Stress is part of life. In the right amount, and at the right time, it can protect us, motivate us, and prepare us to deal with danger. But stress becomes harmful when it continues long after the danger has passed, when it is repeatedly triggered by memories, or when our mind and body remain on alert for too long.

When the brain interprets something as a threat, it activates the body’s stress systems. One of these is the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal, or HPA, axis, which eventually leads to the release of cortisol. At the same time, adrenaline and noradrenaline help prepare the body for action. Heart rate may rise, muscles may tense, attention may narrow, and the body becomes ready to fight, flee, or protect itself.

This response is extremely useful when danger is real and immediate. The problem is that the human brain does not respond only to what is happening now. A memory, thought, expectation, or old injury can also activate a stress response. Someone may have insulted, betrayed, frightened, rejected, or hurt us years ago. The event is over, yet remembering it may still produce anger, fear, humiliation, tension, or resentment. The body can respond again even though the original situation is no longer happening.

This raises an important question: if stressful thoughts and memories can repeatedly activate our stress system, can we also deliberately introduce experiences that move us in the opposite direction? I think this is worth considering.

What is an “anti-stress” activity?

I use the term anti-stress activity as a simple practical expression, not as a medical diagnosis or scientific category. Such an activity can be a deliberate thought or behavior that helps move us away from prolonged threat, hostility, rumination, and tension, and toward calm, connection, safety, meaning, or acceptance.

It does not replace treatment. Persistent anxiety, depression, PTSD, severe trauma, or other mental health difficulties may need professional care. But alongside treatment, exercise, sleep, relaxation, and other established ways of managing stress, there may also be value in something much simpler:

Do one small anti-stress activity every day.

Not ten things. Not a complete transformation of your life. Just one. For example:

Forgive one person

Forgiveness is one example. By forgiveness, I mean something quite specific, a bit like: “I am choosing to forgive this person, and I no longer want to carry a grudge against them.” Then smile to yourself from the core of your heart, just to confirm that it is done.

Holding a grudge often means that the event continues to occupy mental space. We replay what happened, imagine conversations, revisit the injustice, and react emotionally each time. Forgiveness can begin to loosen that continuing connection. The past event remains part of our history, but we stop giving it the same power over our present.

From a biological perspective, this matters because repeated anger, rumination, and threat appraisal can sustain physiological arousal. When those processes decrease, the stress response has a greater opportunity to settle. Cortisol and sympathetic arousal may decrease, while the parasympathetic, or “rest and recover,” side of the nervous system has more opportunity to operate.

Forgiveness is therefore not simply a moral act toward another person. It can also be an act of release for ourselves. But what if I cannot forgive? Some injuries are profound. Telling someone who has experienced abuse, betrayal, violence, or severe trauma that they “should forgive” can itself be unhelpful. Forgiveness cannot be forced.

But there may be another psychological step available. We can begin to change the identity, or present meaning, we give to the memory. This is not the same as forgiveness. A painful memory may have become identified in the mind as danger or threat—something we still need to fight. But perhaps the event happened five, ten, or twenty years ago. We may gradually learn to identify it differently: this is a painful memory of something that happened before, not a danger happening now.

The history has not changed. The person responsible has not automatically been forgiven. What has changed is the meaning of the memory in the present. Instead of being experienced as a “threat now,” the brain can gradually identify it as a “painful event from the past.” That distinction can be important because our stress response is influenced not only by events themselves, but also by how we appraise them.

So there are two different possibilities. Forgiveness says: I release my grudge toward this person. That is a deeper form of release for someone who is able to do it. If that is not possible, then changing the identity or present meaning of the memory can help too. The second is not forgiveness. But it may still help loosen the grip that the past has on the present.

Similar examples of such anti-stress activities can be helping someone unconditionally, being thankful for one thing, letting one thing go, and so on.

Imagine stress sitting in the center like a sun. Its rays reach into our thoughts, emotions, body, sleep, relationships, and behavior. We cannot always remove that sun. But perhaps we can deliberately place other forces around it. These are not magic treatments. They cannot erase trauma or solve every external problem. But they can repeatedly introduce something that prolonged stress often lacks: safety, connection, perspective, meaning, and release. And that matters biologically too.