Even if it feels like an anvil is hanging over your head, worrying at work may be beneficial for your brain. According to research results that were published in the journal Psychiatry Research, low to moderate amounts of stress can foster resilience in people and lower their risk of mental health problems including depression and antisocial behaviour. Low to moderate levels of stress can also assist people to manage difficult situations in the future.
Stress from preparing for a major meeting at work, studying for an exam or working longer hours to finish a sale may all help you grow as a person. For instance, a writer’s style may change after being rejected by a publisher. Additionally, getting fired could make someone reevaluate their skills and decide whether to pursue new opportunities or stick with what they know best. However, there is a fine line between healthy stress and excessive stress.
Good stress can act as a vaccine against the effect of future adversity The Nationwide Institutes of Health-funded Human Connectome Project, a national initiative that attempts to shed light on how the human brain operates, provided the researchers with the data they needed. A questionnaire that is frequently used in research to gauge how chaotic and stressful people feel their life was used to collect data from more than 1,200 young adults who reported their perceived stress levels for the current study.
Participants answered questions about how frequently they experienced certain thoughts or feelings, such as ‘in the last month, how often have you been upset because of something that happened unexpectedly?’ Then, tests were used to evaluate their neurocognitive abilities, including measures of working memory, processing speed, picture sequence memory, attention, the capacity to suppress automatic responses to visual stimuli, cognitive flexibility, or the capacity to switch between tasks, and cognitive flexibility.
In addition to other behavioural and emotional issues, the participants’ responses to several measures of anxiety, attention issues, and aggressiveness were compared to the researchers’ findings. As per the study, low to moderate levels of stress were psychologically advantageous and may even serve as a preventative measure for the onset of mental health symptoms.
But the ability to tolerate stress and adversity varies greatly according to the individual. How successfully people handle problems depends on a variety of factors, including age, genetic predispositions, and having a strong support system.
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