opinion essay about stress

Essays About Stress: 5 Examples and 7 Helpful Prompts

Stress deals with various sensitive matters and is a popular topic. See our top examples of essays about stress and prompts to assist in your writing.

Stress is a poison that gradually affects a person’s mental and physical health. It’s a common problem in all aspects of life, with money being the top stressor. There’s also a spectrum of stress, but chronic stress is the most dangerous of all types and levels. It can lead to health problems such as high blood pressure, anxiety disorders, heart disease, and more.

5 Essay Examples 

1. post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use disorders by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 2. coping up with stress by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 3. stress management: how stress can cause mental illness and how to treat it by anonymous on papersowl.com, 4. assessing the personal stress levels by anonymous on ivypanda.com, 5. sources of stress in youths by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 1. what is stress, 2. good stress vs. bad stress, 3. how stress can affect our daily lives, 4. the impact of stress on children, 5. what is financial stress, 6. the importance of stress management, 7. stress and health problems.

“…the self-medication hypothesis… is supportive to healthcare as it offers a clear pathway to sufferers from existing addiction, which, in turn, enhances the bond between specialists and victims, it improves access to dosages, and it may also decrease the cost of a prescribed drug.”

In this essay, the writer investigates the leading causes of stress and substance abuse resulting from a disorder. They note that stress, anxiety, and depression often develop after divorce, widowhood, disasters, and other traumatic events. 

To show the relationship between post-traumatic stress disorder and substance use, the author adds statistics and situations in which people who have gone through a separation or sexual abuse utilize self-medication, drugs, and alcohol to forget what happened to them. However, this brief escapes lead to addiction. Ultimately, the writer believes that developing stress, anxiety, and depression coping alternatives will reduce the number of people addicted to substances.

Do you want to write about depression? Check out our guide on how to write essays about depression .

“Stress coping and management is essential to have a healthy life. We need to manage stress effectively to avoid the side effects that can arise if not managed effectively. Let’s prioritize on our tasks, manage a healthy lifestyle, have time for fun and for one another, and practice the 4A’s of stress management to have a stress free life.”

This essay shares that stress can be beneficial as it teaches a person to handle difficult situations. However, stress becomes dangerous when it starts to control someone’s life. That’s why it’s vital to manage stress depending on its severity. 

To effectively cope with stress, the author suggests having a balanced diet, exercising regularly, and writing in journals. They also mention the importance of talking to a professional and identifying and avoiding the primary source of stress. 

“When people get stressed out, they try many coping mechanisms, and that usually helps a decent amount, however for some, the stress can be too overwhelming. That being said, stress is seen to have a very significant link to mental illness, more specifically, schizophrenia.”

In this essay, the author contends that stress is the root cause of some mental illnesses like schizophrenia. To support the claim, the author uses a real-life situation and shows the development of the disease, originating from the simple stress of moving and working in the city. 

The essay presents the different levels of schizophrenia and its symptoms. Then, after offering various sources, the author concludes that the most common way to treat stress and schizophrenia is having someone to spend time with and get therapy. You might also be interested in these essays about leadership .

“… A proper assessment of an individual’s stress levels is a critical factor in their well-being. Physiological and psychological aspects of intense pressure should be carefully studied and checked. Using corresponding methods and tools can be of significant help for the person, providing them with a clear understanding of the problems encountered.”

In this essay, the author discusses tools that help assess stress levels and effective strategies for combating stress. They use the “Symptoms of Stress Methodology” from Stress Management for Life: A Research-Based Experiential Approach and the “Ardell Wellness Stress Test” to determine stress levels and evaluate physiological symptoms. These symptoms assist in constructing effective ways to release stress, including participating in PTSD therapies and getting a service dog.

“Early exposure to stress not only affects children’s social and mental development during their formative years, it also can increase the risk of alcoholism, illicit drug use, adult depression, anxiety, and even heart disease much later in life.”

In this essay, the writer proves that stress can affect people of all ages and genders. However, the author focuses on young people and how quickly it appears in their adult life. According to the author, technostress, the fear of missing out, lack of personal space, and high expectations are the common causes of stress in youths. 

The author strongly discourages using drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol to relieve stress. Instead, they recommend reducing stress by taking regular breaks, replacing big life goals with smaller, more attainable goals, being open and sharing problems with others, and getting professional help.

7 Writing Prompts for Essays About Stress

Stress is a person’s emotional response to pressure to meet standards, commitments, and responsibilities. It usually occurs in a situation or an outcome we fail to manage or control. In your essay, explain what stress is all about and why it’s essential to understand this reaction. Use this prompt to help your readers know the early signs of stress. Then, add ways stress can be managed and avoided, so it doesn’t interfere with daily activities.

Although stress is often connected with bad instances, there’s also “good stress,” or eustress. Eustress pertains to a positive response to a stressor. For example, it happens when one is excited or ecstatic. Meanwhile, bad stress, or “distress,” negatively affects your mental and physical well-being. 

Consider using this prompt to compare and contrast the good and bad stress that people usually experience. Then, give real-life examples and suggest how your readers can effectively handle both eustress and distress.

The effects of stress vary in degree and duration. For example, stress can prevent us from functioning properly at work, home, or anywhere else. It can also affect our relationships with others and with ourselves.

To make your essay relatable, share a personal experience on how stress affects your life. You can also interview others in various professions and statuses to demonstrate the range of which stress affects different individuals.

Stress does not only occur among adults or teenagers. Children can also experience stress at a young age. For instance, a child can succumb to the pressure of adapting to a new environment, getting bullied, and sometimes being separated from loved ones. These can lead to anxiety, trust issues, and depression.

Identify and discuss these factors and why it affects young children. Include recent statistics that show the number of children experiencing stress and additional relevant citations to make your essay credible.

The most recent survey found that 65% of Americans worry about money and the economy’s decline. Pick this prompt to make your essay relevant and informative. Delve into what financial stress is and discuss its typical causes and effects. Then, add the latest percentage of people who experience financial stress and address why it’s a pressing issue.

Stress management offers various strategies to battle stress. First, explain to your readers the importance and effectiveness of proper stress management. Then, include proven and tested methods commonly used to treat stress. You can also share the strategies that have worked for you to persuade your readers that stress management is effective.

Stress causes several physical and mental health problems. Use this prompt to show the importance of treating stress before it worsens and affects a person’s welfare. Include research findings from reliable sources and real-life experiences where someone has damaged their health because of stress. If you’re looking for more ideas, check out our essays about bullying topic guide !

Psychology Discussion

Essay on stress: it’s meaning, effects and coping with stress.

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Essay on Stress: It’s Meaning, Effects and Coping with Stress!

Stress is a very common problem being faced today. Every individual will experience stress in one or the other time.

The term stress has many definitions, Lazarus and Folkman (1984) have defined stress as “an internal state which can be caused by physical demands of body or by environmental and social situations, which are evaluated as potentially harmful, uncontrollable, or exceeding our resources for coping”.

According to David Fontana “stress is a demand made upon the adaptive capacities of the mind and body”.

These definitions indicate that stress represents those conditions under which individuals have demand made upon them, that they cannot physically or psychologically meet, leading to breakdown at one or other of these levels.

Stress is usually thought of in negative terms. But ii can manifest itself in both positive and negative way. It is said to be positive when the situation offers an opportunity for one, to gain something.

Eustress (the Greek word ‘eu’ means good) is the term used to describe positive stress. It is often viewed as motivator, since in its absence the individual lacks the spirit necessary for peak performance. Distress is the term used to indicate negative stress.

Almost any change in the environment- even a pleasant change such as a joyful trip- demands some coping, and a little stress is useful in helping us to adapt. But beyond some point, stress becomes a ‘distress’.

What acts to produce distress varies from person to person, but some events seem to be stressors for every person.

Examples of stressors are:

1. Injury or infections of the body, dangers in environment, major changes or transitions in life which force us to cope in new ways.

2. Physical stressors like noise, pollutions, climatic changes, etc.

3. Hustles of everyday life centering on work, family, social activities, health and finances.

4. Frustrations and conflicts.

The physical, environmental and social causes of the stress state are termed stressors. Once induced by stressors the internal stress state can then lead to various responses. On the other hand, psychological responses such as anxiety, hopelessness, depression, irritability, and a general feeling of not being able to cope with the world, can result from the stress state.

Stress cycles:

Stress has a number of immediate effects. If the stressors are maintained, long-term behavioural, physiological, emotional and cognitive effects occur. If these effects hinder adaptation to the environment or create discomfort and distress, they themselves become stressors and, tend to perpetuate a ‘cycle’ of distress.

Example, a patient spends more money on treatment, may experience continued stress even after the cure of the disease, because repayment of debt cause stress for long time in him or a patient whose leg is amputated after accident may continue to worry about it.

On the other hand, many people have developed ways of coping with stressors, so that they are able to respond adaptively. This is the ‘wellness cycle’. Teaching people adaptive ways of handling stress, so as to promote the wellness cycle is an important part of the newly emerging field of behavioural medicine.

Effects of stress:

Stress is not always harmful. In fact, it is recognised that low levels of stress can even helps for better performance. For example, a student can prepare well for forthcoming examination only if he has some stress. However, excess level of stress is undoubtedly harmful.

The effects of stress are divided into three categories:

a. Physiological effects:

Commonly appearing stress related bodily disorders are-peptic ulcers, hypertension, chronic fatigue, hormonal changes, increased heart rate, difficulty in breathing, numbness of limbs, heart disease and reduction in immunity, etc.

b. Psychological effects:

Anxiety, depression, hopelessness, helplessness, anger, nervousness, irritability, tension and boredom may be experienced.

c. Behavioural changes:

Decreasing efficiency, making mistakes, inability to take decisions, under eating or overeating, sleeplessness, increased smoking, develop addiction to alcohol and drugs, forgetfulness, hypersensitivity or passiveness, accident proneness and interpersonal difficulties are seen.

Stress is linked to disorders such as cancer and heart disorders. There are several mediating variables that determine whether stress becomes dangerous or not. For example, good coping mechanisms which can help to reduce stress, having good social support, often help in reducing stress.

Perception of stress or how a person views stress is also very important. For example, a person may not perceive a situation as stressful whereas the same situation may be perceived as highly stressful by some other person.

People with personality type ‘A’ are more prone to be affected by stress related disorders like cardiovascular diseases. Personality character like hardiness or emotional stability helps to withstand effects of stress.

Hans Selye, a renowned biological scientist defines stress as the nonspecific response of the body to any demand upon it. He termed the body’s response to stressors the “General Adaptation Syndrome” (GAS).

The GAS consists of 3 stages:

1. Alarm reaction:

It is an emergency response of the body. In this stage prompt responses of the body, many of them mediated by the sympathetic nervous system, prepare us to cope with the stressor here and now.

2. Stage of resistance:

If the stressor continues to be present, the stage of resistance begins, wherein the body resists the effects of the continuous stressor. During this stage certain hormonal responses of the body are an important line of defence in resisting the effects of stressors (For example, release of ACTH).

3. Stage of exhaustion:

In this stage, the body’s capacity to respond to both continuous and new stressors has been seriously compromised. The person will no longer be able to face stressor and he will finally succumb to it. The person may develop psychosomatic illness.

The stress leads to many psychosomatic diseases. Treatment for such diseases involves medical help for the physical problems and, at the same time, attention to the psychological factors producing the stress.

Coping with Stress :

There are different ways of coping with stress such as: confronting (facing), distancing (remoteness), self-control, seeking social support, accepting responsibility, escape or avoid (from the stressor), plan a problem solving strategy and positive reappraisal.

Usually two broad type of coping types are seen- Instrumental coping and Emotional coping.

In instrumental coping, a person focuses on the problem and tries to solve it. In emotional coping, the focus is more on the feelings generated by the problem.

Today, self- help remedies, Do to yourself approaches, weight loss clinics and diets, health foods and physical exercise are being given much attention in mass media. People are actually taking more responsibility to maintain good health.

However, some specific techniques to eliminate or to manage more effectively the inevitable, prolonged stress are as follows:

Good physical exercise like walking, jogging, swimming, riding bicycle, playing soft ball, tennis are necessary to cope with stress.

Relaxation:

Whether a person simply takes it easy once in a while or uses specific relaxation techniques such as bio-feedback, or meditation, the intent is to eliminate the immediately stressful situation or manage a prolonged stressful situation more effectively.

