Episode 21: The Three Types of Stress and Why They Matter

Stress is not a personal failure, it’s a human experience. Unfortunately, the message many of us are absorbing is that if we’re stressed, we must be doing something wrong. Today, I’m breaking down how stress actually works in the nervous system, why some stress helps us grow, why some stress starts to wear us down, and how the presence or absence of support is often the real difference between coping and burning out, especially in parenting.

In this episode, I explore:

• Why stress itself isn’t the problem and how the belief that it should be eliminated keeps parents stuck in shame
• Positive stress and why it’s essential for resilience, confidence, and growth
• How tolerable stress shows up in parenting seasons and why support, not strength, is what keeps it manageable
• The factors that turn stress toxic and why so many parents are living there without realizing it
• Why being “regulated” doesn’t mean calm, and what capacity really looks like in real life with kids

I hope this conversation helps you soften any self-blame. The next time you feel stressed, ask yourself: what does my system need right now? If you know a fellow parent who may need this reminder, send this episode their way. For additional support in your parenting journey, visit parentingthroughconnection.ca to access a library of resources as well as 1:1 coaching support. You don’t have to do this alone. 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Parenting Through Connection. I'm Megan, a parenting coach and mom, navigating the ups and downs of raising kids in a way that feels connected, compassionate, and true to who we really are. This is the place where we ditch the shame, embrace our humanity, and explore what it really means to parent with intention. From toddlers to teens. Whether you're here for practical tips, heartfelt stories, or a reminder that there's no such thing as a bad parent, you're in the right place. Let's dive in and learn together so we can thrive in parenting. Welcome back to the podcast for our first episode of 2026. And so today I want to talk a bit more about stress. And not in the way that we've been hearing a lot about it right now. I feel like it's kind of everywhere. What can we do? You know, how can we regulate? All of those things. But what a lot of the noise kind of makes us believe is that we should never feel stress. That stress is something we need to, you know, eliminate fully or avoid fully. And if we're not doing that, if we're feeling stress in any area of our life, including parenting, then somehow we're doing it wrong. That we're failing at it in some way, or we should be doing something better. But really, stress is part of being human. And stress is actually necessary. We need stress to build capacity, to have resilience, to go out and actually succeed in the world, succeed in our relationships. And if you're parenting, working, caregiving, just being in the world right now, stress is going to be present. And when we talk about regulation, regulation doesn't actually mean that there's no stress. What it means is that even when you feel stress, you have the capacity to still move forward, to navigate it, to take action, make choices. Basically, you're still good to go. And so today I want to kind of talk to you about what this looks like, about kind of the three main types of stress that you experience. And those are positive stress, tolerable stress, and toxic stress. And I want to elaborate a bit more as well about what makes stress tolerable or toxic. Because all these kinds of stress can make us feel a bit uncomfortable. But the tolerable versus toxic, that's where I find parenting kind of lands a lot too. So I'm not going to talk about, you know, what more you have to do, but it's about how we can support our systems and recognize what's going on with these different types of stress. So let's get started. So before we break this down, I do want to just talk a bit about what stress actually is. So stress is a nervous system response. It is, I say, kind of one of the modes of our brain, our stress brain. It is your body responding to demand, change, or challenge. And again, it's not a bad thing at all the time. We need stress to grow, adapt, survive. The problem isn't feeling stress. It's when we are feeling stress without a way out. We don't feel supported. We don't feel like we have enough resources. We don't feel like we can ever recover from this stress. That's when we start to feel overwhelmed, exhausted, unmanageable. Those types of things start to creep in. So let's talk about those three types that I mentioned. So the first type is that positive stress. So positive stress, you can start to recognize it because it is short-lived, it's manageable, and it happens within a context of safety. So these are things like trying something new, like a new hobby, maybe a new sport. Maybe you have to give a presentation at work. Maybe it's a little uncomfortable, but you know everybody, you like everybody, you feel safe with everybody. Maybe you're starting a new routine. Maybe your child is learning to ride a bike, or they feel nervous on that first day of school. Positive stress, it activates our nervous system, but it doesn't overwhelm it. And it's very easy for us to kind of get activated, but then return back to baseline. And there's usually a little bit of excitement mixed in with that stress. And most importantly, like I said, we feel safe. We feel supported. Maybe it's internal support, like confidence, past experiences, or external support like encouragement, reassurance, somebody nearby that we feel safe with. Positive stress is what