✒ Microstress is far less obvious than stress, which virtually everyone can recognize and have sympathy for.
It’s caused by difficult moments that we register as just another bump in the road — if we register them at all.
Microstresses come at us so quickly, and we’re so conditioned to just working through them, that we barely recognize anything has happened. They tend to seem fleeting, simple to deal with, or too minor to hurt us for more than a second.
The three broad categories are microstress that:
- drain your capacity to get things done;
- deplete your emotional reserves;
- challenge your identity.
Even when we do register microstress, we don’t necessarily think about its impact on our lives. Making it even harder to recognize is the fact that microstress is often triggered by the people we are closest to.
Understanding the toll of microstress doesn’t make us immune to it. On top of the conventional advice for improving our well-being by steeling ourselves again stress (e.g. through mindfulness, meditation, or gratitude), the author also suggested that we:
- Push back on microstress in concrete, practical ways;
- Be attuned to the microstress you are cusing others; and
- Rise above (i.e. learn to keep some of them in perspective and let things that bother you just roll off your back).