Bad Stress, Good Stress: How Knowing the Difference Can Help You Live Longer

In today’s environment, knowing how to cope effectively with stress is more important than ever. Much of the early research on human responses to stress focused on the ill effects of various major life events, such as divorce, a death in the family, or losing your job (Holmes & Rahe, 1967). We hear a lot about the negative effects or the results of “bad stress.”

New research, however, is teaching us that not all stress is necessarily bad. One major study, reported in 2012, comes from data collected over a dozen years earlier. Nearly 186 million adults participated in a U.S. National Health Interview in which they were asked dozens of questions about their habits and how they coped with life. These data were later linked to the National Death Index to see if there were any relationships between people’s habits and how long they actually lived. While there are many different causes of death, it was thought that by mining such a large database we could at least provide some clues and perhaps connections between people’s lifestyles and their longevity.

It may not be that surprising to learn that 55% of the participants reported experiencing moderate to high levels of stress during the year they were interviewed. If we look at many of the people around us, both at work and in our social and family lives, we’d probably come up with a similar finding. Upon further probing, the researchers discovered that 34% described how this stress had negatively affected their health to some extent during that time. So, while over half of the people surveyed were experiencing high levels of stress, only about a third of them felt it was negatively affecting their health in some way.

Later on, the researchers did a follow-up, examining death records and matching them to the people who were interviewed. They made a surprising discovery. Of the people who reported high stress levels, those that said the stress negatively affected their health had a 43% greater chance of premature death. In other words, people who interpret their stress as not having a negative impact on their lives have a better chance of living longer. These researchers went on to find a relationship between people’s coping styles with stress and how long they lived, supporting the idea that it’s not the stress itself that’s bad, but how we manage the stress that’s important.

In the words of the study authors, “Stress appraisal plays an important role in determining health outcomes. These findings also suggest that perceived stress and beliefs about the impact of stress on health might work synergistically to increase risk for premature mortality” (Keller, Litzelman, Wisk, Creswell, & Will, 2012).

Many other studies have shown that major stressful events can lead to all kinds of serious illness, from heart disease to cancer. But it’s not just the experience of stressful events. Rather, it’s how we appraise or think about these events that seems to matter most. For example, a recent study of California women found that those who perceived prior life events as more stressful were at greater risk for breast cancer, as compared to women who experienced the same events but perceived them as less stressful (Fischer, Ziogas, & Anton-Culver, 2018). As the study authors say, “Perception matters.”

It’s a curious fact that people often respond very differently to the same challenging conditions in life.

People Are Resistant or Resilient to Stress

Our colleague Cathy, whom we referred to earlier, reacted quite differently to a situation quite similar to Belinda’s. Cathy, who is very self-confident, likes challenges, yet she still manages to stay in touch with reality. She knows that not all problems are solvable. Perhaps the flight was cancelled, and there was no way to make it for the meeting. While Belinda might blame herself for failing, Cathy would look for alternatives, perhaps a virtual meeting, or try to reschedule.

Cathy also reviewed the experience, looking for lessons she could learn from it to improve on the next time she faced a similar situation. For example, she would check the weather the night before. She might arrange in advance for someone else to take the kids to school. She might even leave a day early to make sure weather or other factors didn’t prevent her from getting to the meeting. She realizes that everyone fails sometimes, but it’s what you do with the failure, how you process it, that makes the difference.

Fight or Flight: Our Immediate Response

What happens to your body when you go into stress mode? Imagine one of your ancestors walking into the jungle and suddenly coming across a lion moving in the opposite direction. The sight of the large beast, and perhaps the slightest eye contact, would most likely send an immediate shock to his system.

When the shock first hits, he experiences an acute stress, which triggers his body’s hormones to activate his sympathetic nervous system. Suddenly his adrenal glands release catecholamines, including adrenaline and noradrenaline. This leads to an increase in his heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rate. His fast heartbeat and breathing help give his body energy to respond. His skin becomes flushed or pale as the blood flow to the surface of his body is decreased so it can go to his muscles, legs, arms, and his brain. As the blood rushes to his brain, his face starts to alternate between pale and flushed. His blood-clotting ability also increases in case he receives any injury that involves blood loss.

At the same time as all of this, your ancestor’s body is preparing to be more aware and observant of his surroundings—so he can decide which is the safest way to run. His pupils dilate, allowing more light into his eyes and giving him better vision of his surroundings. His body also immediately starts to tremble or shake, which is the response of his muscles tensing up and being primed for action.

This sudden shock he is experiencing was named the “flight or fight” response by American physiologist Walter Cannon (Cannon, 1915). The idea here is that the shock prepares us physiologically and mentally, as described above, to either flee quickly or stand up to the threat and take immediate action against it—usually physically. Hence, the “fight” or “flight.” Alternatively, it was referred to as the first phase of the general adaptation syndrome (GAS) by the previously mentioned physiologist Hans Selye. Once the threat is gone, it may take between 20 and 60 minutes for the body to return to its prearousal levels.

