What helped you survive stress in the moment may now be working against you.
Key points
- Around a third of American adults report their stress level to be overwhelming on most days.
- Chronic stress makes us age more quickly and sets us up for serious health issues.
- Depression, anxiety, and addiction are the most common consequences of living with chronic stress.
- Some ways we cope with stress may have been adaptive at one point, but now they’re bad for our mental health.
Chronic stress, that sense of feeling pressured and overwhelmed over long periods of time, has become synonymous with living life in a modern world. This type of stress makes us age more quickly and sets us up for serious health issues such as heart attacks, strokes, high blood pressure, obesity and type II diabetes. Depression, anxiety and addiction disorders top the list of the most common psychological consequences of living a chronically stressed life.
But taking steps to undo the harms of chronic stress is easier said than done. We live in a sea of solutions, offerings, and fixes for our stress-filled lives, yet America remains one of the most stressed nations on earthwith around a third of American adults reporting their stress level to be overwhelming on most days.
From my 25 years of experience as a frontline clinician, one of the obvious roadblocks I observe when it comes to stress management is that the way we cope with stress as individuals is often molded early in life and is dependent upon the environment we grew up in, how much adversity we encountered and, perhaps of most salience, the way the people who raised us coped with stress themselves (i.e., who our role models were). Unfortunately, these organic ways that we learned to cope with chronic stress, while useful in the moment, often turn out to be bad for our long-term mental health.
Here are 2 common ways of coping with chronic stress that may, ultimately, worsen our mental health.
Wearing a Teflon Skin
On one extreme, there is the “no grit, no grind, no greatness” coping style. Those who abide by this coping method lean into the notion that life equals stress. They deal with stressful experiences using psychological defense mechanisms such as compartmentalization, denial, and deflection.
They embrace toxic positivity, the notion you can positively think yourself out of pretty much any stressful situation by quashing emotions like anger or sadness.
From my experience, the problem with this approach is that it involves a disturbing form of self-negation as well as a neglect of one’s self-respect. This “Teflon Skin” strategy renders self and self-respect inert, so any source of stress slides right off them, never sticking. Furthermore, those who wear a “Teflon Skin” have a very high heat tolerance, which means it takes a lot of stress to damage them. That also means it takes a long time for them to notice they’re facing dangerous territory.
While this strategy works well for kitchenware, I have always had grave concerns about the long-term consequences of this approach on human well-being. Indeed, as the years pass, I’ve witnessed the negative toll such a strategy ultimately takes on one’s mental wellness, physical health, and quality of interpersonal relationships.
Playing the Blame Game
On the other hand, there are those that deal with chronic stress by prioritizing their own mental wellness, do not shy away from showing their vulnerabilities, and are vocal advocates for themselves in situations when they feel someone, or something is placing undue stress on them.
They deal with stressful experiences using the following psychological defense mechanisms: projection, avoidance coping, and passive-aggressive behavior.
They are always ready to hold the world accountable for its actions against them. Unfortunately, this strategy is not without its negative mental health issues. Too often those who operate this way become hostage to a series of perceived slights and too quick to play the blame game. This approach leaves them less effective in their life, stuck in their interpersonal relationships, and stalled in their growth and capacity for creativity.
Healthier ways of coping with chronic stress require taking a middle path and a more proactive approach to dealing with day-to-day chronic stress. But this can be a challenging process: determining which battles to pick and which to let go, which situations call for patience and grace, and which require one to prioritize one’s own sense of self-respect can be bewildering