Taking it easy may mean curling up with a good book on an easy chair or watching some light programme on television or listening to a light music. Meditation is scientifically proved to be very useful, both physically and mentally to cope with stress.

Behavioural self-control:

By deliberately managing the antecedents and the consequence of their own behaviour, people can achieve self-control. Besides managing their own behaviour to reduce stress, people can also become more aware of their limits and of ‘red flags’ that signal trouble ahead. They can avoid people or situations that they know will put them under stress.

Maladaptive strategies, rigid strategies or relying on one type of coping method lead to increase in the stress. Social support helps reduce the effect of stress. People may provide help, advice, material support or moral support that helps to reduce stress.

In addition to the above, psychotherapy (Beck’s cognitive therapy, Ellis’s rational emotive therapy and Meichenbaum’s stress- inoculation training), skill training, environmental changes, Bio-feedback (control of physical signs such as Blood pressure, headache, etc), family therapy, group therapy, hypnosis, yoga, are found to be very useful. Finally, uses of drugs are some of the other strategies adopted in coping with stress.

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How to Cope with Stress Essay

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Introduction

How do stress and stressors help a person in identifying ways to cope, problem solving approach in coping stress, the identification of the stressor.

According to Aamodt (2009) stress is the psychological and physical reaction to certain life events or situations. Fear, resistance, resentment, change, relations with others, organizational politics, and unfavorable physical environment are the main causes of stress (Aamodt, 2009). Even though stress affects different personalities differently, it could result to grave consequences if not well managed.

Many people often think there is little that can be done about their level of stress. However, the fact is contrary. Individuals should identify their stressors and develop coping strategies aimed at neutralizing and finally eliminating the effects of the stressors. I have in the past adopted various strategies in coping with stress.

There are many stress coping methods. However, individuals often find themselves employing unhealthy and unproductive methods, which end compounding the problem. Such methods include withdrawal from friends and families, use of pills, drinking, smoking, overeating, and taking out of stress on other people. Even though these methods can work, their results are temporary as individuals soon face the reality of the stressor.

Healthier and effective ways of controlling stress require either situation change, or reaction change. Every individual exhibits unique response to stress, which makes it impossible to have a common method of coping. The simplest approaches to coping with stress, which I have used in the past, include problem identification and solving, acceptance, alteration, self-nurturing, and anticipatory approach also suggested by Aldwin (2007).

Problem solving approach is a strategy that its applicability is dependent on the determination of the main cause of stress. Once the stressor is identified, it becomes easy to solve the stress as an individual directs his or her energy towards subduing the stressor. For example, if lack of finances is the main cause of stress, then an individual may seek for new employment to provide for the much-needed cash.

The identification of the stressor also opens a window for an individual to explore other adaptation methods, which can be of help in the future such as avoidance. In anticipatory approach, an individual prepares for possible causes of stress and consequently prepares for them before their actual occurrence. Past trends and acquired knowledge can help an individual in such preparations.

For example, a student subjected to last minute revision pressures and stress for failing to revise in time may expect the same, hence prepare early in the following semesters to avoid going through the same. This method is very effective as an individual can review and continually revise the best method to use every time the stressor reoccurs. Sometimes stressful situations are not only complex, but also impossible to avoid.

It is only prudent for individuals affected to alter and adapt to such situations. This involves finding possible ways of changing an individual’s operation to avoid the stress from reoccurring. For example, stress caused by coworkers could be avoided by expressing ones’ feelings to the specific workers instead of bottling them up. If the desired change is not achieved, then one can go a step further by changing his or her own behaviors.

Stressors such as the death of people we love, fatal accidents, and illness are unavoidable and impossible to ignore. However, letting such stressors take tall of an individual’s life is also unacceptable. In such cases, the best coping strategy is acceptance. Though hard to take, acceptance is the only way out for individuals facing unchangeable life-threatening situations.

There are other effective coping strategies, which even though I have not used, I would consider applying. Self-nurturing is such “effective way of coping with stress” (Aldwin, 2007).

Creating time for fun and relaxing, enhance our ability to copy with life’s unending stressors. It is therefore prudent for an individual to engage frequently in healthy ways of relaxing such as, going for a walk, playing with a pet, going adventures, watching comedies, and lighting scented candles.

Aamodt, M. G. (2009). Industrial/Organizational Psychology: An Applied Approach (6th ed.). Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.

Aldwin, C. M. (2007). Stress, coping, and development: an integrative perspective (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

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110 Stress Management Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

Stress is a common problem that affects people of all ages and backgrounds. Whether it's due to work, school, relationships, or other factors, stress can have a negative impact on our physical and mental health if not managed properly. To help you better understand and cope with stress, here are 110 stress management essay topic ideas and examples:

• The impact of stress on physical health
• The relationship between stress and mental health disorders
• Effective ways to manage stress in the workplace
• The benefits of exercise in reducing stress
• The role of mindfulness and meditation in stress management
• How diet and nutrition can affect your stress levels
• The importance of sleep in coping with stress
• The connection between stress and chronic illnesses
• The impact of stress on academic performance
• Strategies for managing stress during exams
• The role of social support in stress management
• How time management can help reduce stress
• The benefits of relaxation techniques in stress relief
• The link between stress and substance abuse
• Coping with stress in a fast-paced society
• The impact of stress on relationships
• How to communicate effectively to reduce stress
• The benefits of journaling in stress management
• The role of laughter in stress relief
• The impact of technology on stress levels
• Strategies for managing stress in the digital age
• The benefits of nature in reducing stress
• The role of hobbies and interests in stress relief
• The connection between stress and perfectionism
• Coping with stress in a competitive environment
• The benefits of volunteering in stress management
• The impact of financial stress on mental health
• Strategies for managing stress in times of uncertainty
• The benefits of self-care in stress relief
• The role of positive thinking in coping with stress
• The impact of stress on creativity and productivity
• How to set boundaries to reduce stress
• The benefits of setting realistic goals in stress management
• The connection between stress and self-esteem
• Coping with stress in a multicultural society
• The role of cultural practices in stress relief
• The impact of stress on parenting
• Strategies for managing stress as a caregiver
• The benefits of pets in reducing stress
• The link between stress and sleep disorders
• Coping with stress in the LGBTQ+ community
• The role of therapy in stress management
• The benefits of art therapy in stress relief
• The connection between stress and trauma
• Strategies for managing stress after a traumatic event
• The impact of stress on the immune system
• The benefits of mindfulness-based stress reduction programs
• The role of exercise in stress management for older adults
• Coping with stress in retirement
• The link between stress and memory loss
• The benefits of cognitive-behavioral therapy in stress relief
• The connection between stress and social media
• Strategies for managing stress in a virtual world
• The impact of stress on decision-making
• The benefits of deep breathing exercises in stress management
• The role of music in reducing stress
• Coping with stress during a crisis
• The link between stress and eating disorders
• The benefits of aromatherapy in stress relief
• The connection between stress and chronic pain
• Strategies for managing stress in chronic illness
• The impact of stress on the cardiovascular system
• The benefits of biofeedback in stress management
• The role of resilience in coping with stress
• Coping with stress in the military
• The link between stress and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• The benefits of peer support in stress relief
• The connection between stress and addiction
• Strategies for managing stress in recovery
• The impact of stress on decision-making in organizations
• The benefits of emotional intelligence in stress management
• The role of conflict resolution in reducing stress
• Coping with stress in a toxic work environment
• The link between stress and burnout
• The benefits of career counseling in stress relief
• The connection between stress and job satisfaction
• Strategies for managing stress in a remote work setting
• The impact of stress on team dynamics
• The benefits of team-building activities in stress management
• The role of leadership in reducing stress in the workplace
• Coping with stress in a high-pressure job
• The link between stress and turnover rates
• The benefits of flexible work arrangements in stress relief
• The connection between stress and job insecurity
• Strategies for managing stress in a global workforce
• The impact of stress on work-life balance
• The benefits of mindfulness training in stress management
• The role of emotional regulation in reducing stress
• Coping with stress in a diverse workplace
• The link between stress and discrimination
• The benefits of diversity training in stress relief
• The connection between stress and job performance
• Strategies for managing stress in a competitive industry
• The impact of stress on job satisfaction
• The benefits of career development programs in stress management
• The role of mentorship in reducing stress at work
• Coping with stress in a fast-paced industry
• The link between stress and creativity in the workplace
• The benefits of employee wellness programs in stress relief
• The connection between stress and absenteeism
• Strategies for managing stress in a high-stress job
• The impact of stress on team morale
• The benefits of conflict resolution training in stress management
• The role of communication in reducing stress at work
• Coping with stress in a toxic organizational culture
• The link between stress and turnover rates in nonprofits
• The benefits of self-care programs in stress relief
• The connection between stress and job burnout
• Strategies for managing stress in a non-profit organization
• The impact of stress on employee engagement and retention

These essay topic ideas and examples can help you explore different aspects of stress management and provide valuable insights on how to cope with stress effectively. By addressing these topics in your essays, you can raise awareness about the importance of stress management and help others lead healthier and happier lives.

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Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonigal says that viewing stress more positively seems to encourage people to cope in ways that help them thrive.

If people actually embrace the concept of stress, it can make them stronger, smarter and happier, a Stanford expert says.

“Stress isn’t always harmful,” said Kelly McGonigal, a business school lecturer at Stanford and program developer for the Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. “Once you appreciate that going through stress makes you better at it, it can be easier to face each new challenge.”

The Stanford News Service interviewed McGonigal, who recently published a new book, The Upside of Stress , on the subject.

How can one cultivate a mindset to embrace stress?

The initial research on stress mindsets, which was conducted by Stanford psychology Assistant Professor Alia Crum , showed that viewing stress as a helpful part of life, rather than as harmful, is associated with better health, emotional well-being and productivity at work – even during periods of high stress.

One reason that how you think about stress matters is because it changes how you respond to stress. Viewing stress as harmful leads people to cope in ways that are less helpful, whether it’s getting drunk to “release” stress, procrastinating to avoid stress, or imagining worst-case scenarios. One study found that simply having the goal to avoid stress increased the long-term risk of outcomes like depression, divorce and getting fired, by increasing people’s reliance on harmful coping strategies.

In contrast, viewing stress more positively seems to encourage people to cope in ways that help them thrive, whether it’s tackling the source of stress, seeking social support or finding meaning in it.

So should we just tell ourselves that stress is good for us?

In the course of researching the book and leading my own stress mindset interventions, I’ve discovered that the most helpful mindset toward stress goes beyond a generally positive attitude toward stress. The three most protective beliefs about stress are: 1) to view your body’s stress response as helpful, not debilitating – for example, to view stress as energy you can use; 2) to view yourself as able to handle, and even learn and grow from, the stress in your life; and 3) to view stress as something that everyone deals with, and not something that proves how uniquely screwed up you or your life is.

The emerging science on stress mindsets shows that it is possible to change all of these attitudes, even if we are used to thinking of stress as harmful.  For example, when you feel your heart pounding from anxiety, you think about how your body is trying to give you the energy you need to rise to the challenge. More importantly, changing any one of these attitudes can help you thrive in the face of ordinary stress as well as chronic or even traumatic stress.

When is stress bad?

There is a reason stress has a bad reputation, and part of it is the evidence that chronic and traumatic stress can increase the risk of illness, depression and early mortality, among other things.

Choosing to see the upside of stress isn’t about denying the fact that stress can be harmful. It’s about trying to balance your mindset so that you feel less overwhelmed and hopeless about the fact that your life is stressful. We rarely get to choose the stress in our lives, and it isn’t realistic to think we can avoid stress. Given that life is going to be stressful, what do you gain by focusing on the fear that the reality of your life is killing you?

Psychologists have found that the ability to embrace stress requires a high tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty. You have to be able to understand that two seemingly opposite things can be true at the same time. It can be true that going through something stressful can make you sick or depressed, and it can also be true that the same stressful experience can ultimately make you stronger, more compassionate and more resilient over time.

When facing a difficult or stressful situation, what should people do?

Stress is most likely to be harmful when the following conditions are present: it feels against your will, out of your control and utterly devoid of meaning. If you can change any of these conditions – by finding some meaning in it – you can reduce the harmful effects of stress. 

