10 Things That May Surprise You About Stress

The most common thing my clients come to me about is stress. There may be other things, but stress is always on every single client’s list, whether they are coming for themselves, their team, or their employees. The thing about stress is, it’s highly complicated, and its negative effects seem to kick in only if we believe it will harm us. Basically, we have to reframe or rethink how we think about stress. And to do so, it can be helpful to bust myths and share some facts that many of my clients find surprising. 

1) Stress researchers do not agree on the definition of stress. 

2) The scientific study of stress has roots in the late 19th century, but really only took off in the 1950s. 

3) Because it's vexing to define, some researchers have discussed ditching the word altogether. 

4) Stress researchers also do not agree on what constitutes a stressful life event. 

5) Stress was not always a part of the human experience in the way we think about it today. 

6) The “godfather of stress,” Hans Selye, described what would later be termed “stress” in 74 lines.

7) Selye, sadly in my opinion, took funding from the tobacco industry, as did American cardiologists Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman, in return for minimizing the health risks of tobacco. Friedman and Rosenman created the concept of a Type A personality and its supposed deleterious effects.  

8) The term stress comes from engineering, which is essentially how hard you’re pushing or pulling on something, for its size, before it warps or worse. 

9) Stress affects your musculoskeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular, endocrine, gastrointestinal, nervous, and reproductive systems (male and female).

10) Some research shows that chronic stress rewires the brain. 

References

American Institute of Stress. (2022). The History of Stress. https://www.stress.org/news/the-history-of-stress/

American Psychological Association (2024). Stress Effects on the Body. https://www.apa.org/topics/stress/body 

Cohen, S., Murphy, M. L. M., & Prather, A. A. (2019). Ten Surprising Facts About Stressful Life Events and Disease Risk. Annual review of psychology, 70, 577–597. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010418-102857

Harvard Health Publishing (2021). Protect Your Brain from Stress. Harvard Medical School. https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/protect-your-brain-from-stress 

Hutmacher F (2021) Putting Stress in Historical Context: Why It Is Important That Being Stressed Out Was Not a Way to Be a Person 2,000 Years Ago. Front. Psychol. 12:539799. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.539799

Petticrew, M. P., Lee, K., & McKee, M. (2012). Type A behavior pattern and coronary heart disease: Philip Morris's "crown jewel". American journal of public health, 102(11), 2018–2025. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2012.300816

Rochette, L., Dogon, G., & Vergely, C. (2023). Stress: Eight Decades after Its Definition by Hans Selye: "Stress Is the Spice of Life". Brain sciences, 13(2), 310. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13020310

Spiegel, Alix. (2014). The Secret History Behond the Science of Stress. NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2014/07/07/325946892/the-secret-history-behind-the-science-of-stress