Stop Calling Distress “Resilience”: Rethinking Anxiety in School Settings

Key Idea:
Not all stress is harmful — but not all stress is helpful. Eustress fuels growth, curiosity, and healthy challenge. Distress overwhelms the nervous system, shuts down learning, and signals that the environment isn’t safe. In many school settings, these two forms of stress are conflated, leading adults to pathologize or dismiss student anxiety rather than understand what it communicates. Supporting young people well requires distinguishing growth-oriented challenge from harm-based distress — and responding accordingly.

Inspired by a powerful insight from a LinkedIn post by Je’Anna Clements, this article takes a closer look at a crucial distinction that many school systems miss: the difference between eustress (helpful, manageable stress) and distress (harmful, overwhelming stress).

This conversation has resurfaced in response to a recent Teachers College article (Teachers College, Columbia University) titled “Schools Are Accommodating Student Anxiety — and Making It Worse.” But the framing misses something fundamental: not all anxiety is pathological. Sometimes it is a healthy, protective response to an environment that genuinely feels unsafe or misaligned with a student’s needs.

In many cases, the issue isn’t that kids are “too anxious.”
It’s that the environment is too distressing.

Eustress vs. Distress: Why They Cannot Be Treated the Same

The distinction between eustress and distress is well-documented in stress research, including foundational studies such as the Yerkes–Dodson law, which illustrates how optimal performance occurs at moderate, manageable levels of stress — not at extremes.

Eustress: Stress That Promotes Growth

Eustress:

• feels challenging but doable

• includes a sense of agency or choice

• happens in supportive environments

• leads to mastery, confidence, and genuine resilience

Examples in school:

• preparing for a presentation in a class where the student feels known

• engaging with a hard but interesting project

• taking intellectual risks in a psychologically safe environment

Eustress expands a young person’s capacity and readiness to grow.

Distress: Stress That Harms Learning and Well-Being

Distress:

• overwhelms the nervous system

• triggers fight, flight, freeze, or shutdown

• reduces cognitive functioning and learning capacity

• often leads to avoidance, panic, or emotional dysregulation

Examples in school:

• high-stakes testing environments

• chronic fear of humiliation or failure

• rigid behavioral norms that penalize normal variations in attention, movement, or disclosure

• workloads that exceed developmental readiness

Distress shrinks capacity and leads to protective behaviors that are often misunderstood as misbehavior or “avoidance.”

School-Related Anxiety Is Often Protective, Not Pathological

According to research from the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University, anxiety plays a key adaptive role: it alerts humans to threat or misalignment. When a student feels intense anxiety around school, the right question isn’t, “How do we make them go anyway?” but “What is their nervous system trying to tell us?”

Situational school anxiety often arises because:

• academic demands exceed developmental readiness

• the social environment feels unpredictable or unsafe

• expectations require self-betrayal or masking

• movement, rest, and autonomy needs aren’t met

• the student’s nervous system is in a chronic state of activation

In these contexts, anxiety is a signal, not a disorder.

Pathologizing it — or minimizing it — compounds the distress.

The Common Misinterpretation: Distress Is Labeled as Lack of Resilience

Many schools celebrate “grit” and “growth mindset,” yet simultaneously ignore the conditions required for students to actually experience healthy challenge.

Statements like:

• “They just need to push through.”

• “They’re avoiding hard things.”

• “Kids today are too sensitive.”

…reflect a misunderstanding of nervous-system science.

Students don’t develop resilience by being forced into distress.
They develop resilience when they encounter manageable challenges in safe, trusting relationships.

This aligns with research from Dr. Bruce Perry on the importance of relational safety, and Dr. Stephen Porges on polyvagal theory, which shows that learning is only accessible when the nervous system perceives safety.

How Schools Can Create More Eustress and Less Distress

The good news is that schools can make practical shifts that reduce distress while preserving meaningful challenge.

1. Prioritize Psychological Safety

According to the APA (American Psychological Association), psychological safety is the foundation for cognitive engagement. Schools can:

• build relational trust

• reduce public shaming or punitive practices

• adopt trauma-informed approaches

2. Increase Agency and Flexibility

Challenge becomes eustress when students have:

• choices in how they work

• reasonable control over pacing

• collaborative relationships with adults

Research on motivation (Deci & Ryan, Self-Determination Theory) consistently shows that autonomy enhances engagement and resilience.

3. Normalize Human Variability

Expecting all students to perform identically disregards neuroscience. Reducing rigidity lowers unnecessary distress.

4. Teach Nervous System Literacy

Students and adults alike benefit from understanding:

• how stress works

• what overwhelm looks/feels like

• regulation strategies that don’t rely on compliance

This aligns with emerging research on interoception and self-regulation.

5. Align Demands With Development

Developmentally grounded expectations — informed by cognitive science and child development research — reduce distress and create space for healthy challenge.

The Outcome: More True Resilience, Not Forced Resilience

When schools distinguish eustress from distress and redesign environments accordingly, students become more resilient, not less. They gain:

• authentic motivation

• stronger internal coping tools

• better emotional regulation

• increased capacity for challenge

• deeper engagement

Resilience grows in relational, safe, supportive contexts — not in environments that mistake overwhelm for opportunity.