Stressed? Show me

We don’t have stress. We do stress.

Here’s how I do it: wake up at 5 am with racing thoughts; drink that third glass of wine to be able to check out or snap at people I love.

But I don’t say, “I’m stressed.”

Why not?

I stopped saying "I'm stressed."

In New York City, every person who lives here is working hard. All. The. Time. None of us bother to say we are “busy,” because in NYC, busy is the price of admission. It’s the baseline.

What if we all stopped saying, “I’m stressed" too?

Not just stress — chronic stress

I decided to write this article after attending a workshop organized by a life coach called, “10 Ways to Manage Chronic Stress.” I had never heard the term “chronic stress” and was curious. Was this something I needed to know about to help my clients with?

The coach said we are under more stress than ever before, due to the news, social media, all that is happening in the world, the demands of work, etc. Now people are not just stressed, they are chronically stressed, leading to a variety of problems including high blood pressure and increased anxiety.

Really? More stressed than ever before? More than when we all got locked in our homes for two years during the pandemic? More than when the entire economy came crashing down in 2008?

I looked around the room. Most of the people had jobs, beds, food, freedom, resources. More stress than ever before? Not really.

I did some further digging when I got home.

According to the American Psychological Association (APA): “chronic stress, which is constant and persists over an extended period of time, can be debilitating and overwhelming. Chronic stress can affect both our physical and psychological well-being by causing a variety of problems including anxiety, insomnia, muscle pain, high blood pressure, and a weakened immune system. Research shows that stress can contribute to the development of major illnesses, such as heart disease, depression, and obesity. The consequences of chronic stress are serious.”

The salesperson in me saw chronic stress as a clever term for a new problem invented to support a whole new set of coaches (and pharmaceuticals) who can solve it. To be clear, I am not minimizing any of the above problems, illnesses or conditions. But I am questioning how we got here and what we call them.

Bell bottoms, disco and stress

Here is the thing: Stress does not actually exist. You heard me. If you think I’m wrong, please show it to me.

The term stress, as it relates to our experiences, first emerged in scientific literature in the 1930s. And it did not enter the popular vernacular until the 1970s.

“Today, we often use the term loosely in describing a variety of unpleasant feeling states; for example, we often say we are stressed out when we feel frustrated, angry, conflicted, overwhelmed, or fatigued. Despite the widespread use of the term, stress is a fairly vague concept that is difficult to define with precision.”

If the word didn’t even exist until the 70s, surely we can do without it going forward.

Stress does not exist any more than happiness exists. Both are things we choose to do.

Here is how most of us do happiness: smiling, laughing, feeling joyful, enjoying friends, having sex, playing with our children, attending cultural and sporting events, thinking good thoughts about ourselves and our accomplishments.

Here is how most of us do stress: short temper, racing mind, irritability, complaining, overeating, overindulging in stimulants, hiding out from friends and family, having unpleasant thoughts about our work and personal life.

Just do it. Or don’t.

I have not said, “I’m stressed” in eight years, since I learned in a peak performance workshop that it is a blanket term we use to avoid addressing the real causes of our anxiety or malcontent. During these eight years I experienced losses, both personal and financial; health issues; breakups; and extreme amounts of work, rejection and uncertainty — often all at once. But I never said, “I’m stressed.”

Removing the word from my vocabulary meant zero wallowing and no lengthy conversations with other people about their stress after they hear me talk about my stress. It let me spend way less time stuck in the symptoms and more time fixing them or finding ways to get out of or around them. I don’t miss it.

In the article referenced above, the APA also says, “Many Americans who experience prolonged stress are not making the necessary lifestyle changes to reduce stress and ultimately prevent health problems.”

In other words, it’s within our control. And I say the first step to controlling it is to remove that word from our vocabulary.

Language makes a huge difference. What we say, we speak into existence. Consider the impact of using the below descriptors:

• It’s not hard; it’s impossible

• I’m not scared; I’m terrified

• It’s not upsetting; it’s toxic

We often ratchet manageable things up into big things through our words. My kids used to burst into the kitchen to tell me they were “starving.” I asked them to reframe and say, “I want a snack.” Let’s save starving for people who actually are.

This kind of reframing has also helped many of my coaching clients lessen their anxiety during challenging times — which is about every other minute for entrepreneurs. In my book Go Big Now: 8 Essential Mindset Practices to Overcome Any Obstacle and Reach Your Goals, I put it this way: consider pressing a mental pause button when you are under duress and reframing your challenges as "speed bumps." Just that one shift in language takes the panic away. The problems become simply something to navigate (and perhaps ask for help) until you get back to smooth road.

What if we all stopped saying, “I’m stressed”? If that’s too radical, could we start by going part way, and put a “do” in front of it, as in “I am doing stress.” We each do stress quite differently. You might get headaches. Your brother might have stomach upset. My mother might have sleepless nights. That “do” reminds us we still have a choice. It puts you in the driver’s seat of your life. When you say, “I’m stressed,” you put yourself in the passenger seat. You also may notice that puts in the driver’s seat the “cause” of said stress — your boss, ex, client, kids, etc.

Putting “do” in front of the word reminds us we have a choice in the way we handle setbacks in our life. Try not saying you are “stressed” for 10 days and see if you like how it feels.

How do you do stress? Please tell me in the comments — and let me know if you’ll join me in banning “I’m stressed” from our collective vocabulary?