The relationship between stress and meaning can be very helpful to understand. A 2013 study asked a broad national sample of adults in the U.S to rate how much they agreed with the statement, Taking all things together, I feel my life is meaningful . The researchers then looked at what distinguished people who strongly agreed with the statement from those who did not. Surprisingly, every measure of stress that the researchers asked about predicted a greater sense of meaning in life. People who had experienced the highest number of stressful life events in the past were most likely to consider their lives meaningful. People who said they were under a lot of stress right now also rated their lives as more meaningful. Even time spent worrying about the future was associated with meaning.

One of the researchers’ main conclusions from this study is, “People with very meaningful lives worry more and have more stress than people with less meaningful lives.”

Rather than being a sign that something is wrong with your life, feeling stressed can be a barometer for how engaged you are in activities and relationships that are personally meaningful.

Any other tips for dealing with stress?

One simple mindset reset that can help us face and find the good in the stress in our lives is to view it as an opportunity to learn and grow. The ability to learn from stress is built into the basic biology of the stress response. For several hours after you have a strong stress response, the brain is rewiring itself to remember and learn from the experience. Stress leaves an imprint on your brain that prepares you to handle similar stress the next time you encounter it. Psychologists call the process of learning and growing from a difficult experience stress inoculation . Going through the experience gives your brain and body a stress vaccine.

This is why putting people through practice stress is a key training technique for NASA astronauts, emergency responders, elite athletes and others who have to thrive under high levels of stress.

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What Is Stress?

Stress is Inevitable - Learn to Maintain Your Emotional and Physical Well-Being

The Inner-Workings of the Stress Response

Ways to cope with stress, final thoughts.

• Next in How Stress Impacts Your Health Guide How to Recognize Burnout Symptoms

Stress can be defined as any type of change that causes physical, emotional, or mental strain. Stress is your body's response to anything that requires attention or action. 

Everyone experiences stress to some degree. The way you respond to stress, however, makes a big difference to your overall mental and physical well-being.

Verywell / Brianna Gilmartin

Sometimes, the best way to manage your stress involves changing your situation. At other times, the best strategy involves changing the way you respond to the situation.

Developing a clear understanding of how stress impacts your physical and mental health is important. It's also important to recognize how your mental and physical health affects your stress level.

Watch Now: 5 Ways Stress Can Cause Weight Gain

Clues that indicate you might be stressed.

Stress is not always easy to recognize, but there are some ways to identify some signs that you might be experiencing too much pressure. Sometimes stress can come from an obvious source, but sometimes even small daily stresses from work, school, family, and friends can take a toll on your mind and body.

If you think stress might be affecting you, there are a few things you can watch for:

• Cognitive signs such as difficulty concentrating, worrying, anxiety, and trouble remembering
• Emotional signs such as being angry, irritated, fearful, or moody
• Physical signs such as high blood pressure, headaches , clammy/sweaty hands, muscle tension and neck pain , changes in weight, frequent colds or infections , teeth grinding, digestive problems , and changes in the menstrual cycle and sex drive
• Behavioral signs such as poor self-care, not having time for the things you enjoy, or relying on drugs and alcohol to cope

What Does Stress Feel Like?

Stress can manifest in a variety of ways in your mind and body, and there is no one-size-fits-all answer. It can contribute to feelings of frustration, worry, and burnout. You may feel physically exhausted, worn out, and unable to cope.

Stress vs. Anxiety: What's the Difference?

Stress can sometimes be mistaken for anxiety, and experiencing a great deal of stress can contribute to feelings of anxiety. Stress and anxiety both contribute to nervousness, poor sleep, high blood pressure , muscle tension, and excess worry. Experiencing anxiety can make it more difficult to cope with stress and may contribute to other health issues, including increased depression, susceptibility to illness, and digestive problems.

In most cases, stress is caused by external events, while anxiety is caused by your internal reaction to stress. Stress may go away once the threat or the situation resolves, whereas anxiety may persist even after the original stressor is gone.

The Usual Suspects: Main Causes of Stress

There are many different things in life that can cause stress. Some of the main sources of stress include work, finances, relationships, parenting, and day-to-day inconveniences.

Mental Health in the Workplace Webinar

On May 19, 2022, Verywell Mind hosted a virtual Mental Health in the Workplace webinar, hosted by Amy Morin, LCSW. If you missed it, check out  this recap  to learn ways to foster supportive work environments and helpful strategies to improve your well-being on the job.

The Four Types of Stress

Not all types of stress are harmful or even negative. Some of the different types of stress that you might experience include:

• Acute stress : Acute stress is a very short-term type of stress that can be upsetting or traumatic ; this is the type of stress that is out of the ordinary, such as a car accident, assault, or natural disaster.
• Chronic stress : Chronic stress is what we most often encounter in day-to-day life and seems never-ending and inescapable, like the stress of a bad marriage or an extremely taxing job.
• Episodic acute stress : Episodic acute stress is acute stress that seems to run rampant and be a way of life, creating a life of ongoing distress; episodic stress can be recurring illness, ongoing domestic violence, child abuse , and living through conflict and war.
• Eustress : Eustress , on the other hand, is fun and exciting. It's known as a positive type of stress that can keep you energized. It's associated with surges of adrenaline, such as when you are skiing or racing to meet a deadline. 

Harmful Types of Stress:

The main harmful types of stress are acute stress, chronic stress, and episodic acute stress. Acute stress is usually brief, chronic stress is prolonged, and episodic acute stress is short-term but frequent. Positive stress, known as eustress, can be fun and exciting, but it can also take a toll if you don't keep your life in balance.

Stress can trigger the body’s response to a perceived threat or danger, known as the fight-or-flight response . During this reaction, certain hormones like adrenaline and cortisol are released. This speeds the heart rate, slows digestion, shunts blood flow to major muscle groups, and changes various other autonomic nervous functions, giving the body a burst of energy and strength.

Originally named for its ability to enable us to physically fight or run away when faced with danger, the fight-or-flight response is now activated in situations where neither response is appropriate—like in traffic or during a stressful day at work.

When the perceived threat is gone, systems are designed to return to normal function via the relaxation response . But in cases of chronic stress, the relaxation response doesn't occur often enough, and being in a near-constant state of fight-or-flight can cause damage to the body.

Stress can also lead to some unhealthy habits that have a negative impact on your health. For example, many people cope with stress by eating too much or by smoking. These unhealthy habits damage the body and create bigger problems in the long term.

Brace For Impact: How Stress Affects Your Health

Stress can have several effects on your health and well-being. It can make it more challenging to deal with life's daily hassles, affect your interpersonal relationships, and have detrimental effects on your health. The connection between your mind and body is apparent when you examine stress's impact on your life.

Feeling stressed over a relationship, money, or living situation can create physical health issues. The inverse is also true. Health problems, whether you're dealing with high blood pressure or diabetes , will also affect your stress level and mental health. When your brain experiences high degrees of stress , your body reacts accordingly.

Serious acute stress, like being involved in a natural disaster or getting into a verbal altercation, can trigger heart attacks, arrhythmias, and even sudden death. However, this happens mostly in individuals who already have heart disease.

Stress also takes an emotional toll. While some stress may produce feelings of mild anxiety or frustration, prolonged stress can also lead to burnout , anxiety disorders , and depression.

Chronic stress can have a serious impact on your health as well. If you experience chronic stress, your autonomic nervous system will be overactive, which is likely to damage your body.

Stress-Influenced Conditions

• Chronic Pain
• Inflammatory diseases
• Heart disease
• Hyperthyroidism
• Sexual dysfunction
• Skin problems
• Sleep disorders
• Tooth and gum disease

What Can I Do When I Have Too Much Stress?

There are some treatment options for acute and chronic stress, as well as a variety of stress management strategies you can implement on your own. Stress may be inevitable; however, whenever possible, prevention is the best strategy.

An Old Proverb by Benjamin Franklin

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

Treatment Options

Stress is not a distinct medical diagnosis and there is no single, specific treatment for it. Treatment for stress focuses on changing the situation, developing stress-coping skills , implementing relaxation techniques, and treating symptoms or conditions that may have been caused by chronic stress.

Some interventions that may be helpful include therapy, medication, and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).

Psychotherapy

Some forms of therapy that may be particularly helpful in addressing symptoms of stress including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) . CBT focuses on helping people identify and change negative thinking patterns, while MBSR utilizes meditation and mindfulness to help reduce stress levels.

Medication may sometimes be prescribed to address some specific symptoms that are related to stress. Such medications may include sleep aids, antacids, antidepressants, and anti-anxiety medications.

Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Some complementary approaches that may also be helpful for reducing stress include acupuncture, aromatherapy, massage, yoga, and meditation .

Although stress is inevitable, it can be manageable. When you understand the toll it takes on you and the steps to combat stress, you can take charge of your health and reduce the impact stress has on your life.

Press Play for Advice On Managing Stress

Hosted by therapist Amy Morin, LCSW, this episode of The Verywell Mind Podcast featuring professor Elissa Epel, shares ways to manage stress. Click below to listen now.

Follow Now : Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Google Podcasts / Amazon Music

Here are a few things to get you started:

• Learn to recognize the signs of burnout. High levels of stress may place you at a high risk of burnout. Burnout can leave you feeling exhausted and apathetic about your job. When you start to feel symptoms of emotional exhaustion, it's a sign that you need to find a way to get a handle on your stress.
• Try to get regular exercise. Physical activity has a big impact on your brain and your body . Whether you enjoy a walk in the park, stretching, pilates, or you want to begin jogging, exercise reduces stress and improves many symptoms associated with mental illness.
• Take care of yourself. Incorporating regular self-care activities into your daily life is essential to stress management. Learn how to take care of your mind, body, and spirit and discover how to equip yourself to live your best life.
• Practice mindfulness in your life. Mindfulness isn't just something you practice for 10 minutes each day. It can also be a way of life. Discover how to live more mindfully throughout your day so you can become more awake and conscious throughout your life.

If you or a loved one are struggling with stress, contact the  Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline  at 1-800-662-4357 for information on support and treatment facilities in your area.

For more mental health resources, see our  National Helpline Database .

Stress is a part of life and comes in all shapes and sizes. There are things we can do to minimize or even prevent much of the stress in our lives. But some stress is unavoidable.

If you find you are overwhelmed by an acute stressor, or the daily grind, there are ways to cope and recover. Whether you try some stress management strategies on your own or seek professional help... it is important to keep stress levels in check to avoid the negative impact on your cognitive, emotional, and physical well being.

National Institute of Mental Health. I'm so stressed out! Fact sheet .

Goldstein DS. Adrenal responses to stress .  Cell Mol Neurobiol . 2010;30(8):1433–1440. doi:10.1007/s10571-010-9606-9

Stahl JE, Dossett ML, LaJoie AS, et al. Relaxation response and resiliency training and its effect on healthcare resource utilization . PLoS ONE . 2015;10(10). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0140212

Chi JS, Kloner RA. Stress and myocardial infarction .  Heart . 2003;89(5):475–476. doi:10.1136/heart.89.5.475

Salvagioni DAJ, Melanda FN, Mesas AE, González AD, Gabani FL, Andrade SM. Physical, psychological and occupational consequences of job burnout: A systematic review of prospective studies .  PLoS ONE . 2017;12(10). doi:10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0185781

Bitonte RA, DeSanto DJ II. Mandatory physical exercise for the prevention of mental illness in medical students .  Ment Illn . 2014;6(2):5549. doi:10.4081/mi.2014.5549

Ayala EE, Winseman JS, Johnsen RD, Mason HRC. U.S. medical students who engage in self-care report less stress and higher quality of life .  BMC Med Educ . 2018;18(1):189. doi:10.1186/s12909-018-1296-x

Richards KC, Campenni CE, Muse-Burke JL. Self-care and well-being in mental health professionals: The mediating effects of self-awareness and mindfulness .  J Ment Health Couns . 2010;32(3):247. doi:10.17744/mehc.32.3.0n31v88304423806.

American Psychological Association. Stress in America 2023 .

Krantz DS, Whittaker KS, Sheps DS.  Psychosocial risk factors for coronary heart disease: Pathophysiologic mechanisms .  In Heart and Mind: The Practice of Cardiac Psychology (2nd Ed.). American Psychological Association; 2011:91-113. doi:10.1037/13086-004

By Elizabeth Scott, PhD Elizabeth Scott, PhD is an author, workshop leader, educator, and award-winning blogger on stress management, positive psychology, relationships, and emotional wellbeing.

