Stress as Energizer – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1219

Stress as Energizer – Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1219

Dear Colleagues! This is Asrar Qureshi’s Blog Post #1219 for Pharma Veterans. Pharma Veterans Blogs are published by Asrar Qureshi on its dedicated site https://pharmaveterans.com. Please email to pharmaveterans2017@gmail.com  for publishing your contributions here.

Credit: Nathan Cowley

Credit: Vera Arsic

Preamble

Stress is now among the most felt and expressed feeling. This blog post is based on an article by Scott H. Young, who has given some valuable insights on the subject. Link at the end.

Stress and Energy: How to Turn a Burden into a Boost

Most of us know stress as a drain on energy, that heavy feeling in the chest, that difficulty concentrating, that exhaustion at the end of a long day. Yet, as Scott H. Young shows in his insightful article on stress and energy, stress is neither inherently “good” nor “bad.” Instead, it’s a biological response that has adaptive value at the right intensity and duration, and damaging effects when it is too intense or too prolonged.

Understanding this dynamic more deeply can help us not only survive stress but use it to enhance performance and protect our energy.

What Stress Really Is

To understand how stress affects energy, we need to go back to its biological origins.

Stress isn’t a flimsy feeling invented by modern life, it’s a fundamental survival mechanism. The Hungarian endocrinologist Hans Selye discovered that a wide range of stressful events, from physical injury to psychological threats, trigger the same physiological response in the body. This response, now known as the stress response, mobilizes energy quickly, diverts resources to muscle action, sharpens focus, and prioritizes immediate survival.

When the brain detects a threat, whether a predator on the savannah or an impending deadline, it releases hormones that:

• Redirect blood and energy towards muscles

• Heighten alertness and focus

• Suppress long-term processes (like digestion and growth)

• Prepare the body to act immediately

That’s why stress can feel “energizing” in short bursts; it is designed to rapidly prepare the body and mind to respond to immediate demands.

The Paradox: Stress as Energizer and Drain

The biology above explains a paradox that many of us experience.

In small doses and for short periods, stress can boost energy and performance. But when it persists too long or comes at the wrong time, it undermines both energy and effectiveness.

Short-Term Stress Can Improve Focus and Action

When stress levels rise just enough, they act like a chemical alarm bell. Your attention narrows, your senses sharpen, and your body prepares to act. This is useful when:

• You need to give a presentation

• You must finish a time-sensitive task

• You face a competitive challenge

In these situations, a moderate stress “boost” helps you marshal energy and attention.

The psychological principle underlying this is the Yerkes-Dodson Law, which shows that performance rises with stress up to a point, but after that, more stress begins to impair performance, especially on complex tasks.

Chronic or Excessive Stress Depletes Energy and Health

The trouble begins when stress is:

• Too intense

• Too frequent

• Too long in duration

Unlike the quick, sharp stress of a predator fleeing, modern stressors, deadlines, relationship tensions, financial worries, can linger. When the stress response is engaged for prolonged periods:

• Energy reserves get depleted

• Immune function weakens

• Cognitive performance declines

• Emotional regulation falters

Biologically, prolonged stress leads to chronic activation of hormones like cortisol, which over time can contribute to high blood pressure, heart disease, immune suppression, and fatigue. Instead of mobilizing energy for action, chronic stress saps energy and leaves the body in a state of wear and tear.

The result isn’t a stronger you, it’s exhaustion, burnout, and decreased capacity to take on future challenges.

Four Practical Paths to Managing Stress and Energy

While stress can’t be completely avoided, we can influence how our bodies and minds respond to it. Based on the article and broader understanding of stress science, here are four key approaches:

Health and Lifestyle Foundations

Your body’s baseline resilience affects how you respond to stress.

Exercise regularly: Physical activity not only improves cardiovascular health but also enhances the body’s ability to turn stress on and off efficiently. Exercise releases endorphins — natural mood boosters that counteract stress hormones.

Prioritize sleep: Lack of sleep sensitizes your stress response, making everyday pressures feel more intense. Good sleep helps restore energy and regulate hormones involved in stress.

Eat well: Nutrition influences energy availability and metabolic health, which in turn impacts stress resilience. While the evidence about specific foods is mixed, overall dietary quality matters.

These lifestyle measures don’t eliminate stress but strengthen your baseline capacity so that stress produces adaptive energy instead of chronic depletion.

Support Networks and Social Connection

Contrary to the misconception that stress is a purely individual experience, social support plays a major role in how stress impacts us.

Strong relationships, with family, friends, or colleagues, buffer stress, reduce feelings of isolation, and improve psychological resilience. Research shows that social isolation can have health impacts comparable to well-known risk factors like smoking.

Even introverts benefit from meaningful social contact. Support isn’t merely “nice to have”; it physiologically moderates stress pathways and preserves energy.

Mindset and Cognitive Framing

The stress response is triggered not only by objective threats but by our perception of threat. Ways to influence this include:

Reframing thoughts: Tools like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) help challenge irrational beliefs that amplify stress.

Acceptance strategies: Approaches like Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) focus on accepting stressors rather than resisting them, reducing emotional overload.

Mindfulness and meditation: These techniques shift attention away from future worries or past regrets into present sensory experience, lowering stress arousal.

Since many modern stressors are psychological rather than physical, deadlines, social comparisons, fear of failure, mindset work can be a powerful lever.

Reducing or Eliminating Chronic Stressors

Sometimes the best stress management isn’t coping; it is removing the source.

This is easier to do in some areas than others, but when possible it means:

• Avoiding toxic environments (workplace, relationships)

• Reassessing commitments that cause repeated strain

• Making choices that align with your values and priorities

Psychologist Christina Maslach, a leading expert on burnout, argues that burnout should be treated not just as a personal failure but as a signal that the environment itself is unsupportive. Eliminating or changing systemic stressors is at least as important as coping with them.

Stress Isn’t the Enemy – But Unmanaged Stress Is

If stress were purely bad, evolution would have eliminated it. Instead, stress remains because, in the right amounts and timing, it helps us survive, mobilize energy, and take effective action.

The challenge lies not in wishing stress away but in shaping our lives and environments so that stress energizes when we need it and backs off when we don’t.

Key Takeaway

Small bursts of stress can boost performance on tasks requiring alertness.

Excessive or chronic stress drains energy and impairs health.

Lifestyle, social support, mindset, and stressor elimination are four major levers we can use to manage energy.

What feels like energy depletion often reflects a mismatch between our biology and the stressors of modern life, and the good news is that this mismatch is not fixed or immutable.

By understanding stress as an energizing force when used well, we can shift from burnout and exhaustion toward a more resilient, energized way of living and working.

Concluded.

Disclaimers: Pictures in these blogs are taken from free resources at Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, and Google. Credit is given where available. If a copyright claim is lodged, we shall remove the picture with appropriate regrets.

For most blogs, I research from several sources which are open to public. Their links are mentioned under references. There is no intent to infringe upon anyone’s copyrights. If, any claim is lodged, it will be acknowledged and duly recognized immediately.

Reference:

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2026/01/27/stress-impacts-energy/?ck_subscriber_id=3860626220