Tl;dr: Stress is the feeling of being pressured or challenged. It makes executive dysfunction worse, but is also made worse by executive dysfunction on a biological level. This creates a negative feedback loop, but improving executive dysfunction and reducing stress both help break out of it.
What do you think about when you hear the word “stress”? You might think of arguments with friends or frustration with your favorite game. Or, you might think of problems at work or worries about money. All of these are types of stress and they can have significant impacts on executive functioning abilities. However, executive dysfunction can have more of an impact than you might know!
- What is stress, really?
- Stress makes executive dysfunction worse.
- …but executive dysfunction also makes stress worse.
- Breaking the feedback loop.
What is stress, really?
Let’s break this down to start. Stress is the feeling of being pressured or challenged. Your reaction to this stress is your “stress response.” Stress can come from many possible causes, but there are two which are most common: “Psychosocial” and “physiological”. In other words, stress is caused by your thoughts, emotions, and social interactions, or caused by your body. These range from arguments, to depression or anxiety, to even abuse. Physically, you might be injured, your heart rate may be fast, or you might simply be a bit gassy. Notably, pain is both a cause of stress but is also a form of physical stress itself.
Even more important than the cause of stress is the intensity and duration of that stress. Intensity has obvious effects: The more intense, the stronger the impact. Duration has more complicated effects, and I will split it into two main categories: Acute and chronic stress. Acute stress is brief and short-term, such as a single argument or stubbing your toe. Chronic stress is sustained and long-term, through problems like financial instability or repeated arguments.
Acute stress is generally more manageable, especially at lower levels. You can typically handle lower levels of stress well with support, giving you a chance to develop coping strategies for stress. Chronic stress is far less manageable, as it prevents your mind and body from taking a break and resting properly. Outside of executive functioning, it typically has serious long-term health effects and should be well-managed or, ideally, prevented. However, stress also has a substantial impact on executive dysfunction.
Stress makes executive dysfunction worse.
Concepts like cognitive overhead might seem to explain how stress makes executive dysfunction worse. However, the relationship is more complicated than it might seem! Acute and chronic stress have different impacts on executive functioning and need different approaches.
Unsurprisingly, chronic stress typically has the harshest impact on executive functioning abilities. This type of stress causes a lot of difficulty with selective attention (and self-direction) and short-term (or “working”) memory. It also reduces “response inhibition,” making it harder to prevent your first reaction to an emotion or other event. Interestingly, moderate and manageable levels of stress can actually improve working memory. Remember, lower levels of stress give us a chance to develop coping strategies and can make us more resilient!
Acute stress does tend to cause similar problems as chronic stress. When a stressful situation happens, it impairs your working memory along with your ability to intentionally switch your focus. It also causes you to interpret situations more reactively rather than thinking through them. However, you also have more specific control of your actions based on that intrepretation. Unfortunately, while this makes acute stress less of a problem than chronic stress, it doesn’t overcome the other problems.
…but executive dysfunction also makes stress worse.
It isn’t surprising that executive dysfunction causes stress to be worse. Executive dysfunction often causes us to lose track of our work and responsibilities, completing them later than intended. Not only that, but it causes increased challenges with emotional regulation. These have direct impacts on the amount of stress we experience, creating a feedback loop.
Surprisingly, the link goes deeper than this. Researchers published a fascinating study in 2019, exploring links between stress, pain, and executive dysfunction. They found that executive functioning uses the same brain circuitry as stress and pain regulation. You can compare this to passengers on a bus. A bus has a limited amount of room, so the more passengers there are to take care of stress, the less room there is for passengers taking care of executive functioning. Not only that, but this applies in addition to executive dysfunction causing more stressors.
Given this, it isn’t surprising that executive functioning ability directly connects to how much stress affects you. In fact, better executive functioning during stressful circumstances appears to help protect you from negative stress and health outcomes. This even includes longer-term circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the 2019 study mentioned earlier found that impaired executive functioning could even cause and maintain types of chronic pain.
Breaking the feedback loop.
The negative feedback loop should be obvious. Executive dysfunction and stress both feed into each other, making both worse. This is a problem if left unchecked, but fortunately it also works in your favor! If your stress is reduced or your executive functioning improves, both can also improve as a consequence.
Improving stress is the first main option for breaking the negative feedback loop. Research on rodents has shown that removal of major stressors can result in the brain physically recovering within only weeks. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (or “CBT”) is one of the most well-researched methods of doing this. CBT helps practice and improve coping strategies such as cognitive reframing: Changing your perspective to understand a situation differently. Other methods such as expressive writing and mindfulness can also help executive dysfunction, while exposure therapy particularly helps PTSD and anxiety. The best option to handle stress is through “engagement coping,” using adaptive responses that directly address the cause of stress.
Improving executive dysfunction also clearly improves the feedback loop. Fortunately, if you’re looking to improve your executive dysfunction, you’ve come to the right place! Overall, improving executive dysfunction is a process of managing cognitive overhead. Many articles here address this, through practical tips as well as deeper dives into specific topics such as task switching.
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