No matter where you come from, everyone has been through at least a little bit of stress. Whether it be as big a thing as losing someone important, or even as small as losing a pencil, everyone experiences it. However, when most people are asked about how they get through it, they rarely have an actual answer. Most just say that they kept going on with life, until they finally stopped worrying about it as much. Why is this?

What is Stress and Why is it so Important?

The Mental Health Foundation describes stress as the way that the body responds to factors such as pressure. As a condition, stress can typically be caused when people go through a situation that they may have never expected to happen, or something that really takes a toll on them.

Stress can also be caused by people devoting too much time to “irrelevant” things, and forgetting about the fact that they must take care of themselves. An example of this is applying to colleges. People become so worked up about getting into their dream colleges that they don’t realize what is actually happening to their mental health. Obviously this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t care about college, but it just means that by the time college applications are being done, there isn’t much else that you can do to make it better. At that point, it is better to accept it and just submit everything that you have done.

To one’s mental health, stress can cause many things to happen. It can cause it to deteriorate and make one start experiencing things that they have never gone through before. People may start to lose relationships over stress, and they may even begin to pick at the little things that don’t really matter when looked at as a big picture. So, is there anything good about it?

The “Good” Side

You may be wondering as to why “good” is in quotation marks. This is because the side of stress that can be better for people is a little unorthodox.

Some people report that being under the duress of stress, they begin to work harder, and accomplish their work faster. Others say that stress can actually help them in getting farther in life, because of the fact that they are being “pushed” to their limits. An argument to this can be, is the work being done actually any good?

An example of stress being utilized in a good way can be something that many youth, especially teens, go through. This is submitting assignments on time in school. Many people, including me, like to keep homework assignments to the last minute. This causes a sense of urgency for students when they finally realize that they should start it. Under this pressure, some students report doing very well in their studies. However, others report doing not so well, due to the fact that they submitted a substandard and second-rate assignment. Since there are two answers to the question of if stress has a good side or not, what is the correct answer?

So, What’s the Answer?

In the end, stress is defined with a negative connotation. Especially when it is concerning the youth, stress is seen as a bad thing. It may have some good things to it, as shown in this article, but for the most part it is seen as unpleasant.

Youth can go through many different types of stress, whether it be from their peers, their schoolwork, or even problems that they are experiencing at home. So, in my opinion, it is not fair to the people that are experiencing these real problems to call some types of stress good. Working under pressure and doing well is a skill that people should learn, but it is definitely not a correct example of stress.

Finally, by going through certain experiences, such as stress, as a youth, hopefully people are able to learn and retain these ideas throughout the rest of their lives.