Stress and the appraisal process
There’s no getting around it, life is often stressful. So, it’s useful to understand stress. We all kind of understand what stress is at some level, but what is it exactly? Stress is a psychological and physiological reaction to a perceived threat or demand. Stress occurs when you think the demands of dealing with an interaction between you and your environment exceed your resources, and therefore has the potential to affect your well-being.
Here’s how it plays out. You’re out in the world and you experience some stimulus. You mentally appraise that stimulus to see if it has potential implications for your well-being. You do this by evaluating whether you have enough available mental and emotional resources to deal with the interaction. Let me give you an example. Suppose that your boss talks to you about taking on a big, important project. The interaction with your boss is what we can call a stressor. When you encounter a stressor, your brain goes into evaluation mode and you try to figure out two things. First, you try to figure out whether there are any implications for your well-being. This is called the primary appraisal. This appraisal can have three outcomes, you think the stressor is a threat, a challenge, or something that you can ignore. Then you go through a secondary appraisal that evaluates whether you have the resources available to cope with the stressor.
After this appraisal process, you use coping strategies to try to manage the stressor. Coping is a pretty complicated topic, so we’ll save that for another episode. Today, I want to point out the importance of the appraisal process. We’ll put aside the “something you can ignore” outcome and talk about the two other possibilities, the situation poses a threat or a challenge. A threat is just what it sounds like. You see the situation as being a danger to your well-being. A challenge appraisal isn’t as obvious though. When you appraise a situation as being a challenge, you think that it has the potential to enhance your well-being.
Good stress and bad stress
But what makes you evaluate the new project as a threat and/or challenge? It comes down to whether you think you have the resources to cope with the demands of the new assignment. Demands can take many different forms. There can be time demands, workload demands, family demands, emotional demands, skill demands, social demands, the list goes on and on. You mentally go through the list of possible demands, then weigh them against your resources. Resources can be related to the job, such as the amount of autonomy you’ll have, or the support you can get from your boss, or they can be personal, such as your skill set or your resilience. If you think the demands exceed your resources, you’ll experience some form of stress.
This is where it gets really interesting. Even if you think the demands of the new project exceed your resources, you might not view this as a bad thing. A few months ago, I did an episode on one of my favorite sayings, “Comfort is the enemy.” The main message was that if you always stay in your comfort zone, you won’t grow. The same thinking applies here. You might see the new project as a way to grow your skill set, enhance your reputation, learn new methods and concepts … there can be all sorts of beneficial things that come out of a stressful situation.
So, it turns out that there are two kinds of stress. Distress, or bad stress, is stress that harms your well-being. Eustress (spelled E U S T R E S S) is good stress, stress that can enhance your well-being in the long run. When you think a stressful situation is going to reduce your well-being you see it as a threat and you experience distress. When you see the situation as a challenge that can increase your well-being, you experience eustress. Distress is characterized by experiencing negative emotions like fear, anger, and anxiety, while eustress brings about positive emotions, such as joy, and happiness. Eustress can bring about many benefits, including increases in productivity and performance, greater resilience and improved adaptability, among others.
So, how would you appraise being assigned a big new project? Would you see it as a threat or a challenge? That’s a bit of a trick question; you might see it as both. Something like an important new work project might lead to improved well-being, and at the same time might be bad for your well-being. You might imagine the potential career or financial gains, the opportunity to improve your skills, all sorts of good things. But it might also mean longer hours of work, less time with family and friends, and risks if the project doesn’t go well. It’s really pretty common to simultaneously experience distress and eustress. If you stop and think back, I’ll bet you’ve experienced both from the same stressor lots of times. First dates are a good example. They’re exciting but can also bring about anxiety.
Distress might come in if you're worried about making a good first impression, running out of things to talk about, or experiencing awkward silences. So, you might feel self-conscious, anxious or overwhelmed. (Why are we never just “whelmed?”)
On the other hand, you might view the date as an exciting opportunity to connect with someone awesome, share new experiences and learn about someone interesting. If so, you might feel excited and happy.
Although you might experience both distress and eustress from the anticipation of a first date, which one dominates is really a matter of how you view it. If you remind yourself of all of the wonderful possibilities, your feelings of eustress will dominate distress. If all you can think about is “What if I spill my drink?” or other negative possibilities, distress wins. There’s a critical message here. The event is objectively the same in either case. It’s your mindset, your opinion that determines which form of stress wins.
