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Presenter: Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to our daily programme, Tips from Psychologists. Today in our studio we have Lisa Black, Ph.D., the author of the international bestsellers Parenting, and Under Pressure. Hello, Lisa!

Lisa Black: Good afternoon. It’s great being here, thank you for inviting me here today.

Presenter: In your books, you speak about stress as a positive force. Why?

Lisa Black: Basically, stress is what happens when people operate at the edge of their capacities. Think of weightlifting  — you cannot build muscle unless you strain those muscles. Similarly, you cannot get smarter unless you are doing work that is uncomfortably difficult. Numerous research show that almost everyone who takes a new job that is hard feels stressed because of it, but six months later, they are better and smarter than they were six months prior. That means stress can actually do you good.

Presenter: Why do modern people want their children to lead a stress-⁠free life then?

Lisa Black: You see, stress is good and healthy as long as it is neither too little, nor too great. You don’t want a stress-⁠free environment for yourself or your children. You also don’t want to be overwhelmed by stress. There is chronic stress. There is traumatic stress. There are forms of stress that are over a line that is no longer healthy. We’ve lost sight of that line, and we’ve lost sight of the true benefits of stress in terms of promoting growth and durability.

Presenter: Do you have many teenagers who come to you because they suffer from stress and anxiety?

Lisa Black: Well, I definitely have a lot of kids who come in and say that they have anxiety. I tell them that everybody has anxiety. That’s how you cross the street without getting hit by cars. That’s how you get your work done because, eventually, after watching Friends for the hundredth time, you become sufficiently anxious about the work that you have to do, that you turn it off and go do the work.

Anxiety is what protects you from yourself and the world around you.

Presenter: What’s a healthy way for parents to respond when their kids are upset?

Lisa Black: When teenagers feel that they are facing a problem, but it is not an actual crisis, there may be some room to play worst-⁠case scenario. If a kid comes home and says, "There will be no one for me to sit with at lunch tomorrow," the parent can think through with the child, "Let’s say that happens, what would you do?" The key thing in this is the tune, not the lyrics, for the parent. The tone in which they engage this conversation must be one of interest, yet comfort with the reality that their child may arrive at school and have no one to sit with at lunch. That’s where the critical work gets done  — turning something that the child has declared unbearable into something that is merely a hassle.

Presenter: How do parents help themselves not to overreact?

Lisa Black: Parents often have an idea that their children should not be uncomfortable, and if the child is uncomfortable, that has to be stopped. As wellmeaning and loving as that is, that is a fundamentally handicapping view of what it means to be human. The most durable human beings can tolerate a pretty high level of discomfort. They don’t like it, but it doesn’t frighten them. If you think about any hard work you’ve accomplished, it’s not fun. We have to reject the idea that it’s a problem for our kids to be uncomfortable. That is driving a lot of what’s not working so well for our kids right now.

Presenter: Thank you very much, Lisa. You’ve given our listeners plenty of useful information to think about.

Lisa Black: Thank you.

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