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Stress Management Essays

Stress is now a major problem in many countries around the world. What are some of the factors in modern society that cause this stress, and how can we reduce it? In present times, stress has become a very common problem that people are facing all over the world. This essay will examine its potential causes and possible ways of reducing it. The predominant factor for leading a stressful life is work pressure. As industries are growing rapidly, the competition among them is also increasing day by day, thus enforcing employees to work harder and harder to maintain their company's reputation and position in the competitive world. Consequently, in order to meet their task deadline, people always feel constant pressure upon them. For instance, it is evident that due to work pressure many IT professionals face problems related to mental health such as depression and anxiety. The other factor responsible for this tension is nuclear families. For working couples, managing both work and home at the same time is a challenging job especially when they are leaving away from their parents, and hence, they do not have anyone at home to depend upon for small assistance. There can be a number of ways to release this anxiety and pressure. Firstly, people need to learn to maintain work-life balance which is essential for leading a happy and fulfilling life. There are many stress management programs available these days that are very helpful in handling mental pressure. Secondly, physical activities are considered as a stress buster by many medical professionals. For example, yoga and power yoga have proven to be successful in improving both mental and physical health. Thus people can join some sports or physical activity on a regular basis to reduce their day to day life stress. In conclusion, work-related stress and fast-paced life are the main reasons for stress among people. However, people can manage it effectively by doing physical exercises and meditation as a daily practice.

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Stress in Modern Society

Hi can someone review my writing for this change in society essay and give it a band score if possible please? In some societies, stress is now regarded as a major problem, and it is thought that people suffer from more stress than they did in the past. However, others feel that the amount of stress people have today is exaggerated. They say that previous generations were under more pressure, but the idea of suffering from stress did not exist. Discuss both these views and give your own opinion. It is undeniable that life has been upgraded remarkably for the last decades. People live an easier and more convenient life, yet are put under a lot of of pressure, which is now one of societies' biggest issues. However, some people argue that people today do not suffer from as much stress there was in the past when the concept of stress did not exist. I personally think that each generation deals with different kinds of pressure. To begin with, people in modern societies tend to have numerous concerns whilst pursuing a high living standard. Employees are forced to work longer hours which results in a large amount of stress. Modern problems in finance, business, education and relationships usually put people in distress as well. Moreover, pollution caused by technology development has brought about a lot of serious diseases adding up to the endless list of today's concerns. On the other hand, life of the previous generations was no less stressful. Without the help of technology, people in the past would have a lot of difficulties in doing everything on their own. Furthermore, as a result of war and ages of economic depression, poverty and diseases became the largest problems most people had to face. However, they were not likely to suffer from emotional instability from pressures. Common today's mental illness resulting from stress such as bipolar, eating disorder, social anxiety did not exist. In conclusion, I think that the pressure that each generation is under aredistinct and incomparable. Nevertheless, unlike us, our ancestors had learned to manage it quite well.

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Causes of and Solutions to Stress

by Fizza (Pakistan)

Stress is now a major problem in many countries around the world. What are some of the factors in modern society that cause this stress, and how can we reduce it? In the contemporary world, the issue of stress has been found to affect almost everyone at some point in their lives. This essay will look into the precedents of rising stress levels in society, and potential measures that can be taken to avoid or reduce it. The reasons of stress can either be physiological or psychological. Among the former, the use of screens is the leading factor. In the present information age, the lifestyle of people and the nature of their jobs have altered. One of the most notable changes is a very high tendency of screen use in the form of desktops, laptops and mobile phones among others. Spending long hours focusing on screen causes the muscles to stiff and boost the stress level. If we talk about the latter, people belonging to almost all age groups residing across the globe face tensions about various matters related to education and jobs due to heightened competition in these fields. Such worries coupled with uncertainly about future lead to increased stress levels. Although the problem of stress is definitely prevalent in current context, there are a number of stress management techniques that can be learned to tackle this issue. First, one must take short breaks for simple exercises while doing office work or while studying to relax the muscles and avoid stress. Second, consultation with a sincere friend or a psychiatrist for catharsis can turn out to be helpful when someone is facing high stress level. In addition to these, one must also try to stay away from certain situations that cause stress for example toxic relationships, dishonest friendships and political environments. In conclusion, due to changes in overall society, people are more likely to experience stress. Although it is a pressing issue, it can be solved easily through adopting some crucial yet uncomplicated measures.

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How stress affects your health

Stress can be brief, situational, and a positive force motivating performance, but if experienced over an extended period of time it can become chronic stress, which negatively impacts health and well-being.

• Chronic Illness

Stress : We’ve all felt it. Sometimes stress can be a positive force, motivating you to perform well at your piano recital or job interview. But often—like when you’re stuck in traffic—it’s a negative force. If you experience stress over a prolonged period of time, it could become chronic—unless you take action.

A natural reaction

Have you ever found yourself with sweaty hands on a first date or felt your heart pound during a scary movie? Then you know you can feel stress in both your mind and body.

This automatic response developed in our ancient ancestors as a way to protect them from predators and other threats. Faced with danger, the body kicks into gear, flooding the body with stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol that elevate your heart rate, increase your blood pressure, boost your energy, and prepare you to deal with the problem.

These days, you’re not likely to face the threat of being eaten. But you probably do confront multiple challenges every day, such as meeting deadlines, paying bills, and juggling childcare that make your body react the same way. As a result, your body’s natural alarm system—the “fight or flight” response—may be stuck in the on position. And that can have serious consequences for your health.

Pressure points

Even short-lived, minor stress can have an impact. You might get a stomachache before you have to give a presentation, for example. More major acute stress, whether caused by a fight with your spouse or an event like an earthquake or terrorist attack, can have an even bigger impact.

Repeated acute stress may also contribute to inflammation in the circulatory system , particularly in the coronary arteries, and this is one pathway that is thought to tie stress to a heart attack. It also appears that how a person responds to stress can affect cholesterol levels.

Chronic stress

When stress starts interfering with your ability to live a normal life for an extended period, it becomes even more dangerous. The longer the stress lasts, the worse it is for both your mind and body. You might feel fatigued, unable to concentrate, or irritable for no good reason, for example. But chronic stress causes wear and tear on your body, too.

The long-term activation of the stress response system and the overexposure to cortisol and other stress hormones that come with it can disrupt almost all of your body's processes. This can put you at increased risk for a variety of physical and mental health problems, including anxiety, depression, digestive issues, headaches, muscle tension and pain, heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure, stroke, sleep problems, weight gain, and memory and concentration impairment.

Chronic stress may also cause disease, either because of changes in your body or the overeating, smoking, and other bad habits people use to cope with stress. Job strain—high demands coupled with low decision-making latitude—is associated with increased risk of coronary disease , for example. Other forms of chronic stress, such as depression and low levels of social support, have also been implicated in increased cardiovascular risk.

Chronic stress also  suppresses the body's immune system , making it harder to recover from illnesses.

What you can do

Reducing your stress levels can not only make you feel better right now, but may also protect your health long-term. Several research studies have demonstrated, for example, that interventions to improve psychological health can have a beneficial impact on cardiovascular health . As a result,  researchers recommend boosting your positive affect—feelings like happiness, joy, contentment, and enthusiasm—by making time for enjoyable activities every day.

Other strategies for reducing stress include:

• Identify what’s causing stress. Monitor your state of mind throughout the day. If you feel stressed, write down the cause, your thoughts, and your mood. Once you know what’s bothering you, develop a plan for addressing it. That might mean setting more reasonable expectations for yourself and others or asking for help with household responsibilities, job assignments, or other tasks. List all your commitments, assess your priorities, and then eliminate any tasks that are not absolutely essential.
• Build strong relationships. Relationships can be a source of stress. Research has found that negative, hostile reactions with your spouse cause immediate changes in stress-sensitive hormones, for example. But relationships can also serve as stress buffers. Reach out to family members or close friends and let them know you’re having a tough time. They may be able to offer practical assistance and support, useful ideas, or just a fresh perspective as you begin to tackle whatever’s causing your stress.
• Walk away when you’re angry. Before you react, take time to regroup by counting to 10. Then reconsider. Walking or other physical activities can also help you work off steam. Plus, exercise increases the production of endorphins, your body’s natural mood booster. Commit to a daily walk or other form of exercise—a small step that can make a big difference in reducing stress levels.
• Rest your mind. To help ensure you get the recommended seven or eight hours of shut-eye, cut back on caffeine, remove distractions such as television or computers from your bedroom, and go to bed at the same time each night. Research shows that activities like yoga and relaxation exercises not only help reduce stress, but also boost immune functioning .
• Get help. If you continue to feel overwhelmed, consult with a psychologist or other licensed mental health professional who can help you learn how to manage stress effectively. They can help you identify situations or behaviors that contribute to your chronic stress and then develop an action plan for changing them.

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• Stress effects on the body
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IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Answer: Stress (Real IELTS Test)

by Dave | Real Past Tests | 2 Comments

This is an IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Answer taken from the real test related to reducing stress.

Here it is:

Many psychologists recommend that the best way to relieve stress is to do nothing at all for a period of time during the day. Do you agree or disagree? Real Past IELTS Tests

The structure of the essay is an agree/disagree essay.

For these IELTS essays you must choose a side. You can write about both sides but by the end you must choose an overall point of view.

If you don’t, you will get band 5 for task achievement.

It is a seemingly simple question but when I started to write about it there are a couple of thorny (difficult) issues.

The question is about whether or not taking a break is the best way to reduce stress.

If you write about how taking a break is the best way to reduce stress – it is really hard!

That is because it is obvious: take a break = less stress. How can you further support that?

Read below to see what I did with the question.

You can read more about IELTS structures here .

My exclusive essays are available only on Patreon .

IELTS Writing Task 2 Sample Answer: Stress

Many pschologists recommend that the best way to relieve stress is to do nothing at all for a period of time during the day. Do you agree or disagree? Real Past IELTS Tests

One of the most pressing issues for first world countries is how to reduce their stress levels and this has led some psychologists to propose a daily period of rest. Although I think that daily rest would be helpful, it is more important to take an active role in stress relief.

Proponents of a rest period suggest that taking a break has proven health benefits related to stress reduction. It is very common in Latin American countries and some Southeast Asian countries to take an afternoon ‘siesta’ or short nap before resuming work. Research has supported the myriad health benefits related to this stress-free period. It lowers blood pressure, increases serotonin in the brain, and aids memory function. Besides the statistics from studies that breaks reduce stress, there is also anecdotal evidence that taking a break energises people in both the short and long term. Plowing on without breaks, on the contrary, can lead to an increase in stress and has been linked to related health problems.

Instead of taking a rest, I believe that joining a team sport will do more to relieve stress. Doctors and scientists agree that exercise is the best way to cut down on stress overall. In most parts of the world, football is the most common sport both to watch and participate in. Playing football reduces your stress by releasing endorphins in the brain that make people happier, strengthening the heart to better withstand stressful situations, and helping people to relax by working in a team towards a shared goal. The teamwork aspect cannot be underestimated, and is integral to most sports, as it does more to reduce stress and reset your body for a new day than any other activity.

To conclude, although taking a rest certainly helps reduce stress, the best way to unwind is to play a sport. People should set aside time at least once a week to partake in team sporting activities.

1. One of the most pressing issues for first world countries is how to reduce their stress levels and this has led some psychologists to propose a daily period of rest. 2. Although I think that daily rest would be helpful, it is more important to take an active role in stress relief.

• The first sentence restates/paraphrases the main topic for the essay. Don’t spend a lot of time on this – write it quikly and get going!
• The second sentence gives my opinion – be clear and choose a side!

1. Proponents of a rest period suggest that taking a break has proven health benefits related to stress reduction. 2. It is very common in Latin American countries and some Southeast Asian countries to take an afternoon ‘siesta’ or short nap before resuming work. 3. Research has supported the myriad health benefits related to this stress-free period. 4. It lowers blood pressure, increases serotonin in the brain, and aids memory function. 5. Besides the statistics from studies that breaks reduce stress, there is also anecdotal evidence that taking a break energises people in both the short and long term. 6. Plowing on without breaks, on the contrary, can lead to an increase in stress and has been linked to related health problems.

