Chronic stressors, such as daily traffic jams or an abusive boss, are undeniably in the chronic range and lead to negative outcomes.

“The other curve that's sort of perpendicular to this is dealing with the fact that sometimes stress is a great thing. Like our goal is not to cure people of stress because if it's a right kind, we love it. We pay good money to be stressed that way by a scary movie or a rollercoaster ride. What you wind up seeing is when it's the right amount of stress, it's what we call stimulation. And the basic curve there is, here is an optimal level of stimulation and too little, and function goes down with what we would call boredom, and too much and function goes down with what we would call stress. And the optimum is what all of us aim for.”