Reframing to achieve eustress
Therein lies the secret to turning stressful situations into something positive. Remember Epictetus’ wise words, “It’s not things that upset us, but our judgments about things.” Believe it or not, you have the ability to reframe many very stressful situations from threats to challenges, from bad stress to good stress. Let’s talk about cognitive reframing, changing our opinion of some situation. We'll stick with the example of the first date because it's kind of interesting and a little bit fun I guess.
So you're ready for your big date and you get that hollow feeling in the pit of your stomach. That’s pretty natural. You might start thinking, What if I can’t come up with something to talk about? What if I drop my fork or get spaghetti sauce on my shirt? (Why would you order spaghetti on a first date?) What if they think my job is stupid? WHat if they're a Cubs fan? (Sorry, just kidding Cubs fans, I’m sure you’re great people.)
But you can shift your thoughts to all of the great possibilities. They’ll be really fun and interesting. We’ll have a ton of great stuff to talk about. I’ll bet they’ll be very nice. We’ll get along great. They’re probably a huge Cardinals fan. These are all pretty much at least as likely as the negative possibilities. So, choose to focus on the potential good outcomes and end up having a great time.
Yeah, yeah, I know, easier said than done. But I want you to listen very carefully to this next part. …….. You really DO have the ability to reframe stressful situations so that you experience eustress instead of distress. Sure, it will take some effort, but it seems pretty worthwhile to me.
So, how can you actually move a stressful situation to eustress? Surprise surprise, I have some ideas. I’m going to use the new project example to explain.
The first step is to acknowledge your feelings. It’s perfectly natural to experience some anxiety and discomfort in a stressful situation. It’s going to happen. Such feelings are a natural reaction to a challenging situation like taking on a big project.
The next step is to identify negative thoughts and feelings. WHat thoughts are triggering the negative feelings? To overcome these thoughts, you need to know that they exist. You might think “I don’t have the skills for this.” or “There’s no way I can deal with this much work.”
Then challenge those negative thoughts. As podcast guru Dave Jackson says, “You’ve done hard things before.” Think about all the times you’ve done hard things, learned new skills and techniques, and managed heavy workloads. Use your ability to reason to develop evidence to counter the negative thoughts by drawing on your experiences and your abilities.
Focus on your strengths and resources. IDentify the skills, knowledge, people, and resources you can draw on to handle the demands of the new project. Remind yourself of your past accomplishments and of your capabilities. THis will help boost your confidence in your ability to take on the challenge of the new project. Remember that your personal network is a huge resource when taking on challenging tasks. You have lots of colleagues and friends you can call on to give you guidance and assistance; they’d love to help you.
Finally, remind yourself that the project represents a huge opportunity for growth. Embrace the challenge as a chance to develop new skills, expand your expertise, build resilience, and enhance your network. Think about all of the great benefits leading the project will bring. Be sure to engage in a little “second order thinking.” The growth that comes from the new project will let you take on even bigger projects in the future, which will bring further growth, leading to bigger projects and so on.
OK, let’s move on to three things you can do this week to build your ability to see stressful situations as stimulating opportunities for growth.
Three things
First, when you’re in a stressful situation, accept that stress is a natural part of life. The initial experience of stress is pretty much an automatic reaction. The trick is learning how to cope with the stress. Reframing is one approach, but there are others, which I’ll talk about in later episodes.
Second, remind yourself that some things are beyond your control. When you’re in a stressful situation, sometimes the first thing to do is to accept that the extent of your control is limited. Then turn your mind to what you can control. When you’re facing a really stressful situation, it’s easy to get caught up in all the things that are beyond your control. You can’t do anything about those, so focus on what you can control. You might find it useful to actually make a list. So, if you’re feeling stressed about something this week, stop, take a few deep breaths and write down a list of four or five things you can control. Remember that you can always control your opinion of the situation, but there are usually other things you can do as well.
Finally, make an investment and start building your resilience resources. These are resources that you can draw on to not only get through future stressful times, but to actually grow from them. For example, you might have strong emotional intelligence, or maybe you’re good at calming yourself and others, or you’re good at coming up with creative solutions.You likely have more such resources than you recognize. One good way to start building your list is to reflect on past challenges and what helped you get through them. THis week, take ten or fifteen minutes and actually write these down. Then, later, when you’re feeling stressed, review the list to remind yourself of the resources available to you. I’ll talk more about building a resilience inventory in a later episode.
Closing
Well, that’s enough for now. Our closing quote is often misattributed to Albert Einstein, but actually comes from physicist John Archibald Wheeler: “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” The next time you’re in a difficult situation, try to see the opportunities that lie within. Do so, and you’ll grow and flourish.
