What even is stress?
Stress is a core response of the body to a demanding or dangerous situation. It gets your heart rate up, sends more blood to your muscles, makes it easier to focus and can even make you feel less pain and tiredness in the moment. That’s incredibly useful when something actually threatens you.
This was perfect when our lives were more primitive and real physical danger was a daily thing.
But today, in an age where a lot of our stress comes from screens, messages, deadlines and social pressure, the way our body reacts isn’t really appropriated anymore. Your brain still treats an angry email a bit like a wild animal.
A certain amount of stress can actually help. It can boost your motivation, help you focus and push you to work in a more productive manner. That short-term “good stress” is what gets you to study, work, react quickly and take action when it matters.
But if your stress level stays too high for too long, that’s when it turns into chronic stress. This is where it gets bad. Your body stays tense, your sleep and recovery suffer, and tiredness starts to pile up. It becomes very easy to get stuck in a stress loop: you’re stressed, so you rest badly, so you have less energy, so everything feels more stressful.
The goal of managing stress is finding the balance that works for you. Stress is kinda overpowered, and it’s our job to nerf it just enough so it helps more than it hurts. Your physical and mental health should always be your number one priority in life.