• The first sentence is a topic sentence giving the main idea for the whole paragraph – health benefits related to stress.
• My second sentence begins a specific example. Try to be as specific as possible.
• The third sentence continues to support the same main idea with research.
• The fourth sentence gives specific examples of the parts of the brain impacted by taking a break.
• My fifth sentence further supports the same main idea.
• The last sentence concludes the paragraph by using a counter-point to again support my main idea. Focus on 1 main idea, fully developed!

1. Instead of taking a rest, I believe that joining a team sport will do more to relieve stress. 2. Doctors and scientists agree that exercise is the best way to cut down on stress overall. 3. In most parts of the world, football is the most common sport both to watch and participate in. 4. Playing football reduces your stress by releasing endorphins in the brain that make people happier, strengthening the heart to better withstand stressful situations, and helping people to relax by working in a team towards a shared goal. 5. The teamwork aspect cannot be underestimated, and is integral to most sports, as it does more to reduce stress and reset your body for a new day than any other activity.

• The first sentence of the second paragraph is also a topic sentence with my main idea – doing a sport does more to reduce stress overall. Notice that I keep my opinion weak – it has a greater overall impact.
• My second sentence begins my support for this main idea.
• The third sentence focuses on the very specific example of football.
• My next sentence details the specific ways that football reduces stress – be as specific as possible.
• The final sentence adds more support for the same main idea – sports do more to help reduce stress.

1. To conclude, although taking a rest certainly helps reduce stress, the best way to unwind is to play a sport. 2. People should set aside time at least once a week to partake in team sporting activities.

• The first sentence of my conclusion restates my opinion – make sure that you have a clear, overall opinion!
• My final sentence gives an extended detail that most examiners require for band 7+ for task achievement. Read more about it here .

Try to figure out what the words in bold mean below or think of a synonym for each one, then check your answers in the answer key:

One of the most pressing issues for first world countries is how to reduce their stress levels and this has led some psychologists to propose a daily period of rest. Although I think that daily rest would be helpful, it is more important to take an active role in stress relief .

Proponents of a rest period suggest that taking a break has proven health benefits related to stress reduction. It is very common in Latin American countries and some Southeast Asian countries to take an afternoon ‘ siesta ‘ or short nap before resuming work . Research has supported the myriad health benefits related to this stress-free period. It lowers blood pressure , increases serotonin in the brain, and aids memory function . Besides the statistics from studies that breaks reduce stress, there is also anecdotal evidence that taking a break energises people in both the short and long term. Plowing on without breaks , on the contrary, can lead to an increase in stress and has been linked to related health problems.

Instead of taking a rest, I believe that joining a team sport will do more to relieve stress. Doctors and scientists agree that exercise is the best way to cut down on stress overall. In most parts of the world, football is the most common sport both to watch and participate in . Playing football reduces your stress by releasing endorphins in the brain that make people happier, strengthening the heart to better withstand stressful situations, and helping people to relax by working in a team towards a shared goal . The teamwork aspect cannot be underestimated , and is integral to most sports, as it does more to reduce stress and reset your body for a new day than any other activity.

pressing issues important problems

first world countries rich, developed countries

reduce their stress lessen anxiety

propose suggest

active role more proactive about

stress relief reducing stress

proponents supporters

siesta break

resuming work getting back to work

myriad health benefits many ways it is good for health

lowers blood pressure good for your heart

serotonin a chemical in the brain

aids memory function helps you remember better

statistics figures/facts

anecdotal hearsay

energises gives energy to

plowing on without breaks continuing to work without stopping

cut down on reduce

participate in take part in

releasing endorphins making you happier

strengthening making stronger

withstand get through

shared goal common purpose

underestimated think too little of

integral essential

reset your body recharge

unwind relax

set aside time make time for

partake participate in

Pronunciation

ˈprɛsɪŋ ˈɪʃuːz   fɜːst wɜːld ˈkʌntriz   rɪˈdjuːs ðeə strɛs   prəˈpəʊz   ˈæktɪv rəʊl   strɛs rɪˈliːf prəˈpəʊnənts   sɪˈɛstə rɪˈzjuːmɪŋ wɜːk ˈmɪrɪəd hɛlθ ˈbɛnɪfɪts ˈləʊəz blʌd ˈprɛʃə serotonin eɪdz ˈmɛməri ˈfʌnŋkʃən stəˈtɪstɪks   ˌænɪkˈdəʊt(ə)l   ˈɛnəʤaɪzɪz   ˈplaʊɪŋ ɒn wɪˈðaʊt breɪks kʌt daʊn ɒn   pɑːˈtɪsɪpeɪt ɪn rɪˈliːsɪŋ endorphins   ˈstrɛŋθənɪŋ   wɪðˈstænd   ʃeəd gəʊl ˌʌndəˈrɛstɪmeɪtɪd ˈɪntɪgrəl   ˌriːˈsɛt jɔː ˈbɒdi   ʌnˈwaɪnd   sɛt əˈsaɪd taɪm   pɑːˈteɪk  

Vocabulary Practice

Remember and fill in the blanks:

One of the most ____________________ for ____________________ is how to ____________________ and this has led some psychologists to ____________________ a daily period of rest. Although I think that daily rest would be helpful, it is more important to take an ____________________ in ____________________ .

____________________ of a rest period suggest that taking a break has proven health benefits related to stress reduction. It is very common in Latin American countries and some Southeast Asian countries to take an afternoon ‘ ____________________ ‘ or short nap before ____________________ . Research has supported the ____________________ related to this stress-free period. It ____________________ , increases ____________________ in the brain, and ____________________ . Besides the ____________________ from studies that breaks reduce stress, there is also ____________________ evidence that taking a break ____________________ people in both the short and long term. ____________________ , on the contrary, can lead to an increase in stress and has been linked to related health problems.

Instead of taking a rest, I believe that joining a team sport will do more to relieve stress. Doctors and scientists agree that exercise is the best way to ____________________ stress overall. In most parts of the world, football is the most common sport both to watch and ____________________ . Playing football reduces your stress by ____________________ in the brain that make people happier, ____________________ the heart to better ____________________ stressful situations, and helping people to relax by working in a team towards a ____________________ . The teamwork aspect cannot be ____________________ , and is ____________________ to most sports, as it does more to reduce stress and ____________________ for a new day than any other activity.

To conclude, although taking a rest certainly helps reduce stress, the best way to ____________________ is to play a sport. People should ____________________ at least once a week to ____________________ in team sporting activities.

Reading Practice

Read and review the causes of anxiety and stress:

https://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/guide/causes-anxiety

Comment any questions that you have below!

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Very well-written essay. It was very interesting to read it and I feel like I have learned a thing or two from it. Just a quick comment: I’d prefer using more appropriate nomenclatures like developed countries or leading nations to first world, because first world may sound offensive to some people, especially those from underdeveloped (or third-world as you might say) countries. Also, first-world is an outdated term, implying countries that were aligned with the United States, and other westernized countries as opposed to countries that aligned with the former-Soviet Union.

Cheers, Duy Anh

Thank you, Duy Anh. Great points! I was trying to paraphrase but you are absolutely correct that first-world / third-world have rightly fallen out of usage in general.

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Home — Essay Samples — Nursing & Health — Stress Management — Coping Up With Stress

Coping Up with Stress

• Categories: Stress Stress Management

About this sample

Words: 931 |

Published: Jan 21, 2020

Words: 931 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

• Schwarzer, Ralf. Self-efficacy: Thought control of action. Taylor & Francis, 2014.
• Meichenbaum, Donald. "Stress Inoculation Training: A preventative and treatment approach." The Evolution of Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Routledge, 2017. 117-140.
• Figley, Charles R., and Hamilton I. McCubbin. Stress and the family: Coping with catastrophe. Routledge, 2016.

Should follow an “upside down” triangle format, meaning, the writer should start off broad and introduce the text and author or topic being discussed, and then get more specific to the thesis statement.

Cornerstone of the essay, presenting the central argument that will be elaborated upon and supported with evidence and analysis throughout the rest of the paper.

The topic sentence serves as the main point or focus of a paragraph in an essay, summarizing the key idea that will be discussed in that paragraph.

The body of each paragraph builds an argument in support of the topic sentence, citing information from sources as evidence.

Should follow a right side up triangle format, meaning, specifics should be mentioned first such as restating the thesis, and then get more broad about the topic at hand. Lastly, leave the reader with something to think about and ponder once they are done reading.

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Ielts essay # 1217 - life has become much more stressful, ielts writing task 2/ ielts essay:, life has become much more stressful compared to our parent’s generation. as a result, stress-related illnesses are increasing around the world., why is stress such widespread in the modern world what do you think can be done to overcome the problems caused by stress.

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An opinion essay.

Look at the essay and do the exercises to improve your writing skills.

Instructions

Do the preparation exercise first. Then do the other exercises.

Preparation

Are video games a good way to keep fit.

Nowadays, many teenagers have got video consoles at home and they often like playing active video games. These are good for you for a number of reasons.

First of all, I think that active video games are a good way to keep fit. There are lots of different types of exercise you can do such as basketball, water-skiing and dance and, what's more, you can play them in the comfort of your own home. In my opinion, these games are fun and interactive because you can play them with friends and, if you play online, you don't need to be in the same place as your friend to play.

In addition, you can play them whenever you want. Some people think that it's better to do exercise outside in the fresh air. Although this is true, it's actually difficult to play outside when it's raining or very hot so video games are a good alternative.

To sum up, I believe that video games are a fun and social way to keep fit. I think they are a good option when you can't play outside and they might encourage people to do more exercise.

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• Write your essay in clear paragraphs. Use phrases like First of all , In addition and To sum up to start each paragraph.
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Are video games really a good way to keep fit? What do you think?

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Jesse Wegman

Editorial Board Member

In the Trump Era, the Supreme Court Can’t ‘Soar Above Politics’

Does John Roberts live in the same world as the rest of us? One has to wonder, given how frequently the Supreme Court’s chief justice seems removed from the social and political realities of the country.

As revealed by my Times colleagues Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak in their remarkable, deeply reported article that was published on Sunday, Roberts orchestrated multiple high-profile rulings last term in ways that benefited Donald Trump, at least partly by acting as though the American people would not interpret them as political. In drafting the majority opinion for the Jan. 6 presidential immunity case, for example, Roberts “seemed confident that his arguments would soar above politics, persuade the public, and stand the test of time,” Kantor and Liptak wrote.

That attitude was dangerously naïve, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor tried to warn Roberts in the justices’ private conference following oral arguments in the case. The court was weighing whether to reverse a federal appeals court ruling that Trump was not immune from prosecution for his actions on and around Jan. 6. Sotomayor “did not see how the court could reverse the appellate decision. It would look like the Supreme Court was being used to delay the trial, she said,” according to the article.

She was right, of course: “Both conservatives and liberals saw it as an epic win for Mr. Trump.” Combined with the rulings in Trump’s favor in the other two Jan. 6 cases, it is no surprise that the Supreme Court’s public approval level is hovering around its all-time low . You don’t need a law degree to understand that in the post-Bush v. Gore era, the court treads on extremely thin ice when it inserts itself into presidential politics, all the more so if the justices in the majority share a political ideology with the winning side.

At the same time, Roberts gives indications of being aware of the fragility of the court’s legitimacy. In one of the article’s most telling details, the chief justice took charge of writing an opinion in a case involving Jan. 6 rioters — one that had initially been assigned to Justice Samuel Alito. Roberts did so just days after The Times reported that a pro-Trump flag had flown outside Alito’s home around the time of the Capitol attack. Given how unusual it is for a majority opinion to change hands, the timing suggests Roberts was trying to counteract a perceived bias of at least one of the justices.

Still, masking the radical partisanship of the court’s right-most flank doesn’t fool anyone. If Roberts wants to rebuild public confidence in the court he could start by acknowledging the real world outside One First Street. In a world as polarized as ours, you can’t issue a hugely consequential ruling that’s about Trump and pretend that it has nothing to do with Trump. The immunity ruling has already affected the operation of the presidency, and it’s natural for people to consider it in light of how Trump (or Kamala Harris, for that matter) would react to it starting in 2025.

