You're sitting on the bus heading to work and you notice a suspicious person eying an elderly woman's purse. The next thing you know he's full on diving for the purse and has planned a quick getaway.
But Wait!
You Chuck Norris chop the door close and tackle the perp to the ground. You had no idea how it happened, but you did it without thinking. OK I get it, this is certainly an exaggeration and most likely will never happen in your lifetime. But biologically, this is why humans were meant to produce what we refer to as stress. It all starts with the hypothalamus, which then tells the adrenal medulla to release hormones like norepinephrine and epinephrine. These little guys open up our lungs and do other cool stuff to help us forget the pain for a short time and get things done in the short term. Another big player that is released is the hormone cortisol. Cortisol is a helpful hormone that increases our blood sugar during stress to provide additional energy as needed.
See? Cortisol isn't all bad now right?
Well..kind of. This "fight or flight" response is referred to as acute stress. Acute stress in healthy adults is perfectly acceptable as evolution so kindly intended. The problem is this response can last for days, months, and even years. This long term chronic stress has devastating effects on our bodies. The question then beckons as to how much stress is good and when is it bad?
Besides the obvious running away from a bad guy scene (Or woman, I mean have you seen "Misery?"), stress can also be used to help prep for an exam, play well in athletics, or complete a task at work. Stress that is manageable and that can be overcome actually builds mental toughness. (Seery et al., 2010). This toughness allows us to be masters of our craft and to be resiliency machines. Therefore, when bad stress does arrive at your door, you are more prepared. Researchers have shown that there may be a sweet spot for a good amount of stress. The study suggests that those who have had a medium amount of adversity in their life report not only better mental health than those with lots of adversity but also those with minimal to no adversity in their lives. We should be careful to completely replace the word adversity with stress, but these results are intriguing nonetheless. This this tells us there may be some kind of line we can draw for ourselves when performing introspection.
Where is the line?
One useful tool to gauge your stress level during the day is to simply ask yourself "How are you doing?" No really, "How are you doing?" Be sure to emphasize every single word in your mind as you say them. I think the key here is to ask yourself this question in third person because we just aren't used to asking ourselves in this manner how we are actually doing. How often do you take two seconds to sit back and seriously ask this question of yourself? Probably not every often. A simple check in can go a long way in identifying how high your stress level is and determining how long that level of stress has been persisting throughout your day. If your answer to this question indicates that you've had a particular stressful hour and you have resolved the stress inducing event (Meeting with a supervisor, an exam, a large social event), you are building mental toughness. If your answer dictates that a high level of stress has existed most of the day, that is an unhealthy response. Thus the battle line has been drawn and it's time to act. I wrote about a few quick and easy science back methods to reduce stress here.
It may also be useful to take a longer look at your level of stress using other tools. One such tool was developed by psychologist Dr.Grohol and can be found here. This should not be used as a diagnostic tool by any means but may harbor more insight into your own stress.
In essence, stress is a valuable tool that can be used to help us further our careers or schooling, but the line between acute healthy stress and chronic debilitating stress is incredibly thin. Everyone is different and that line will inevitably vary. So, I ask you "How are you doing?"
Reference: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20939649
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