It’s this system that has largely allowed us to avoid predators and survive as a species. However, the challenges our ancestors experienced have significantly changed in today’s world. It’s only our response to these challenges that has largely remained the same.

Stress’s Long-Term Effects on Health

Stress, especially when negatively perceived, and chronic, has additional effects on our bodies. The same effects we see in acute stress, such as increased heart rate and blood pressure, over longer periods of time, can produce a chronic wear and tear on the cardiovascular system that can result in disorders such as stroke and heart attacks.

Other effects of being “stressed out” include changes in behavior that have been found to be detrimental to health. These include poor sleep, eating or drinking too much, smoking, drug use, and lack of physical activity (McEwen, 2008). All of these can have direct and indirect effects on your ability to live a long and satisfying life.

Positive Ways to Handle Stress

In this book we’ll be exploring positive approaches that people have successfully used to handle the stressful situations in their lives. Some of the techniques we present are well documented in scientific research journals. Others have been developed, used, and modified through our collective work across different environments. Our experience includes people from all walks of life and spans military personnel, students, corporate executives, various workplaces (nonprofit, for-profit, government), lawyers, entertainers, athletes (professional, Olympic, and amateur), managers, frontline workers, leaders, homeless people, and homemakers.

Hardiness and Commitment

People high in hardiness-commitment see life as overall meaningful and worthwhile, even though it sometimes brings pain and disappointment. Hardiness-commitment also includes a striving for personal competence as first described by the Harvard psychologist Robert White (White, 1959). The sense of competence aids the person in making realistic appraisals of novel and stressful situations, and generates increased self-confidence that one can handle adversity.

To be high in commitment means looking at the world as interesting and useful, even when things are difficult. These kinds of people pursue their interests with vigor, are deeply involved with their work, and are socially engaged with other people. They are also reflective about themselves and aware of their own feelings and reactions.

Low commitment people are often bored and don’t find much meaning in life. They go to school or work or are unemployed with no real game plan or idea of where they want to be in the future. They tend to be unreflective and disengaged, not much interested in their work, themselves, or other people in general. When presented with a challenge, those low in commitment tend to give up easily. Figure 1.1 gives you some examples of how people with different levels of hardiness relate to commitment.

Hardiness and Challenge

People high in hardiness have a strong sense of challenge: they enjoy variety and tend to see change and disruptions in life as interesting opportunities to learn and grow. They understand that problems are a part of life, and they set out to solve them, rather than run away from them. For these people, taking on new challenges is an interesting way to learn about themselves and their own capabilities, while also learning about the world.

In contrast, those low in challenge prefer stability and predictability in their lives and tend to avoid new and changing situations. They may be highly reliable, but are not very adaptable when conditions change. Figure 1.2 illustrates how people with different levels of hardiness typically respond to challenges.

Hardiness-challenge involves an appreciation for variety and change, and a desire to learn and grow by trying out new things. The main theoretical influences come from work by Fiske and Maddi on the importance of variety in experience (Fiske & Maddi, 1961), and Maddi’s ideas on active engagement in the world (Maddi, 1967). Maddi used the term “ideal identity” to describe the person who lives a vigorous and proactive life, with a desire for variety and new experiences. These people are courageous in choosing to look forward and take action, despite the fact that future outcomes are always uncertain. At the other end of the spectrum is the “existential neurotic,” who shies away from change and always seeks security and predictability in the old and familiar.

Hardiness and Control

Control is simply the belief that your own actions make a real difference in the results that follow, that what you do has effects on outcomes. In contrast, people low in hardiness-control generally feel powerless to control or influence events in their lives (see Figure 1.3).

The control facet of hardiness also derives from existential theory. According to Maddi (1989), the core tendency in existential personality theory is “striving for authentic being,” which involves an honest acceptance of yourself and the world around you, and a willingness to make choices and take responsibility for those choices. The authentic (hardy) person regularly chooses the path of engagement and active involvement in the world, instead of the relative safety of passive withdrawal and inaction.

High-hardy persons are authentic in this sense, seeing themselves as being in charge of their own destinies, even though the future is always somewhat uncertain and frightening. Being in control is well known to lower the effects of stressful conditions. For example, experimental studies have found that when subjects are given control over aversive stimuli such as electric shocks, the stress effects are reduced, as compared to subjects who have no control (Averill, 1973; Seligman, 1975).

In the chapters that follow, we’ll cover each of these facets in more detail and show how you can develop your strengths in each of these areas. We’ll also give examples on how important these facets have been in both successful and unsuccessful attempts to deal with stress in people’s lives. Some of the examples we describe will be of real people you might be familiar with. Other examples will be composites of real-life people and interesting situations that we, the authors, have come across in our work. So let’s get started!