🌱 When Stress Serves You: Why a Little Pressure Is a Good Thing
by WISe Wellness Guild
Let’s be honest—when we hear the word stress, we usually associate it with burnout, anxiety, or that overwhelming feeling of being stretched too thin. But here’s a different take: not all stress is bad. In fact, a little stress can be really good for us. And instead of trying to erase it from our lives completely, maybe we should lean into it—just a little.
Science even backs this up. Researchers at Stanford talk about a kind of stress called “eustress”—a positive form of stress that helps you stay alert, focused, and motivated. Think about the surge of energy before a big presentation or the way your brain kicks into gear before a deadline. That’s eustress at work. Dr. Firdaus Dhabhar explains that short bursts of this kind of stress can actually boost your immune system, enhance performance, and help you adapt to new challenges. It's the long-term, chronic, unrelenting stress that wears us down—not the quick, purposeful kind that helps us grow.
The key here is how we see stress. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal has studied this in depth, and she found that our beliefs about stress matter just as much as the stress itself. When we view stress as helpful—a signal to rise to the occasion—it changes how our body responds. Our heart still beats faster, but our blood vessels stay relaxed, almost as if the body knows we’re doing something meaningful. In one large-scale study, people who had high levels of stress but didn’t believe it was harmful lived longer than those with low stress who feared it. It’s all about mindset.
Stress Prepares Us for Real Life
Here's the truth: the real world isn’t bubble-wrapped. It doesn’t come with a full-time snowplow to remove every challenge in our path. Deadlines, difficult conversations, failures—these are all part of life. And if we never practice dealing with discomfort, we’re going to struggle when the stakes are higher. Stress, in manageable doses, is a training ground for resilience.
That’s why more parents are starting to challenge the idea that kids should be shielded from all stress. There’s a growing movement (with a not-so-gentle name) called FAFO parenting—short for “F*ck Around and Find Out.” It’s exactly what it sounds like: giving kids the freedom to make choices, even the not-so-great ones, and letting natural consequences do the teaching.
Now, don’t mistake this for being cold or careless. It’s not about punishment. It’s about stepping back, allowing safe failures, and then stepping in with support after the lesson has been learned. The result? Kids who aren’t afraid of falling down—because they’ve learned how to get back up. They build grit. And in today’s world, that kind of inner strength is priceless.
Experts agree that some stress in childhood—when paired with a supportive adult—actually strengthens brain development and emotional regulation. In other words, letting your child forget their lunch once (and deal with the consequences) might teach them more than ten reminders ever could.
Stress + Recovery = Growth
Of course, we don’t need to live in a constant state of stress. That’s not the goal here. What we’re talking about is the dance between challenge and recovery. We need moments that push us and moments that restore us.
