You might think of stress as good or bad. Planning a wedding? Good stress, right? Losing your job? Bad stress. But that’s not exactly the right way to look at it.

“Stress is just our body’s natural way of responding to demanding circumstances. It’s a programmed neurobiological response,” Vaile Wright, Ph.D., senior director for health care innovation at the American Psychological Association, told TODAY Health. You can feel stress about positive events or negative events.

“What the stress is telling us is the degree to which these things are important to us,” Wright said. “It’s not like there's good stress and bad stress. There’s just stress and then how we manage it.”

Ideally, you want a Goldilocks level of stress — not too little and not too much. “That moderate level of stress leads to optimal or peak performance,” Jennifer Beckjord, Psy.D., senior director of clinical services at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Western Psychiatric Hospital, told TODAY.

Too little stress? You might feel less challenged and motivated.

Too much stress? You might feel overwhelmed, distracted, unsettled or anxious.

“Under moderate stress, we can feel more physiologically and physically charged up. We might feel a more heightened sense of clarity and alertness and feel more motivation to perform well,” Beckjord said.

Remember that stress brings valuable life benefits

“Stress can lead to increased resilience, and an ability to manage and respond to life stressors and to adaptively manage life situations in general,” Beckjord said.

Even in a stressful situation like losing a loved one, you can find things you can learn or changes you can make. “That’s really where we find that beneficial things happen as a result of stress — when we can take those moments of stress and learn from them and grow from them,” Beckjord said.

Stress can give you an increased ability to tolerate and adapt to life’s challenges and changes. It can give you self-confidence in your ability to manage the next stressful event you face. It can also make you more comfortable in taking reasonable risks that might lead to personal and professional growth.

Reframe how you perceive stress

Try to reframe stress as something that can be helpful. You might perceive losing your job as negative. “But sometimes losing your job can be the catalyst that you need to spur you on to doing what you really wanted to do,” Wright said. “How we interpret events is really the critical component. If you’re always thinking from this lens that it’s bad, then it’s always going to be bad.”

Beckjord agreed. “Once you start perceiving stress as something negative, it can quickly devolve into catastrophizing about it and leading to that feeling of overwhelm and that fight, flight or freeze response,” she said.

If you can think of it as something temporary, something you’ve overcome before, and your body’s way of telling you to pay attention, stress doesn’t feel so negative.

Focus on the things you can control

“It’s really important to cognitively shift to focusing on what you have control over in a given situation. That can help keep stress in that kind of moderate, manageable level,” Beckjord said.

Take climate change, for example. “There are lots of things related to climate change that are out of our control. We don’t set the laws, and we can’t control the companies. But what we can do is recycle. We can use a hybrid car. We can support politicians and companies that are engaged in climate change,” Wright said. Focusing on what you can control gives you more agency and less of a sense of hopelessness.

Here’s what to do when stress gets to be too much

Stress at a constant high level is not helpful or beneficial. So, as much as possible, you want to take steps to reduce chronic stress and give yourself breaks in between stressful events or situations:

• Cover the basics — eat right, drink enough water, get enough sleep and make time for the things you enjoy doing.

• If you’re feeling stress physically — you grit your teeth, tense your muscles or have headaches — try stress-reduction techniques like walking and diaphragmatic breathing to reduce that physical response.

• If you’re feeling emotionally stressed — you’re overwhelmed or facing the fight, flight or freeze response — try self-soothing activities, stay socially connected, connect spiritually, meditate or listen to music.

• Know what’s right for you. “Some people are naturally more resilient and can respond more effectively to stressors, where others may require more learned skills,” Beckjord said. Moderate doses of stress, over time and with breaks, can build that resilience.

The post Some stress is actually good for you. Here’s how to get better at dealing with it appeared first on TODAY