No one gets a free pass when it comes to stress. We all experience it, and though chronic stress can take its toll on our health, there are situations when stress can be beneficial. Ever felt clammy palms or butterflies in your stomach? In the moments before you walk into a job interview, ask someone out on a date, or step up to a podium to speak to a crowd, your stress response can kick in and create these physical sensations.
Dan Harris, host of the podcast 10% Happier, recalls a case of the jitters before a recent TV appearance. He felt his heart rate pick up. “In the seconds before I went on I was pacing around,” he says, feeling nervous.
And the outcome? “The appearance went great.” Harris says he’s come to interpret some of the physiological aspects of stress as a good thing. “There’s an empowering inner jujitsu move,” he says, to reframe stress.
“Instead of telling yourself that you’re having crippling anxiety, you can tell yourself a more empowering story, which is, I’m excited!” he says. Your stress response can be your body’s way of preparing to rise to a challenge, explains Jeremy Jamieson , a psychologist at the University of Rochester. He studies how stress responses can be “optimized.
” “We’re not passive receivers of stress,” Jamieson explains. “We’re active agents in actually making our own stress response.” Jamieson says the stress we feel during challenging situations can give us fuel to address the demands we face.
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