on-one relationships. No one has 574 friends on Facebook or Instagram or anywhere else. We just don’t. If you have ten friends you see regularly you’re doing really well! Pre-SM, that’s who we used to share our personal lives with.

The upshot is get in charge of what you do online, otherwise it will consume you, rewire you. That rewiring has already happened for some. For example, many young adults are so unfamiliar with how to communicate with the world at large — they can text alright — that they want a parent to accompany them to job interviews and go to bat for them while at work. Don’t believe me? Check this out.

6 Last but not least, maintain youthful curiosity. 

This is a personal fave of mine. Some might see it as unrelated, but I don’t. To me, it’s the wellspring to discovering more of the world around us, and therein lies solutions to problems. Observe. Take your time. Daydream. Ponder. Explore. Be curious about anything and everything. We all did it as kids. You have to make the time for it, though. It’s individualised, there’s no one-size-fits-all. Best if you make it up as you go. Even if you set aside ten minutes a day to ‘goof off’, that’s a start. And do it off-line . . . please.

NOTE The image above? Yep, AI-generated, but it took several goes at refining the text. AI is getting better; it still generates some doozy images that don’t work, but this one nails it.