Are We All Really Getting More Stressed?

Modern life’s pressures can feel like they are increasing, but science reveals that it’s the nature of the stress we suffer today, rather than the amount, that has changed.

Before the 1940s, the only people who talked about “stress” were engineers describing whether the struts of a bridge would hold up. Today, “stress” is a vague catchall term for all of the many challenges you might face in life: you may have stress at home, be stressed out by work, and the anxiety you feel around hospitals or before exams can be “stressful.” If you believe the headlines, the world is the most stressed out it’s ever been—and we are fretting our way into an early grave.

Pick up any stress-management book or tap into a healthy-living website and you will encounter the classic stress story that we all undergo the “fight-or-flight” survival response and its accompanying deluge of hormones when stressed. However, the body is far more sophisticated than we give it credit for. No two “stresses” are the same: being punched in the gut triggers a different biological response to the turmoil of a feud with a neighbor or the worry over a delayed paycheck. Each demand (or “stressor”) placed on you has its own survival response.

Different kinds of stress cause the body’s defensive systems to react in different ways; for example, a brief stress response triggers helpful infection-fighting chemicals, whereas longer-term trauma can cause virus-attacking white blood cells to stop multiplying. Your responses also vary with age, past experiences, general health, and any medical conditions. You undergo the most drastic fight-or-flight responses only if you’re threatened or physically injured.

“Stress” has become such a fuzzy term, it’s no wonder we think there’s more of it in the world. While it can be a useful way to understand our responses to mental and physical challenges, labeling every negative experience as “stress” risks impoverishing our experience of the richness of what it is to be human.

n Double-tap image to read the labels

the many faces of stress

This chart sets out the different types of stress, characterized in terms of how they affect us and how long they last.