Understanding the Difference Between Healthy Stress and Toxic Stress

Stress can be your body trying to tell you something useful, or it could be a prolonged response to adverse experiences from childhood. Knowing the difference can help you heal.

By Dr. Rachel Gilgoff, Clinical and Science Senior Advisor to the ACEs Aware Initiative with the Aurrera Health Group in Oakland.

Life, work, school, and relationships can bring us both joy and stress.  Social media and 24/7 news bring us content that is often scary, exclusionary, gendered, racist, shaming, or blaming. And all of screen time means we are spending less time on in-person connection, self-care or other activities that help us buffer stress. As a result, these everyday stressors may drive repeated or prolonged activation of our stress response leading to feelings of anxiety or panic or a continual freeze state that leaves us feeling numb. 

In addition to the daily stressors of current life, many of us have experienced personal traumas in our childhood known as Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACEs. These include traumas  such as physical, sexual, or emotional abuse, neglect, living with a caregiver who has a mental illness or struggles with alcohol or substance use, or intimate partner violence in the home. 

How to Know When Positive Stress Becomes Something More
While it has gotten a bad rap today, stress and the related feelings and behaviors are all signs of a healthy stress response system trying to tell us something about our environment. Our brilliant, lifesaving, biological pathways are simply helping us adapt to our environment.  But while these normal, protective, stress adaptations, can be lifesaving in one environment they can also be complicated in another. Being hypervigilant, quick to react, or good at blending in and hiding can be very helpful living in an unpredictable or unsafe household or community, however, these adaptations might make it difficult to fit into other environments such as having to sit still in class or give a class presentation.   

And for those of us who have experienced ACEs in our childhood these adaptations can turn into a prolonged response called toxic stress. The adaptations normally associated with toxic stress can put a strain on our long-term health and well-being because repeated activation of the stress response can lead to wear and tear on our body.  

Your positive, informative stress response could be showing up in our life as toxic stress if you are experiencing: 

• Frequent irritability, impulsivity, lack of engagement.
• Learning issues, or a diagnosis of ADHD, anxiety, or bipolar disorder. 
• Being stuck in the freeze state, feeling detached, numb, quiet, or depressed. 
• A need for perfectionism or people pleasing, especially for those who have had to be the caretaker at home or being perfect to not draw negative, harmful attention.  
• A belief from childhood that people can’t be trusted or that you can’t trust yourself.
• Struggle with positive attachment or forming relationships.  

How to Heal Your Stress Response
Wherever we are on our stress, health, and well-being path, we can all cope, heal, and flourish.   Start by listening to our body and what it may be trying to tell you.  You can then assess and address whether you have control over your environment and the direct ability to decrease current or if you need strategies to effectively cope with things beyond your control.

Luckily the state of California recently launched the Live Beyond campaign to increase awareness of ACEs and toxic stress and provide tools, resources and increase awareness of the range of accessible and proven strategies that can rewire your prolonged stress responses and help you feel better. These include: 

• Forming supportive relationships
• Getting good quality sleep
• Eating nutritious food
• Getting exercise 
• Practicing mindfulness 
• Getting out in nature 

There are many ways to live beyond your ACEs and find ways to balance your reaction to toxic stress. While life will always throw us challenges, we can support each other and ourselves to heal and flourish.  We can take steps for ourselves, we can work to break cycles of family trauma, and all of us and we can notice when a young person or their caregiver is struggling and reach out – as friend, relative, co-worker, classmate, neighbor, or community member. Together, we can all pave the way to a healthier and more resilient future.