Jonathan Alter

Contributing Opinion Writer

Why Kamala Harris Brought Up Polish American Voters

Kamala Harris’s powerful message on abortion and Donald Trump’s deranged lies about Haitian immigrants eating pets are getting most of the post-debate attention, but Harris’s appeal to Polish American voters in Pennsylvania might prove more influential in the outcome.

One highlight of the debate came when the moderator David Muir asked Trump: “Do you believe it’s in the U.S.’s best interests for Ukraine to win this war? Yes or no?”

After Trump basically said no, Harris detailed her 2023 visit to Poland and Romania on NATO’s eastern flank and her role in the “righteous defense” of Ukraine. She explained why our NATO allies are “so thankful that you are no longer president.” If Trump had been in office then, “Putin would be sitting in Kyiv with his eyes on the rest of Europe. Starting with Poland. And why don’t you tell the 800,000 Polish Americans right here in Pennsylvania how quickly you would give up for the sake of favor.” She ended by calling Putin “a dictator who would eat you for lunch.”

That was a smart line of attack for reasons beyond Pennsylvania and the Polish American vote. It appeals to veterans and to swing voters looking for a candidate who will stand up for American interests in the world. Many of these voters understand that persuading other nations to contribute more to our common defense (which Biden and Harris have done) is not our only foreign policy objective.

More broadly, the exchange over the war in Ukraine made Harris look strong and Trump weak. He came across as not just a patsy for dictators (and an autocrat who uses the Hungarian strongman, Viktor Orban, as a character reference), but clueless in claiming that he could settle a complex conflict overnight. While foreign policy is rarely a critical issue in elections during which no American soldiers are in combat, Harris’s fluency in its nuances signaled to voters that she is presidential.

It’s hard to predict how all of this will play with a bellwether constituency in a bellwether state. Polish American voters have sided with the losing candidate only three times in more than a century. A gaffe by President Gerald Ford in a debate with his challenger, Jimmy Carter, (“I don’t believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union.”) helped sink Ford in the 1976 election. But an overheard ethnic slur against Poles by the vice-presidential candidate Spiro Agnew in 1968 did not cost Richard Nixon the election that year.

In Pennsylvania, Polish Americans were essential to Joe Biden’s victory over Trump there in 2020, following Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss in the state. They identified with Biden as a Scranton native and fellow Catholic, advantages that Harris does not possess.

It may be “wishful thinking,” as one Pennsylvania professor told The Times last week, to assume Harris can make inroads with this constituency, which cares a lot about the immigration issue. But at least Harris is trying. Attacking Trump for selling out to Putin on the future of Poland is more than just good politics. It’s a sign that she is ready to be the leader of the free world.

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Pamela Paul

Opinion Columnist

A Huge Cause of Parental Stress

Last month, the surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, issued an advisory on the mental health and well-being of parents. Too many parents, Murthy noted, are stressed out by the demands of parenthood in an environment dominated by gun violence, social media and drug epidemics. Murthy recommended policies to support parental mental health, improve child care access, increase parental leave and improve community support.

That’s nice.

As for Kamala Harris, if she becomes president, she wants to offer $6,000 child tax credits to families with newborns and make high-quality child care more affordable.

That’s also nice.

But it’s a drop in the bucket. Across the developed world, parents are stressed over social media and their kids doing well at school. But in many European countries, parents can afford to stress about those things because they have access to free or heavily subsidized child care, health care and education. (These countries also have sensible gun laws, but that’s another story.)

Here in America, we get none of that. If American parents didn’t have to sweat over saving hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for these larger things, they might have the time and mental space to attend to child-rearing’s ordinary challenges. If they didn’t have to panic over their kids’ futures being subject to these same expenses and a merciless job market, they wouldn’t be quite so frantic about their children’s education and whether it will adequately prepare them for an economically secure future.

My European friends think what American parents put up with is bonkers, but unlike many Americans, they don’t blame parents. They recognize that American parents are trapped in an impossible system.

Fifteen years ago, I wrote a book called “ Parenting, Inc.: How the Billion-Dollar Baby Business Has Changed the Way We Raise Our Children .” That book was largely about how companies exploit parents’ fears to sell them products and services intended to make their children “succeed.” That market has since metastasized, but its underlying cause remains the same. “The cost of raising children is rising far faster than our earnings,” I wrote. “That leaves even couples who make decent salaries belaboring the decision to have children based on the bottom line.” Republicans like JD Vance have suggested a similarly meager tax credit in their push to get Americans reproducing. And even Democrats are too tentative to push for systemic change in health care, child care or education. The picayune proposals currently on the table amount to petty change, not to any material change at all.

Patrick Healy

Deputy Opinion Editor

The Wrong-Track Generation Knows Only One America

Every Monday morning on The Point, we start the week with a tipsheet on the latest in the presidential campaign. Here’s what we’re looking at this week:

After the Kamala Harris-Donald Trump debate last week, I held a focus group with young, undecided voters and we discussed the 2024 election.

“It feels like something out of a dystopian movie,” a 22-year-old said.

“Full of twists and turns,” one 24-year-old replied.

“A confusing whirlwind,” a 21-year-old called it.

These three voters grew up in a country and a world shaped and scarred by 9/11, the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, Twitter, the Great Recession, Sandy Hook, a rapidly warming planet, the famines and food crises across Africa, President Donald Trump, Charlottesville, Covid, George Floyd, Jan. 6, deep fakes, Ukraine, Oct. 7, Gaza. I call these young voters the wrong-track generation: For pretty much their entire lives, a majority of Americans have said that the country was on the wrong track, and were dissatisfied with how things were going. I’m 53 and I can’t imagine growing up and, through no fault of their own, only knowing an America where so many people thought so many things were so bad.

Yesterday I was editing the transcript of this undecided voter focus group when I got an email from the Trump campaign at 2:23 p.m. saying, “President Trump is safe following gunshots in his vicinity.” I thought of those young voters who described last week’s debate as another twist and turn, as more dystopian confusion, and wondered, what will they think of America now?

Some have historical perspective, of course: we don’t live in a nation where a senator is caned in the chamber, or assassinations feel commonplace, or the KKK is marching en masse, they told me last week. In our focus groups, one thing people argue about the most is whether America’s best days are behind us or ahead of us. I find those arguments fascinating — the participants feel a deep stake in America, no matter what side they take. And yet I can’t imagine what it is to be a young person in America today, processing so much in a real-time information deluge. What I can imagine is why some young voters are still undecided. Many loathe Trump and found Jan. 6 traumatic ; at the same time, they care a great deal about trust, and don’t confer it easily — and they don’t feel like Kamala Harris has earned their trust with the handful of big policy speeches, interviews and debates she’s done. People ask me, how can these voters be undecided? But I feel only empathy for them. Thinking about what America has given them in the last two decades, I reply, can you really blame them?

This week, these voters and the rest of us will learn more about the F.B.I.’s investigation of what may be an attempted assassination and of the suspected gunman. Trump and Harris both have events in which Sunday’s news — and the state of America — will get full airings, I’m sure. The lies about Haitian migrants will most likely continue, and the economy will swing back into public focus with a probable Fed interest rate cut. More twists and turns, in other words, as a lot of voters look for some meaning in it all and think about America’s best days.

Michelle Cottle

Opinion Writer

The Week in Bad Political Behavior

With less than two months to go until Election Day, it is impossible to keep track of all the political madness afoot. So much bad behavior. So much weirdness. But for the remainder of this campaign season, I pledge to keep an extra close eye on things for you and, every Friday, spotlight a smattering of the week’s more colorful developments, including obscure bits you easily might have missed.

This week brought us some brutal MAGA-on-MAGA combat, compliments of Laura Loomer, the right-wing influencer who has been kicking it with Donald Trump on the campaign trail of late. Loomer started things off by snarking on X that if Kamala Harris wins the presidency, “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center.” Get it? Because Harris is half Indian.

The smear wasn’t clever or funny and, in fact, was so thuddingly racist it prompted a public scolding from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (yep, you read that right: Marjorie. Taylor. Greene), who denounced Loomer’s post as “ appalling and extremely racist ” and later told CNN that Loomer lacked “ the right mentality ” to advise a presidential campaign. Loomer responded by slamming Greene as the real racist — and, oh, yes, also “ gutter trash .”

But wait! There’s more. One of the Senate’s top Trump toadies, Lindsey Graham, also publicly warned his MAGA king against associating with the “toxic” Loomer, prompting Loomer to go hard at Graham, with an attack on the senator’s loyalty to Trump and on his sexual orientation.

I guess this is what happens when you build a political movement on the idea that nastiness and pugilism are signs of courage and integrity.

It looks as though Mayor Eric Adams of New York may have a Trumpian predilection for surrounding himself with questionable characters. Various aides have been swept into multiple federal investigations of possible corruption at City Hall and the Police Department. The mayor, a Democrat, has had his phone seized and his judgment questioned, since many of those under investigation were his direct appointees, including the police commissioner, who resigned on Thursday .

How is Adams responding to the gathering storm? By explaining to New Yorkers what’s going on or by vowing to clean up his administration? Don’t be silly. He is instead cloaking himself in the good book by comparing himself to Job , the biblical innocent whose suffering was imposed by God as part of a divine test.

“I wish I could tell you that I had one moment in my life that was a Job moment,” he said at an evangelical Black church in Brooklyn on Sunday. “But I did not have one. I had many.”

Lord, deliver us from this shameless posturing.

Just when you thought Trump’s migrants-munching-pets hullabaloo couldn’t get any more delicious, up pops Marianne Williamson, the erstwhile Democratic presidential hopeful, with this spiritually themed warning on X:

“Continuing to dump on Trump because of the ‘eating cats’ issue will create blowback on Nov. 5. Haitian voodoo is in fact real, and to dismiss the story out-of-hand rather than listen to the citizens of Springfield, Ohio confirms in the minds of many voters the stereotype of Democrats as smug elite jerks who think they’re too smart to listen to anyone outside their own silo.”

I’m just going to leave this here for you to unpack on your own.

Worried About Kamala Harris? ‘That’s Tomorrow’s Problem.’

For those for whom the presidential election offers an obvious and decisive choice, there is nothing more baffling than undecided voters.

What could they possibly be waiting for?

Donald Trump has made it endlessly clear who he is. Those who count themselves as his fans somehow look at this whiny, wounded figure and see a tough guy and strongman who will stand up for people like them or at least someone who will serve their interests. As for JD Vance, the more he seems to explore who he is, the more he seems to alienate everyone else.

People who say they don’t know enough about Kamala Harris, on the other hand, have a point. Harris’s strategy is to stay vague, and it’s an astute one: It enables her to capture Never Trumpers, independents, moderates and liberals without alienating the progressive wing, third-party flirters and potential abstainers. This may frustrate those keen on more detail, but her campaign knows too well that every detail risks turning off potential voters.

Like many people in the broad Harris coalition, I am sure I will dislike some of Harris’s policy decisions and actions. That’s beside the point.

Or, as the conservative journalist David Frum put it on the “Bulwark” podcast last week, “That’s tomorrow’s problem.” Frum has his own reasons to foresee disagreement with a Harris administration. But, he explained, “today’s problem is you have to save the Constitution, save NATO, save trade, save American leadership in the world.”

It’s a simple point, but it offers a clarifying framework. For those who are still wavering, consider not only the stakes but also the timeline. If you are at all concerned about those larger issues, you can sweat the smaller ones later. Regardless of any disagreements — petty or significant, ideological or practical — you may have with her, Harris is an intelligent, capable and healthy individual who will be subject to ordinary checks and balances.

You might say that’s a low bar. But remember, that is the bar.

Where Was Merrick Garland When Justice Needed Him?

Attorney General Merrick Garland gave an important and sadly necessary speech on Thursday, thanking the 115,000 employees of the Justice Department for their efforts and steeling them for the difficult months ahead.

The purpose of this pep talk was to defend against right-wing charges of politicized prosecutions and to warn of the dangers of assaulting federal law enforcement.

“Over the past three and a half years, there has been an escalation of attacks on the Justice Department’s career lawyers, agents and other personnel that go far beyond public scrutiny, criticism and legitimate and necessary oversight of our work,” Garland said, noting the “conspiracy theories, dangerous falsehoods, efforts to bully and intimidate career public servants by repeatedly and publicly singling them out and threats of actual violence.”

