Thought Leader Q&A: Reframing Stress for Our Modern Culture

Note: This blog post features a thought leader from APA 2019. This will not be a session at APA 2023.

Psychologist Lisa Damour, PhD, suspects that Americans have become too wary of stress and anxiety—feelings that can actually play an important role in our productivity, personal growth, and safety . “We are in a cultural moment where people feel stressed about becoming stressed and anxious about becoming anxious,” says Damour, who writes the monthly Adolescence column for the New York Times and is the author of the best-selling book “Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls.”

“We know that fearing stress and anxiety can actually make them worse,” she says. In her talk at APA 2019, Damour will speak to the need for psychologists to reframe stress and anxiety for our modern culture and continue to help people develop the skills they need to use those feelings to their advantage.

What more can psychologists do to help normalize people’s stress and anxiety?
Unfortunately, by the time clinicians are involved, the levels of stress and anxiety among our clients have usually reached unhealthy levels. But, at the broader cultural level, we can take steps to normalize stress and anxiety so they are less likely to reach toxic heights. Psychologists can help by talking openly about the fact that stress will occur any time we must adapt to new circumstances—and that the changes that cause stress can be positive or negative. And we can point out that anxiety usually serves as a helpful warning system that alerts us to threats, such as when a nearby driver is swerving into our lane. In this way, we can help the general population to appreciate that stress and anxiety are usually normal, and potentially beneficial, parts of life.

 What should psychologists know about how our youngest generation is dealing with stress and anxiety?
One cause of the rising levels of stress and anxiety among adolescents may be the fact that these emotions are so often misunderstood. Parents who are frightened of stress and anxiety and can sometimes react in ways that make things worse. That’s not to say there aren’t other forces at work that make today’s children feel especially stressed—there’s more academic pressure on teens now than in previous generations, they don’t get enough sleep and digital technology is without question part of what’s keeping them up at night. These are real factors that we need to address. But we also need to help both parents and children develop the tools to accept stress and anxiety as expectable and unavoidable.

Are there any other broader issues psychologists should be more involved with?
There’s important counter-messaging that psychologists might take on with regard to what I call “the happiness industry.” In other words, we can address well-meaning, but perhaps unhelpful, efforts from anyone in the wellness business selling the idea that people should feel calm and relaxed most of the time. Psychologists are good at taking a more measured approach to thinking about the human experience. We want to support well-being, but don’t set the bar at being happy nearly all of the time. That is a dangerous idea because it is unnecessary and unachievable. If you are under the impression that you should always be joyful, your day-to-day experience may ultimately turn out to be pretty miserable.

Interviewed by Alyssa Shaffer