When Adam lost control of the muscles in the left-hand side of his face thanks to Bell's palsy, he was told that stress may have made him more susceptible to the condition.
"That was a big signal to me to pay a little bit more attention to my stress levels," he tells ABC RN's This Working Life.
But as an employee in the professional services industry with a never-ending to-do list and several long-term projects on the go, Adam wasn't sure where to start.
He's not alone.
In 2015, the Australian Psychological Society's Stress and Wellbeing in Australia survey revealed 35 per cent of Australians reported a significant level of distress.
More recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said the COVID-19 pandemic has made the world an inherently more stressful place to exist, with social isolation, loneliness, fear of infection and death, and financial worries leading to unprecedented stress levels globally.
Unfortunately, it seems stress is difficult to escape. So is trying to reduce it the best option? Or should we be learning to address stress in a different way?
Stress can be good for you
Alison Earl is an author and trainer in mindset and resilience. She says, rather than trying to stress less, it's time we changed the way we think about it.
"Trying to eliminate stress and reduce it is actually really unrealistic when you break down how we live our lives."
Ms Earl has experienced what she calls "the dark side" of stress.
Six years ago, she was living in New York, working around the clock and running on adrenaline. Then she was diagnosed with proctitis, an inflammatory condition of the lower digestive system.
"I was told it would never go away," she says.
"The doctor said I needed to learn how to manage it, and the biggest thing I should do is reduce my stress."
Ms Earl says this advice wasn't very helpful.
She had a more positive relationship with stress in the past. As a young athlete, she'd used it to her advantage.
"Stress or pressure to perform was always something I really relished," she says.
So, in the face of her chronic health diagnosis, Ms Earl decided to harness a different way of thinking about her stress. "I re-engaged with the athlete mentality of how stress is useful and helpful," she says.
She says this mindset shift — of seeing stress as a positive — had a dramatic effect on her health and her life.
"My symptoms cleared up completely and I haven't experienced any in six years."
Dr Kari Leibowitz, a health psychologist from Stanford University who has conducted research into how changing your approach can improve your health and wellbeing, says mindset can be incredibly powerful.
"It creates this self-fulfilling prophecy," she says.
In essence, if you start thinking stress is good for you, it starts being good for you.
"People have fewer sick days, they perform better at work and have greater life satisfaction," Dr Leibowitz says.
She highlights the work of mindset expert Dr Alia Crum, who is the principal investigator at the Stanford Mind and Body Lab.
In a 2007 study, the researcher asked a group of hotel room attendants how much exercise they got in a week.
"Two thirds of them said that they didn't exercise regularly and one third said they got no exercise at all," Dr Leibowitz says.
"But if you think about it, hotel room attendants get a lot of exercise.
"They're on their feet all day, they're changing bed linens, they're scrubbing bathtubs, they're moving all day long."
So Dr Crum told half the attendants their work meant they were exercising and the amount they were doing exceeded the general recommendations for adults.
"Four weeks later, those room attendants not only liked their jobs more, but they also reported significant weight loss and had reduced blood pressure," Dr Leibowitz says.
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'What we care about the most'
Ms Earl says although many people accept that stress can help performance, they find it difficult to believe it's good for you. But changing the way we think about stress has a knock-on effect in the rest of the body, she says.
"It's not just about feeling better about it, research shows we also release different hormones in our body," Ms Earl says.
"So our body has a different physiological response to make it less harmful and more helpful."
Dr Leibowitz says one of the ways to help understand how stress can be good for you is to realise it can be a marker for the things we really care about.
"The most rewarding, fulfilling, meaningful parts of our lives are also the parts where we've experienced stress," she says, such as family and work.
But she acknowledges this can sometimes be hard to realise in the moment, particularly because of the physiological sensations we experience.
In these instances, Dr Leibowitz says it can be helpful to reframe your stress.
"There's a study showing that if you can get kids who are taking [exams] to reframe their stress as excitement, it helps them perform better."
She says it's worth observing your physical experience of stress, such as a faster heart rate and sweaty palms, and telling yourself you're excited – even if you're not.
"This can be a 'fake it 'til you make it' moment."
But Dr Leibowitz says sometimes pretending isn't possible. "Sometimes you're not thriving, you're not living your best life."
She believes many of us have understandably felt that way due to the pandemic.
Changing the way we manage stress
There's no doubt stress can be debilitating.
Burn-out was listed in the WHO's 2019 revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as an occupational phenomenon. It was defined as the result of chronic workplace stress that hasn't been successfully managed.
Dr Leibowitz says the focus of stress management needs to shift.
"So much of it is on reducing stress only, and not on building up other things that bring us joy and feed into our positive emotions," she says.
Ms Earl agrees, suggesting a two-minute energy-boosting activity five times a day — such as a breathing exercise, listening to a song or watching a funny video — can transform how you feel.
This can be particularly hard to do when we're feeling stressed.
But she says your brain's got it all wrong. "So much of the research shows that taking breaks makes us more creative and efficient and that fuelling our bodies helps us perform."
"So, for a week, do an experiment where every hour you force yourself to go and move around a little bit, and drink a glass of water and step outside for two minutes and breathe in the fresh air."
"At the end of the week, ask yourself a) how do you feel and b) how much less have you gotten done?"
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