By: Hannah Swift
In general, students across America dread school. Why? Most people say that it’s because of stress. It makes sense. Nobody likes to be stressed. Being stressed is stressful. Five days a week, children go to school to face an onslaught of homework, tests, and projects. This means students’ afternoons are filled with studying and work. On top of that, when kids are involved in extracurricular activities, they get home late at night and have much less time to do their work. All of this results in high levels of stress. But what if I said that stress was good? Recently, leading psychologists have found that being in stressful situations improves one’s resilience. It is also found to improve people’s abilities to handle stressful situations later on in life. Psychologists have been able to learn this through a variety of studies and experiments. In these studies, the goal has been to find out how stress at a younger age impacts children’s abilities when they become adults. It also focuses on the era of helicopter parenting and its downfalls. The most important pieces of data gathered has shown that stress is effective in building resilience. Resilience is the ability to persist throughout difficulties. When introduced to stress at a young age, children don’t find stress to be as stressful, which makes them better equipped to handle it later in life. According to The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, stress puts “the brain and body in an optimal position to perform”. When we accept and understand what stresses us out, we are able to work our best. Jeremey Jamieson, a professor at the University of Rochester, has stated that “Avoiding stress doesn’t work and is often not possible. To achieve and grow, we have to get outside our comfort zones and approach challenges”. Despite this, it can be difficult to work through stress if we don’t know how to spark one’s resilience. Resilience may differ from person to person for many reasons, one of which being genetics: “A range of human genes and polymorphisms associated with NPY, HPA axis, noradrenergic, dopaminergic and serotonergic systems, and BDNF have been linked to resilient phenotypes” (Feder et al., 2009; Russo et al., 2012). In short, the genetic makeup of a person may impact what levels of stress they thrive on, opposed to levels of stress that overwhelm them and could result in PTSD. Too much stress may lead to the inability to function under any stress at all. On the contrary, children that never experience stress are found to never be able to handle it. More and more recently, studies have found that parents feel it is their job to rescue their children from any stressful situations. Instead of allowing their children to handle stress, parents will take it upon themselves to help their children. These studies should give us a better outlook on our large quantities of schoolwork. Stress is normal, and it is critical for our brains to experience it. Reasonable amounts of stress allow us to act under stress during our experience in the workforce. This should encourage all of us to be more positive about stress. Instead of trying to eliminate your stress load, you should try to learn how to work with it. Overall, this study will teach us that stress is good. Through a variety of tests about genetics and adults’ abilities to cope with stress, we know it is a vital part of our life. It motivates us, and stress allows us to work under pressure. As they say, “give a busy person something to do, and it will always get done”. Damour, L. (2018, September 19). How to Help Teenagers Embrace Stress. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/well/family/how-to-help-teenagers-embrace-stress.html?rref=collection/timestopic/Psychology and Psychologists&action=click&contentCollection=health®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=25&pgtype=collection&login=email&auth=login-email Links: Image:http://www.brainfacts.org/-/media/Brainfacts2/Diseases-and-Disorders/Mental-Health/Article-Images/AAE-Stress-Resilience.png Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/19/well/family/how-to-help-teenagers-embrace-stress.html?rref=collection%2Ftimestopic%2FPsychology%20and%20Psychologists&action=click&contentCollection=health®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=25&pgtype=collection&login=email&auth=login-email
2 Comments
Emma Moll
12/12/2018 06:56:06 am
This experiment is very interesting, as I feel as if I get stressed very often in my own life. Although I do feel I get stressed often, I think I am good at dealing with my stress. As you said, when we accept and understand what stresses us out, we can deal with it better. I agree with this, and feel like when I do this in my own life, it helps. Also, you mentioned how doing things outside our comfort zones helps our stress. This is something I feel as if I could do better. Overall, I do believe that stress is good, as long as we are finding ways to deal with it.
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Bella Solari
12/12/2018 09:50:46 am
This is such an interesting topic! Personally, I find myself getting stressed quite often over things like schoolwork and upcoming tests. I know that there is a point where stress becomes unhealthy and thought-consuming, but for the most part I agree that some stress can be good! It motivates me to get my work done, which in turn actually gives me time to relax after completing what I need to get done. I agree that stress improves our resilience, and can actually be positive. I really like how you compiled all of this information and backed up your argument with solid evidence and points. Great job!
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Ms. Carrigan's Psych ClassWe have been reading articles about psychological studies to inform the way we live our lives. Please explore, and we hope you learn a bit about the psychology in your life! Categories
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