Those are all important points, and it’s a frightening reminder of where we are that he felt he had to make them at all. No previous attorney general has had to say these things, because no previous attorney general has been faced with a presidential nominee who has openly promised to politicize the Justice Department if elected (and who took clear steps in that direction when he was last in office).

That’s the fine line Garland has to walk. He conspicuously did not utter Donald Trump’s name on Thursday, no doubt out of respect for the department’s rule against getting involved in electoral politics, but the hard truth remains: Those conspiracy theories, the threats of violence, the undermining of law enforcement — they are inspired and even promoted by one man, a man who is the single biggest threat to independent justice and the rule of law in America.

And, unfortunately, a man whom Garland tried his best to ignore until it was too late.

“There is not one rule for friends and another for foes, one rule for the powerful and another for the powerless, one rule for the rich and another for the poor, one rule for Democrats and another for Republicans,” Garland said in his speech.

The right words, for sure, but not really true. By delaying any investigation or prosecution of Trump until almost two years after he became attorney general, Garland hamstrung Jack Smith, the dogged and beleaguered special counsel, leaving little time for the predictable unpredictabilities of two high-stakes prosecutions. Both were as solid as federal cases get, and now neither has any chance of being completed before the election, leaving voters without clear legal conclusions about Trump’s responsibility for the Jan. 6 riot and the highly classified documents he took from the White House.

In short, for Donald Trump there was, and always is, a separate rule. Contrary to the bogus complaints of “lawfare,” the Justice Department has treated Trump better, not worse, than everyone else. If Trump wins in November and orders Justice to drop the prosecutions against him, that will be a lasting tarnish of Garland’s legacy.

Farah Stockman

Editorial Board Member, reporting from Boston

The Dirtiest Trick Whitey Bulger Ever Played on Boston

To mark the 50th anniversary of court-ordered school desegregation in Boston on Thursday, a yellow school bus drove reporters and educators on a pilgrimage around the city to sites that played a key role in that notoriously divisive period in Boston’s civic life.

The tour went to City Hall, where a mob of busing opponents turned on Senator Ted Kennedy, shattering the windows of the building where he took refuge. It stopped at South Boston High School, where white parents threw stones and insults at Black children from Roxbury who were arriving for their first day of class. It made its way to Freedom House in Roxbury, where Black parents, educators and activists strategized about how to keep children safe and continue their struggle for more equitable education.

On the bus, Ira Jackson — chief of staff to Kevin White, who was mayor of Boston in those fateful days in 1974 — took the microphone and told the incredible story about how the mayor learned on the eve of that first day of school that Whitey Bulger, the notorious Irish American mobster, was planning to kill Black children on those buses. The city was already a tinderbox. An evil act like that would have set it ablaze.

Mayor White begged Washington for federal marshals, but President Gerald Ford refused. The mayor ended that night at the home of Whitey Bulger’s brother, William, a powerful politician at the time, warning him to dissuade his brother. City Hall then did what it could to beef up the police presence on the streets.

So while the nation watched in horror that day as a bastion of liberalism revealed its inner Selma, Ira Jackson called the mayor and reported the good news: Nobody had died.

But if you look back, no one benefited more from the chaos and disorder of those years than Whitey Bulger. Police officers lost their credibility, because they were enforcing an unpopular order. South Boston “became a no man’s land,” Jackson said. Amid the chaos and violence, white students dropped out of South Boston High in droves and never went back. Bulger recruited them to sell drugs.

That’s the irony: Bulger, who portrayed himself as protecting his white Irish community from dangerous Black people, proved to be his own people’s deadliest scourge, as Michael Patrick MacDonald points out in his memoir, “All Souls: A Family Story From Southie.”

Standing in the auditorium of South Boston High, MacDonald read from his book for the people on the bus tour and noted how much the people of South Boston and Roxbury had in common then, and now. They were poor and getting a substandard education. And today, they are priced out of the neighborhoods where they were born.

“What kills me is how easy it is to bring them together,” he told me, of his community organizing work. “When I am working with Black moms and white moms who have lost kids to incarceration or drugs, they see themselves in each other.”

Editorial Board Member, reporting from Charlotte, N.C.

Even Harris’s Strongest Supporters Long for More Details

Kamala Harris’s buoyant rally in Charlotte, N.C., on Thursday — her first rally since her successful trouncing of Donald Trump at their debate on Tuesday — was full of some of her most faithful supporters. But even here, several voters said they wanted to hear more details about what she intends to do in office.

“I’d like to see her talk a little more about immigration,” Terra Barnhill, 51, told me after the rally in this battleground state. “A lot of my friends who are on the fence are concerned about that,” Barnhill said.

Even fully decided voters still had questions about how Harris planned to make their lives better. Muriel Harley, 66, an accountant from Raleigh, said the rally had been thrilling.

“To me it was emotional, just as a Black woman,” Harley, 66, told me outside the Bojangles Coliseum afterward. Even so, Harley, who wore a shirt with an image of Harris as a child, said she had at least one issue in mind she hoped the candidate would directly address.

“She needs to talk about student loan forgiveness,” Harley said. “I went back to grad school,” she explained, shaking her head about the loan debt she faced.

Polls have consistently shown Trump with an edge among voters concerned about the economy, and that concern was reflected even among Democrats who told me they want to hear more from Harris about what can be done to help Americans grappling with the higher prices they’ve experienced under President Biden, especially at the grocery store.

At the rally, attended by more than 8,000 very excited supporters, Harris seemed to lean harder into those concerns. She reminded voters of her middle-class upbringing and said she wanted a country where “every American has an opportunity to own a home, to build wealth, to start a business.”

Harris also repeated her promise of a tax cut for small businesses. “I know they are the backbone of America’s economy,” she said.

But while Harris has said she would expand the child tax credit and give a tax break to small businesses, she has yet to offer many specifics on what she would do as president to lower prices. She did, however, bring up her plan to offer $25,000 in aid to first-time home buyers — a good idea that would provide direct relief to Americans (though it would certainly require building more housing, something Harris has said she would support).

Addressing the higher costs Americans are grappling with is thorny: The causes of these economic pressures are complex, and the president’s role in driving down costs is somewhat constrained. Harris will have to find a way to give Americans more specifics anyway. Doing so could be crucial to making sure voters don’t look for relief anywhere else.

David Wallace-Wells

Hurricane Francine Tells Us a Lot About Storm Seasons to Come

A week ago, the much-hyped hurricane season was looking like a fascinating dud. Forecasters had projected an incredibly busy summer and fall, with many predicting the worst season in modern history. But after an early encounter with Hurricane Beryl, which made an unusual June landfall in Grenada as a Category 4 storm, there has been hardly any activity at all in the Atlantic basin, leading meteorologists and climate scientists alike to wonder what happened and why the terrifying-seeming season fizzled out so spectacularly.

The waters of the Atlantic remained astonishingly high, meaning that any storm to pass through the waters of the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico was likely to become a powerhouse. Nonetheless, weather patterns farther offshore seem to have shifted the geography of storm formation. Tropical cyclones were not appearing off the coast of Africa, where they typically begin their trip westward, but over the continent instead, producing pretty much unheard-of meteorological activity and delivering historic amounts of rainfall to the Sahara.

Hurricane Francine, which made landfall in Louisiana as a Category 2 on Wednesday, isn’t exactly a historic storm, though it has produced widespread flooding and power outages for hundreds of thousands all along the Gulf Coast. But as a sort of “tweener” weather event, it does illustrate several features of the new phase of climate history we are all now living through, having left behind the window of global temperatures that enclose all of human history — and all of our previous experiences of hurricanes.

First, even quiet seasons and unexceptional storms can generate an awful lot of damage and disruption. Some of that reflects the increasing level of valuable stuff we keep building blithely in harm’s way. But it also means that even relatively small increases in the actual intensity of extreme events can produce enormous increases in weather damage. Increasingly in the United States, “normal” seeming meteorological events are imposing costs in the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.

Second, though many people assume that warming will increase the number of hurricanes, in fact, climate science is much more confident that it will make a larger share of them high intensity storms (perhaps even necessitating the creation of new levels on the category scale).

And third, the behavior of individual storms is itself being changed by warming, which seems particularly effective at getting them to intensify much more rapidly (as Hurricane Otis did last year in Acapulco , Mexico, growing from a tropical storm to a Category 5 in barely one day). Warming can also make them slow down or even stall right at landfall, often producing more damage in a single place.

At the moment, Francine feels like a book end to a surprisingly quiet season, but there may well be more to come, given that roughly half of the season lies still ahead of us. In the further future, the pattern is even more forbidding, with one recent paper suggesting that without rapid emissions reductions, nearly three-quarters of the planet could experience unprecedented weather events over just the next 20 years.

Something Important Is Happening With JD Vance, Laura Loomer, Project 2025 and Donald Trump

Right-wing absurdities — Donald Trump’s comments about Haitian migrants eating pets, JD Vance’s comments about “childless cat ladies” (among other things), Project 2025’s ideas, the conspiracist Laura Loomer being in Trump’s inner circle — are breaking through to regular Americans and undecided voters to a degree that undermines the Trump campaign’s goal of positioning the former president as the more moderate, change-oriented candidate in the race. To me, this is the biggest political dynamic coming out of Tuesday’s debate.

On Wednesday night, I spent a couple of hours with our Times Opinion panel of 14 undecided young voters — a group we are talking to weekly this fall — and I asked them to tell me something they had changed their minds about since our first conversation in mid-August . Two of them quickly brought up how much they had soured on Vance. Another young person had heard about Fred Trump’s assertions about Donald Trump and disabled people and felt disgusted with the former president. While many of them still have reservations about Harris after Tuesday’s debate, they were more dismayed with Trump’s behavior and remarks. Some were disgusted by his false allegations about migrants eating pets in Ohio. Two others brought up the images of Loomer and Trump.

Mark, a 24-year-old chef from California who remains undecided in the race, reflected the sentiments of several in the group when he said of Trump:

He doesn’t necessarily scare me. I think he’s incompetent. What scares me is the people he’s surrounded himself with and how they can use him. Laura Loomer was on the plane with them. The Heritage Foundation and all the plans they have. It just seems like he’s a vessel for other people who are way more competent and have way more plans to do stuff that I personally don’t agree with. I feel like they’re going to use him and get policies enacted that I personally don’t agree with.

A lot of regular people are starting to tune into the presidential race. After the debate, when they looked on TikTok, they saw wacky, unsubstantiated comments about people eating cats on one side and an endorsement from Taylor Swift on the other. Trump and his campaign have tried to position him as the more moderate candidate who would change the economy for the better. Some polls indicate people see him that way. But the more the wacky stuff breaks through to regular people — and it is breaking through — the worse it will be for Trump.

He won in 2016 by being someone people felt they could take a chance on. Listening to our undecided young voters, I didn’t expect to hear such disgust over Vance, Loomer and Project 2025. That stuff is catching on. It’s not hard to imagine many Americans deciding in late October to take a chance on Harris (like they did in 2016 with Trump) rather than see a candidate they don’t like take the White House.

Paul Krugman

What Harris Shouldn’t Say About the Economy

When Kamala Harris talks about economic policy, she talks a lot about the present and the future — about how we currently have low inflation and unemployment, and about things she will do to raise incomes and hold down prices. I’ve seen a number of commentators, however, saying that this isn’t enough, that she also needs to look back, to do more to defend the economic record of the administration in which she has been serving.

That’s a terrible idea. And I say that as someone who believes that the Biden administration did an excellent job coping with the aftermath of the pandemic. The trouble is that making the case for that record takes a fair bit of explaining. And as the old political saying goes, if you’re explaining, you’re losing.

Of course, this dictum applies to politicians, not policy wonks. So let me use two charts to do the explaining Harris shouldn’t, then talk about why none of this should be in her speeches.

First, here’s the evolution of prices and wages since just before the pandemic:

Why start there, rather than from the month Biden took office? Because economic numbers during the pandemic slump were deeply weird. Oil prices crashed, even going negative at one point; average wage data were distorted by the fact that many low-wage workers were laid off; and so on. So better to start in February 2020.

What you can see right away is that inflation surged in 2021-22 but that the surge was temporary: Over the past year consumer prices have risen only 2.5 percent, and even that number largely reflects a price nobody pays — “owners’ equivalent rent,” an estimate of what homeowners would be paying if they were renters. A measure that corresponds to the practice in many other countries, which don’t include that rent equivalent in their inflation numbers, is up only 1.3 percent over the past year.

