Can stress ever be good for you? The summer holiday edition

Somewhere around week three of the school summer holidays, most working parents have discovered a new form of stress: the "who is having whose child on Wednesday, and where did the smaller wellington go?" variety. Here is a genuinely helpful thing to know. Not all stress is bad. Some of it is actually making you sharper.

The idea has a hundred-year history. Psychologists Yerkes and Dodson (1908) first described the "inverted U" of arousal and performance: too little stress and we are flat, unfocused and disengaged. Too much and we tip over into exhaustion and error. The sweet spot in the middle is where humans consistently perform, learn and grow. Although the exact level of optimal arousal varies between people and tasks, the principle that both too little and too much arousal impair performance has been repeatedly supported.

Modern research has sharpened this into something usable. In a landmark 2013 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Alia Crum and colleagues at Yale ran three experiments and found that people who held a "stress is enhancing" mindset, rather than a "stress is debilitating" mindset, showed more adaptive physiological responses, including healthier cortisol patterns in laboratory testing, sought feedback more readily, and reported better wellbeing and work performance. The mindset itself, not simply the amount of stress, influenced how people responded to challenging situations (Crum et al., 2013).

A 2024 meta-analysis in Scientific Reports, pooling 44 effect sizes from randomised controlled trials, confirmed that brief stress reappraisal and mindset interventions produce small but consistent improvements in task performance (Cohen's d = 0.23, p < 0.001) (Bosshard & Gomez, 2024). The improvements were modest but statistically reliable, suggesting that changing how we interpret stress is not a magic fix, but it can meaningfully improve performance. Reappraisal appears to influence both how we interpret stress and how our body responds physiologically, helping us perform more effectively under pressure. A racing heart is either "I am panicking" or "my body is preparing me to do this well". Same physiology. Different meaning.

Why this is quietly good news for the summer

The stress of a busy family kitchen at 8am is not going away this August. What can shift is what you make of it. Acute, time-limited, meaningful stress is exactly the kind of stress that helps humans stay mentally sharp, adapt and learn. It is chronic, unrelenting, unrecoverable stress that does the damage.

Practical takeaway: a stress check for humid Wednesdays

Before reacting, run a five-second internal check:

• Is this acute or chronic? (Chaotic school run: acute. Ongoing sleep deprivation: chronic.)

• Is it time-limited? (End of the holidays in sight.)

• Am I framing this as "I am struggling" or "my body is helping me handle this"?

• Would a good friend describe this as a growth moment or a signal to rest?

Two of the four leaning towards "acute, time-limited, energising" means your stress is probably in the useful zone. Three or four leaning the other way is a signal to protect rest, ask for help and lower the bar.

Stress is not always the enemy. Sometimes it is evidence that you care, that you are growing, or that you are doing something meaningful. The aim is not to build a life with no pressure. It is to build a life where periods of challenge are matched by periods of recovery.

So, the next time the house is noisy, the diary is overflowing and everyone seems to need you at once, remember this: your body may not be signalling that something is wrong. It may simply be reminding you that you are capable of meeting the moment. Learn to recognise when stress is helping you rise, and just as importantly, when it is time to step back and recover. Both are part of thriving.

References:

Crum, A. J., Salovey, P., & Achor, S. (2013). Rethinking stress: The role of mindsets in determining the stress response. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(4), 716-733. 

Bosshard, M., & Gomez, P. (2024). Effectiveness of stress arousal reappraisal and stress-is-enhancing mindset interventions on task performance outcomes: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Scientific Reports, 14(1), 7923. 

Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18(5), 459-482.