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After reading the title of this post, some readers may be asking “Stress can be positive? How could anxiety ever be ‘optimal?'” Modern society has trained us to think that we should rarely, if ever, be inconvenienced or uncomfortable, and stress and anxiety in all of their forms are things to be avoided. But as it is a little more nuanced than that, this post asks that we try to embrace the complexity.
First, there are two kinds of stress: Eustress and distress. The former is where we perceive a challenge or demand within our capacity to manage and cope. The latter type is when the demand is seen as exceeding one’s abilities of coping capacity, and we feel overwhelmed or highly anxious. Of course, people have different sensitivities to stress as well. The same demand, such as a public speaking event, could be perceived as an exciting opportunity for one person and extremely daunting for another. But as the event approaches, anxiety tends to rise. What is the impact of anxiety, and what’s the relationship between levels of anxiety and optimal performance?
As a second-year undergraduate psychology student, I was first exposed to the relationship between anxiety and performance in the form of a graph resembling an upside-down “U.” As anxiety along the bottom of the graph increases, performance increases to a peak, and then begins to go downhill in an inverse function as anxiety continues to rise.
This graph left an impression on the young version of me, as it highlighted that a moderate level of anxiety could aid performance (i.e., the “Goldilocks” sweet spot, or “just the right amount”), and that anxiety was not, in and of itself, necessarily “bad.”
For instance, if an athlete was not anxious about their event at the Olympics, or a student did not care a bit about a big test coming up, they would not invest time and energy in training or studying and might flop. If the athlete or student was so keyed up about the event or test that they couldn’t concentrate or had a series of panic attacks before or during their event/test, their performance would again suffer. A moderate level of anxiety sparks motivation and the energy to prepare for a performance.
Obviously, stress and anxiety can be perceived and experienced as uncomfortable. Research shows that high anxiety and chronic stress can have serious health impacts (see Mayo Clinic, 2024; World Economic Forum, 2024). Some people hope to make anxiety and stress more manageable by masking it with distractions (compulsively scrolling on one’s phone, watching a show on a streaming service till the episodes run out, etc.) or treating it with prescription meds like benzodiazepines. (In consultation with your physician, check out natural supplements with no side effects or interactions, such as bacopa monnieri, ashwaganda, lemon balm, and magnesium). But a low to moderate level of anxiety is not really a problem from which we must escape.
In many instances, “demands” and challenges may be initially perceived as discomfiting and may trigger anxiety, but one is likely able to summon the resources, energy, and concentration needed to hit that optimal level of anxiety for a peak performance at the gym, in a sport, or for a presentation. Anxiety is normative, and needn’t be thought of as pathological or something to be eliminated totally for us to be healthy or happy. As long as one’s (dis)stress does not become chronic or uncontrollable, one is likely to experience some benefits from a little jolt of anxiety telling us there’s a new challenge we’re about to take on, and will likely be successful at again.