When Stress Feels Good…

Like most of the world, I am glued to the Olympics right now. When I watch those athletes, I gasp when they fault, scream when they make an impossible pass, and feel that rush of relief when the event is over. It’s so stressful!

But this stress is different. It’s not the disconnecting, overwhelming, or dissociating stress that I’ve described in previous posts. This stress is fun, exciting, and invigorating!

This is the stress that feels good!

Mostly when we talk about stress we talk about how to get rid of it. De-stress, stress is bad, re-pattern the behavior, the stress response… Even just talking about stress stresses us out! We treat it like a 4 letter word.

Rarely do we talk about how stress can be good for us.

To refresh: Stress is our body’s natural response to the demands of our environment. Our stress responses are normal. They are there to protect us and help us no matter the type of stress we are dealing with. Cause there are different types! Chronic, tolerable, distress, acute…but the one we rarely talk about is good stress.

Good stress, or eustress, is the stress that makes us feel good. This is the stress we see as a challenge, rather than overwhelm. Eustress can increase our resilience, our grit, and our determination. It can even reinforce our belief in ourselves and our talent.

We artists know this stress well. It’s the adrenaline rush when we walk on stage, the sense of accomplishment we feel when we hit that top note, the leaning forward in our seat when we watch an incredible show. This is the type of stress that makes us feel capable, that makes us want to push our artistic limits.

And because they feel good, we don’t think of these experiences as stress! Yet our bodies respond the exact same way. We activate the exact same stress responses no matter the type of stress we’re experiencing. What is different is our perspective.

Whether we consider stress as a challenge or as overwhelming shifts based on how we perceive it. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “great! I’ll just shift my mindset, think of all stress (especially audition stress) as excitement rather than nerves and I’ll be set!” How I wish it were that simple…

Yes, our mindset and thoughts play a role in how we perceive and respond to stress. Yet it’s not the only character in play. There’s also our genetics, our identities, culture, community resources, and much, much more! All these factors change and evolve throughout our lifetime, so how we perceive and respond to stress changes and evolves as well. This is why audition stress can feel overwhelming one month and exhilarating the next!

Our culture places a huge overemphasis on our minds and mindset: Shift your mindset and the rest will follow. And for some people that really works! But not for everyone and not for every situation. We cannot always think our way out of a stress response.

The first time I reframed audition nerves as excitement, it worked wonders! I was so elated! Then, a couple months later, I kept getting the audition shakes. No matter how many times I told myself “it’s just excitement,” it didn’t help me stop shaking. Changing our minds doesn’t always change our body’s response.

And when mind over matter didn’t work for me, I used to see that as a personal failing. There must be something wrong with me, with my mind, or with my body. So I would push harder, override my body, clamp down, or muscle through it.

When we overvalue the mind, we tend to believe we can think ourselves out of any situation. And when that strategy fails, it must be our fault that it didn’t work. We jump on the shame an blame spiral, when in reality, it’s just a strategy that isn’t working for us right now!

So what strategies can we use? How can we perceive audition stress as good?

First, we’ve got to build some awareness around good stress. What does it feel like? For one person, it might be heart pounding out of our chests, for others it might be a laser focus, and for others still it might be where our brains turns off entirely. Each of us has a unique set of given circumstances, so each of us experiences good stress uniquely.

Next, we can look at when we are using our tools. For a lot of us, we only use our tools when we really need them to rescue us. What would it be like to use a tool when the stress feels good? When we don’t really need it? How might that deepen our connection to our craft?

We humans are such complex, nuanced creatures, so we need nuanced ways of approaching stress, including good stress. Grounding during good stress can actually widen the experience. When done over time, it can increase our tolerance for all types of stress. So next time we notice ourselves feeling that good stress, lets play around with a tool and see what happens!

Lastly, we need to build in rest and recovery. The longer we keep our stress responses “on,” the harder it can be to turn them “off.” This is true of good stress as well. If we aren’t allowing ourselves recovery or rest, good stress can transform into tolerable or overwhelming stress. And that really sucks the joy out of performing.

So build in that rest time. It does not matter the tool or practice as long as it is sustainable and lets us recover. And if you need help with building awareness or finding tools that are quick and truly effective, I got you. Reach out to me here.

A mentor used to say “take a break before you need it, cause if you really need it, it’s too late.” A lot of us only start this work when the stress has gotten so bad that we have no other choice but to change. I was like that too.

But what would it be like to start now, before we need it?

What if we could start with the good? With good stress?

How might that deepen our craft and creativity?