Stress is Normal…and Even Helpful!

Stress is a normal physical and emotional response that helps motivate us to stay safe, healthy, and engaged in our lives. When experienced in manageable amounts, stress can actually be beneficial. For example, feeling stressed about a relationship may prompt someone to communicate more openly and work through challenges. Similarly, stress related to work responsibilities can motivate us to stay focused, meet deadlines, and perform well. In these situations, stress serves a helpful purpose—it pushes us toward growth, problem-solving, and positive action.

How Our Brains Are Wired

Our brains are beautifully designed to protect us. They naturally pay close attention to potential challenges—a pattern researchers refer to as negativity bias or threat-focused attention (7). This built-in system helped our ancestors survive by quickly detecting danger in their environment. Today, it continues to operate behind the scenes, keeping us alert and responsive even during relatively calm moments. While this protective mechanism serves an important purpose, it can also keep the nervous system in a heightened state of alert—sometimes even when we are safe and our basic needs are fully met (8).

Awareness is the Key to Calm

The first step to finding calm is simply noticing what your mind is doing. Without awareness, the brain can continue scanning for concerns, and the body may respond to those thoughts as if they were real threats. For example, you might be at home on a day off with nothing urgent happening yet still feel stressed about your to-do list. Even though you are physically safe, your body can react as though there is danger nearby.

Over time, this constant activation can make stress feel overwhelming. When stress remains turned on, it can affect both emotional and physical health and may even influence things like blood sugar levels.

So, How Do I Manage It?

When you begin to recognize how your mind tries to protect you by constantly scanning for concerns, it becomes easier to step out of stress loops. For some people, simply pausing and asking, “What’s okay about this moment?” can be surprisingly powerful. Often, the answer is “nothing is wrong right now.” We tend to emotionally respond to problems that haven’t happened yet—and may never happen at all. This question helps bring awareness back to the present moment.

As the saying goes, to imagine how things might go wrong is to suffer twice.

It’s also important to acknowledge that while stress isn’t always helpful, some situations genuinely do warrant a stress response. Certain experiences aren’t fair or fixable, and in those moments, allowing yourself to safely feel and process emotions—both comfortable and uncomfortable—is healthy and necessary.

Try these tools to help keep stressful thoughts in perspective:

• Ask Yourself: Will this matter in 5 minutes, 5 days, 5 months, or 5 years?
• Examine the thought: What evidence supports this thought? What evidence goes against it? What more balanced or realistic thought could replace it?
  • When looking for evidence against the thought, focus only on the facts.
  • Notice whether you’re jumping to conclusions, making assumptions, or overgeneralizing. Words like “always,” “never,” and “everybody” are often clues that a thought can be reworded in a more helpful, accurate way.
• Try grounding: Notice
  • 3 things you can see
  • 3 things you can hear
  • 3 things you can feel (9)We can always tune into our surroundings to give our minds a break from stressful thinking. If this works well for you, repeat it as often as needed, or focus on just one sense—such as noticing everything you can see.
• Practice gratitude through writing:
  • 3 good things about yourself
  • 3 good things that happened today
  • 3 things you’re looking forward to
  • 3 things you like about yourselfIf you enjoy this exercise, aim to practice it twice a week, choosing new answers each time. Writing things down helps you track progress—and over time, you’ll build a personal record of positive moments and strengths.

While your mind is powerful and these thought-based tools can reduce stress, physical strategies are just as important:

 

Successful stress management looks different for everyone. What works well for one person may not work for another, and that’s completely normal. Take time to reflect on which strategies feel most helpful for you. If you find yourself feeling stuck or not noticing much relief over time, consider talking with your therapist, HealthCoach, or another qualified health professional about your experience. Support can help you find approaches that are better suited to your needs.

Sending Health Your Way!

The Tula Clinical Team

Austin MS, RDN, CSR, LDN, CD
Aubree RN, BSN