Stress, can it be good?

By Jessica Jordan, MS, OTR/L

What is the Stress Enhancing Mindset?

The stress mindset refers to how we think about stress. The stress mindset can be an additional variable that influences the stress response.

The stress mindset is proposed to be an additional variable that influences the stress response (distinct from other stress-inducing variables such as the amount and severity of stress one is experiencing and one’s coping style). The stress mindset refers to the attributes and expectations ascribed to stress whether one is stressed or not; coping refers to the process of appraising threat and mobilizing cognitive and actionable resources to combat that stress when it does occur. AKA the stress mindset is how we perceive stress and coping is how we handle the stress.

How Can it Help Us?

How you think about stress impacts the stress response in profound ways! An individual’s cognitive understanding of stress can impact the physiology or body to either be enhanced by stress or impaired by the stress. In one study, individuals who learned how stress can enhance health and performance increased their performance on easy tasks, and made significant improvements on tasks considered to be hard! So in conclusion, stress is neither good or bad. It really depends on how you believe these sensations of stress (increased heart rate, narrowed vision, etc.) are effecting your personal performance.

As an OT this is crucial in the work that we do with the neurodivergent populations, specifically motor coaching and/or any activities where we encourage the individuals we support to embrace the challenge. If the understanding that stress can be enhancing is present, those intentional motor exercises and activities can help to rewire existing motor pathways and create more purposeful motor that the individual can tap into, even when things get hard or the body becomes dysregulated. We know stress doesn’t feel good, but knowing that it can be helpful can allow us to take that heightened awareness and fine tune it to the areas where we want to improve our performance.

What are your beliefs and thoughts around stress?