The surprising role of challenge in self-care

We're often told to relax and unwind to cope with stress, but that's only part of the equation. If we fail to foster the other side—the capacity to struggle and expand our resilience—the endless quest for relaxation can weaken our capacity to handle stressors. However, by intentionally challenging our minds and bodies in the right ways, we can train our resilience and strengthen our ability to overcome life’s inevitable challenges.

 Optimal Struggle Is Key

“The ability to struggle and overcome is in our DNA,” explains Rachel Oblak, a licensed clinical mental health counselor (LCMHC), who specializes in recovery and resilience issues related to trauma, burnout, secondary traumatic stress, and post-cult recovery. “Struggle that falls within our growth edge feels exhilarating to conquer. We suffer without it.”

Many of us have been conditioned to see struggle as bad. If we feel uncomfortable, we tend to assume something’s wrong. But a certain amount of stress isn’t just helpful—it’s necessary. In fact, a lack of healthy struggle can feed depression, anxiety, or destructive behavior, just as much as too much adversity can.

“You’ve heard about a victory high—that’s a struggle high,” says Rachel. “Your brain rewards you for optimal struggle, just as it rewards you for other survival behaviors, like eating when you’re hungry.”

The Art of Safe Discomfort

One of the most overlooked forms of resilience training is play. Not productivity, not perfection—play.

Animals, including humans, use play to learn skills, regulate emotions, negotiate conflict, and build confidence. Adults often abandon play in favor of efficiency, but playful struggle is one of the most powerful ways to retrain your nervous system. It gives permission to be silly, start imperfectly, and take risks.

Things like trying a new hobby, taking a dance or improv class, doing an escape room, playing a high-stakes game of chess, or other ways of engaging in activities that create excitement, curiosity, and a dash of frustration or fear amidst fun are all playful ways to hone your capacity under non-threatening pressure.  

 When Adrenaline Assists You

Your nervous system is designed to adapt. It ramps up to meet a challenge and then settles back down. If you avoid all discomfort, you lose the opportunity to experience survivability. On the other hand, when you intentionally move through a challenge, your body learns that activation is survivable—sometimes even fun.

Engaging in activities such as rock climbing, trail running, martial arts, playing music at a recital, public speaking, or performing in a play temporarily raises your heart rate and activates your stress response. Many of us associate adrenaline with dread, but in the right dose, it enhances our performance.

The key is that the stress is time-limited and contained, giving your nervous system the chance to complete the stress cycle. Your nervous system doesn’t just need to calm down; it needs to know it can ramp up, meet the challenge, and then recover. That’s where true adaptability lives.

“Over time, you may notice that you recover from stressors more quickly or aren’t shaken by things that previously would’ve overwhelmed you,” explains Dr. Sarah Paquette, the owner of Compass Chiropractic in Richmond, VT, where she and Dr. Nicole Bonneau Lee use chiropractic care to help patients rebalance their nervous systems and improve the brain’s communication with the body. “You can feel activated and still be okay. You’re building on your experience of accomplishment and problem-solving in real time. That’s resilience.”

 Avoiding Burnout

Training resilience starts like training for any other ability: with enough high-quality food, water, and rest to fuel and energize you. “That foundation—nutrition, rest, supportive care—is not the end goal, it’s the starting line,” says Dr. Sarah.

We also need to recognize that resilience training is not a prescription for pushing through burnout. If you’re exhausted to your core, feeling numb, depleted, or resentful in ways that feel foreign to you, your first step is not to sign up for more of anything. Burnout is a signal to reassess the load you’re carrying. Sometimes, resilience begins with subtraction, removing, or renegotiating what is unsustainable.

“When you’re really living your life, stress is unavoidable; that’s not the problem,” Dr. Sarah says. “The problem is living a life where stress is unremitting and uncontained. We wouldn’t expect anyone to run a marathon every day or let our cars drive indefinitely without an oil change. How can we possibly expect the same of ourselves?”

 Seek Professional Support

This is where professional support can be invaluable for your mind and body. Therapy provides space to process and change patterns fueling chronic stress, while chiropractic, massage, and other forms of body-focused care can address the physical manifestations of prolonged tension.

And even when you’re not at the point of burnout, balancing self-care is still essential. “Resilience requires a pendulation between striving and recovery, seeking and retreating, expanding and consolidating,” says Rachel. Quieter practices such as journaling, art, spirituality, and therapy help you integrate your gains, preparing you for the next phase of growth. 

Struggle without reflection can become punishment. Struggle with awareness fosters transformation.

 Integrate Growth and Rest

The cultural conversation needs to shift. Society has made important strides in elevating the value of relaxation, safety, and peace, but if the focus is solely on destressing, we risk stagnation. We can neither eschew softness nor constantly push. Integrating growth with rest honors both halves of our nervous systems—the part that calms, and the part that mobilizes to strive or seek. We become more adaptable, more confident, and more alive. We thrive. 

Resilience is not about grinding yourself into the ground. It’s about choosing your challenges wisely, training thoughtfully, and trusting that your body and mind were built to do it all—struggle, conquer, rest, recover, and grow.

Rachel Oblak, LCMHC

8031 Williston Road, Suite 2

Williston, VT 05495

www.racheloblak.com

Dr. Sarah Paquette 

Compass Chiropractic

1151 W. Main Street

Richmond, VT

www.compasschirovt.com