You're Avoiding the Wrong Stress

Every week I watch the same pattern play out. A client tells me she canceled dinner plans because she needed to protect her peace. My friend texts that she’s skipping book club because she’s too anxious. I bail on the block party because I’m too tired. We all say we need rest, and we do. But most of us spend two hours a day scrolling news about wars, economic collapse, and climate disasters. We are so stressed by all the problems of the world, we stop showing up for our own life.

Not all stress is created equal. Eustress, known as “good stress,” stretches and strengthens you. It looks like training for a race even though you’re slow. You may not win, and you may not even shave minutes off your mile, but you will become someone who runs. And with that come much more important skills — consistency, work ethic, self-trust — that will last long after the race is finished.

Feel free to swap cooking risotto or calling your mom. The important point about eustress is that there is a clear goal and an endpoint. It’s challenging, but you have influence over how it goes. Even if you fail, you’re more likely to feel proud of yourself and satisfied afterwards. Research backs this up: people who engage in meaningful activities report higher life satisfaction, a greater sense of purpose, and better mental health. People who spend their free time on passive leisure like watching TV or scrolling on their phone report more depressive symptoms.

Distress, by contrast, is “bad stress.” It overwhelms your capacity and often exists outside your control. It looks like feeling responsible for your children’s happiness, doom-scrolling global crises you cannot fix, or managing your partner’s emotions as if their feelings were yours to regulate. This stress is like treading water as you grow increasingly exhausted. Your legs burn, your chest aches, you’re working as hard as you can just to keep your head up, but the water keeps rushing in faster and faster.

The same challenge can be eustress or distress depending on your capacity and agency. Starting a new job because of a promotion is eustress. Starting one because you were laid off, while also managing a family crisis, is distress. The context matters.

Eustress requires friction and effort. The discomfort of scraping ice off your car to get to book club, the awkwardness of texting a friend you haven’t talked to in months, the effort of chopping vegetables for dinner — that friction is part of what makes these things meaningful.

So when we engineer all friction out of our lives, we’re often engineering out the eustress too. This doesn’t mean all convenience is bad — research shows that outsourcing tasks improves well-being, but only when you’re removing something draining and replacing it with something fulfilling. The problem is that we’re outsourcing the wrong things. We can’t go for a walk (don’t have the energy) but we’ll spend three hours ruminating about our future and researching the perfect morning routine. We can’t grab coffee with a friend (no time) but we can track every developing crisis like we’re personally responsible for knowing about all of them.

The problem is that distress feels urgent. You feel as though you’re helping by staying on top of every development. But you’re not actually taking action, you’re just absorbing crisis after crisis. Meanwhile, the things you could actually influence get labeled “too much effort” or feel frivolous by comparison.

So what should we do instead?

Start by lowering the bar. Too often we decide that if we can’t do something fully, we shouldn’t bother at all. But experience and habit are more important than outcome. Show up to book club 20 minutes late. Walk for ten minutes if that’s all the time you have. Text your friend back even when you don’t have the energy for a real conversation. None of these acts are impressive on the surface, but that’s not the point. Small, imperfect action is how you transform distress into eustress.

It’s also how you stop drowning in problems you can’t solve and start showing up for the ones you can. The crises will continue without your surveillance. But you are the only one who can show up for your life and make it meaningful.