helps build that resilience. Resilience is just that fancy term for our capacity to deal with stress. Positive stress is one of the most simplest ways that our nervous systems learn. I can do hard things and I'm okay at this. This is the kind of stress that grows us. Now the second type that we move into is tolerable stress. Tolerable stress is more intense, it's more uncomfortable, and it tends to last a little bit longer. And we usually need to bring in a bit more of those skills. It can involve challenges like a move, a loss, maybe a health issue, maybe financial strain, this really tough season of parenting. Maybe your child's going through a hard phase and there's a lot of behaviors. And this kind of stress impacts our nervous system by feeling heavy. It does feel exhausting. And it's the kind of stress that starts to kind of push us out of our capacity. Say we start to hit like that edges. We start getting irritable, frustrated, we're quicker to snap, those types of things. But the key difference between tolerable and that shift into toxic is support. So you can experience the exact same thing. But if you have support, like someone who listens, someone who believes you, practical help, coaching, therapy, community, rest, all of those things. When support is present and it's the support that works for you, your nervous system can then move through that stress instead of getting stuck. And this is where sometimes we can stumble because a lot of us parents have been taught, and so then we think that we should be able to handle tolerable stress on our own. And then when we can't, when we're having that really hard season, when we're having that really hard phase with our kids, and we're not doing great, we're feeling that stress, that uncomfortable stress, we then assume there's something wrong with us. That, you know, we're somehow not doing things right, that we're bad parents, that we're failing at parenting, kind of all those things pop up. But I want you to know right here that tolerable stress is only tolerable because of support. It has nothing to do with being stronger than someone else. And this leads me to that third type, that toxic stress. Toxic stress is that intense, ongoing stress without support or recovery. And this can look like chronic overwhelm, feeling constantly on edge, never getting a break, parenting without support, you know, living in that survival mode or feeling alone with way too much responsibility. This kind of stress means that your nervous system does not get a chance to settle. You don't get any safety signals, you can't pause, you don't have space or capacity to recover. And over time, toxic stress is what impacts our mental health, our physical health, our emotional regulation, our relationships. It's what makes us feel like those small things are really big, where we have no patience, where the thought of connecting or playing or doing all those things, you know, we see that we should do feels so overwhelming, so hard. This is what toxic stress starts to show. And again, this isn't because you're not good enough or strong enough or doing you know what you should be doing. This is because you are not getting that support. You are doing too much with too little support for too long. And this is where many parents are actually living. Because again, we've been taught you should be doing this alone. And the main difference between the two is support. Again, it is the exact same experience. But if you have one parent over here who is supported, in whatever way that looks like for them, that stress is gonna stay tolerable, they're gonna be able to get through it, they're gonna be able to get back to regulation, and they're gonna be able to move on. This other parent over here has no support or very little support, that exact same situation is going to now turn toxic. Same thing. The only difference, this is the most important takeaway you can have from this, is support. Not doing it better, not doing more, not trying harder. Because support helps our nervous systems feel less alone. It provides those moments of regulation, of pause, of recovery. It allows us to feel safe even when life is still hard. It doesn't mean your child stops going through their hard phase. It doesn't mean your harder season stops all of a sudden, but it means that you can feel safe despite all of that. And this is also why regulated does not mean calm all the time. It means capacity. It means stress can come and go without completely overwhelming you. It means you can feel stressed. You can have those moments where your kids are so much, but you can still stay connected to them. You can still stay connected to yourself. It means that you can recover more easily when you do have really big stressful moments. And so if you're listening to this and you're realizing that your stress has tipped into something that feels heavy or unmanageable, and you're sitting here recognizing that you are within toxic stress and it seems never-ending or ongoing, and you don't have enough support. I want you to know that you deserve it. And even if you recognize you're in tolerable stress with your parenting, that you're getting those thoughts of, I should be able to do this, I just need to be stronger. You also deserve support. And that might look like nervous system work, coaching, community, or even just naming that what's going on is a lot. Because stress is a part of being human, but so is safety and so is regulation during that stress. And you deserve to be supported while you move through it. And as always, I'm here to help you if you need it. I want to thank you so much for being here, and I look forward to you joining next time.