Why did we have that temporary inflation surge? The best explanation is that it reflected pandemic-related disruptions. One strong piece of evidence for this proposition is that cumulative inflation since the beginning of the pandemic, using comparable measures, has been similar in many wealthy countries:

Still, prices are considerably higher than they were four and a half years ago. But going back to that first chart, so are wages, which for most workers have risen substantially more than prices.

This is, objectively, a pretty good story. We had a one-time jump in prices, which was probably unavoidable given the effects of the pandemic, or at any rate could have been avoided only at the cost of a severe recession; but inflation is back under control, and workers’ purchasing power is higher than ever.

But Americans in general are unhappy with the fact that things cost more than they used to and aren’t mollified by the fact that wages have gone up even more.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s a longstanding result that everyday people don’t think about inflation the way economists do. At times when both prices and wages are rising, people tend to believe that higher prices are taking away their hard-earned wage gains, rather than seeing rising wages and rising prices as two sides of the same coin.

So should Harris be giving lectures on Econ 101, telling voters, “Look, you just don’t understand”? Any adviser suggesting such a thing should be fired on the spot.

No, leave it to people like me to argue that Biden was right to allow a temporary spike in inflation — no matter how big the avalanche of hate mail it inevitably produces. I don’t pretend to be an expert on political strategy, but everything I see says that on economics, Harris is right to focus on what can be, unburdened by what has been.

One of Trump’s Insidious Lies on Abortion Is Grounded in an Old Truth

As the debate over the Debate rages a day later, it’s tempting to try to catalog all of the lies Donald Trump told to an audience of tens of millions of Americans. But more interesting than the fact of his lies is how he lies.

Take a look at the former president’s rambling answer on abortion and reproductive rights. Linsey Davis of ABC News corrected Trump when he claimed, falsely, that Democratic-led states allow “execution after birth.” But he followed that one up with another lie, more insidious and, in its way, more Trumpian.

“Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote,” he said.

Let’s stop right there. The first part — “every legal scholar,” whether liberal or conservative — is not only untrue but obviously so. Just look at the briefs filed at the Supreme Court in the Dobbs case, which overturned Roe v. Wade. You will find an overwhelming number of liberal scholars weighing in on the side of preserving the constitutional right to an abortion.

But as with so many of Trump’s lies, it is wrapped around a grain of truth. In this case, the grain is that some high-profile liberals once criticized Roe v. Wade. Famously, Ruth Bader Ginsburg did so before she became a Supreme Court justice, arguing that Roe was decided too quickly and too broadly.

Of course, anyone who listened to her reasoning would learn that she did not want Roe overturned. Rather she wanted it to be grounded more explicitly in the Constitution , on equal protection grounds, rather than on the right to privacy. In the 1970s, the liberal law professor John Hart Ely strongly denounced Roe , but by 2022, when Justice Samuel Alito quoted Ely in his decision overturning Roe, attitudes like that were near impossible to find on the left.

This was all part of the political and legal evolution of the debate over abortion rights, but Trump doesn’t do nuance. So he ignored the inconvenient parts of the story and never explained the nature of the objections to Roe. And he changed “some” scholars to “all,” as though through sheer maximalism — the biggest building, the smartest guy, the perfect phone call — he could lull voters into his simplistic, zero-sum view of the world.

It’s also worth noting that, contrary to Trump’s claim, I have yet to meet anyone who actually wants abortion to be decided on a state-by-state basis. Why would they? No matter where you stand on the issue, it involves profound matters of life and death, bodily autonomy and human equality. What abortion opponent is fine with a rule that lets unborn babies be killed in California but not in Kentucky? What abortion rights supporter is content with protecting women from forced birth in New York but not in Texas?

This is why we have a federal Constitution that is supreme over the states — it’s how we protect and defend the fundamental rights of all Americans, regardless of where they happen to live. One of those rights — which Americans continue to support by at least a 2-to-1 majority , even after Roe was struck down — is a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body.

If Football Were Treated Like Inflation

Imagine you’re listening to a football game on the radio and the play-by-play guy says: “Patrick Mahomes takes the snap, throws … and that’s 71 yards gained over the last 12 plays!”

Ridiculous, right? But that’s exactly what journalists and economists do every month when the inflation numbers come out. Instead of saying what happened in the latest month — the latest “play” — we usually focus on what happened to prices over the past 12 months.

Can’t blame the government for this. The headline on the news release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that came out on Wednesday was this: “ C.P.I. for All Items Rises 0.2% in August; Shelter Up .” That’s the one-month change in the Consumer Price Index. It’s the equivalent of telling people what happened on the latest play from the line of scrimmage.

But reports about that announcement said things like this: “Inflation fell in August to 2.5 percent, down from 2.9 percent in July.” Summing up the price change over the past 12 months through August is the equivalent of summing up the total yardage over the past 12 plays.

The justification for focusing on the price change over the past year is that the monthly numbers are volatile. Looking over an entire year smooths out those ups and downs.

The problem is that the fresh news gets swamped by stuff that happened in the past. If the Kansas City Chiefs happened to gain 98 yards on a kickoff runback a few plays ago, that will “inflate” the total yardage gained over the past 12 plays. Economists call that a base effect. As time goes on, the 98-yard gain will fall out of the 12-play total and suddenly yardage gained — like measured inflation — will abruptly fall.

I’m not against measuring the year-over-year change in prices, but I’d like to see more attention on the latest monthly change, which is really the only new thing. What did happen on that Mahomes pass play?

Actually, Europe Is Doing a Lot for Ukraine

It wasn’t the biggest whopper of the night, but during the debate, Donald Trump — who refused to say that Ukraine should win its war — said some false things about the role our allies are playing. Again, let me give you the full statement, with no sanewashing :

“I want the war to stop. I want to save lives that are being uselessly — people being killed by the millions. It’s the millions. It’s so much worse than the numbers that you’re getting, which are fake numbers. Look, we’re in for $250 billion or more because they don’t ask Europe, which is a much bigger beneficiary to getting this thing done than we are. They’re in for $150 billion less because Biden and you don’t have the courage to ask Europe like I did with NATO. They paid billions and billions, hundreds of billions of dollars when I said either you pay up or we’re not going to protect you anymore. So that may be one of the reasons they don’t like me as much as they like weak people. But you take a look at what’s happening. We’re in for $250 to $275 billion. They’re into $100 to $150. They should be forced to equalize.”

I’m not sure why he thinks it necessary to claim that the casualty numbers are fake. But I do know that he loves to claim that our allies aren’t paying their share. Except that’s completely wrong. I wrote about this a few months ago : Europe is spending considerably more on Ukraine than we are:

It’s true that America, with its much bigger defense industry, is supplying most of the weapons. But we are not bearing most of the monetary burden.

For Trump, of course, the claim that Europe isn’t helping serves the purpose of portraying the Biden-Harris administration as weak. But it just isn’t true.

Kathleen Kingsbury

Opinion Editor

The Question Kamala Harris Couldn’t Answer

Even before Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris, it was clearly the vice president’s night. In more than 90 minutes of contentious debate, Harris continued to prosecute the case against a second Donald Trump presidency more effectively than perhaps any of his other rivals has since 2015. But was it enough to satisfy those voters who say they still need to know more about her in order to cast a ballot in her favor this November?

Over the weekend, a survey by The New York Times and Siena College found that 60 percent of likely voters said they believed America was headed in the wrong direction, and many reported that they didn’t know enough about where Harris stands on several key issues. Any poll is just a snapshot in time, and it is admittedly hard to interpret exactly what those respondents are looking for from her. Do they want a better understanding of how she plans to govern from the Oval Office in terms of policy? Or are they more interested in her character and what type of leader she would be?

For those voters looking for answers on policy, the debate is unlikely to have left them feeling better informed. According to the Times tracker, the vice president spent nearly half of her speaking time attacking Trump. She rightfully called out his lies and his dangerous embrace of dictators. She was also strong in defending reproductive rights, as well as President Biden’s record on foreign and domestic policy. And she mentioned a handful of plans she’d pursue if she won the White House.

Yet we learned very few new details about those plans. On the economy, which voters often rank as the issue of most importance to them, she only scratched the surface in discussing how she’d enact tax cuts, build more affordable housing and help parents of young children. On foreign policy, she committed herself to a two-state solution in the Middle East and to supporting Ukraine in victory over Russia, but she didn’t expand on how she’d seek to achieve either goal. She pledged not to ban fracking but said little on how she would plan to invest in climate solutions. She also continued to dodge questions about why she recently distanced herself from positions that she took in her quest to be the Democratic nominee in 2020.

Most important, she did very little to distinguish her plans from Biden’s in an election in which the electorate seems hungry for change.

To be clear, Trump utterly failed to present or defend his policy goals. In many ways, the former president confirmed what has been obvious for years: His main aim, should he win another term, would be to do whatever is best for Donald Trump. He is not fit to serve .

But on a night when Harris set traps every which way for Trump (and he took the bait essentially every time), the one moment those tables were turned was when the former president asked her what she would do differently from the past three and a half years. Some voters may still be left looking for that answer.

Jessica Bennett

Contributing Opinion Editor

How to Diminish a Former President

She didn’t shout. She didn’t interrupt. She didn’t complain about having less time to speak .

But “she” — she being Kamala Harris, to use Donald Trump’s preferred name for her — managed to undermine him, provoking him into shouting, finger-pointing and sputtering, ranting about eating dogs and nuclear weapons with sweat on his upper lip. She remained calm and collected, emasculating him one subtle jab at a time.

I came into the debate prepared to watch for the subtleties of Trump’s sexism . He wouldn’t look at her. He refused to speak her name. He kept referring to “her boss”(President Biden), diminishing her power. But by the end of the debate, I was tallying the ways that Harris had done the reverse: picking at his brittle ego, cracking the fragile facade of his blustering machismo.

She dismissed the size of his rallies. She mocked his “love letters to Kim Jong-un.” She called him “weak,” referred to him as “this fella” and said Vladimir Putin would “eat you for lunch.” She talked about his multiple bankruptcies (code for him failing as a man and a provider) and noted that he had been “fired by 81 million people” and was clearly “having a hard time processing that,” like a gentle mother, patting her tantruming child on the head.

And she managed to do it without being shrill or angry or coming off as petty. Worst of all, she laughed at him. It wasn’t a forced or controlled or premeditated laugh. It was a real laugh. A big laugh. The sort of laugh she couldn’t hold in and made those of us watching laugh along with her.

“Talk about extreme,” she said, as he stared dead-eyed into the distance. She immediately hammered home all of the former generals and advisers who had declared him unfit for office. He could only fidget uncomfortably in response.

Eight years ago, the same man, perhaps less sleepy but no less angry, hulked over Hillary Clinton as she tried to ignore him and keep speaking. Now the woman running for this country’s highest office was no longer turning the other cheek. Instead, she laid bare the smallness of Trump’s manhood and asserted her own power, competence and confidence in the face of it. In the end, only a woman could do that for us.

David Firestone

Deputy Editor, the Editorial Board

Over 90 Minutes, Trump Descended to His True Self

For the first 10 minutes or so of Tuesday night’s debate, it looked as though the restrained version of Donald Trump might have shown up in Philadelphia, the one who learned his lesson from his failure to curb his impulses in the 2020 debates with Joe Biden. He stayed silent while Kamala Harris ripped up his economic plan, which she correctly noted was based on a tax cut for the wealthy and a sales tax on all imported goods. When it was his turn to respond, he accurately pointed out that the Biden administration had made no attempt to end the tariffs he imposed on China.

But it didn’t last, and no one who has watched Trump over the past decade thought it could. Within minutes, he descended from a discussion of tariffs into a description of immigrants — one he returned to over and over again during the evening — that could only be described as a form of nativist hysteria.

“They are taking over the towns,” he said. “They’re taking over buildings. They’re going in violently. These are the people that she and Biden let into our country. And they’re destroying our country. They are dangerous. They’re at the highest level of criminality, and we have to get them out. We have to get them out fast.”

This was the level of delusion that Harris and her campaign had clearly hoped Trump would demonstrate to voters, and it just got worse from there. “They’re eating the dogs,” he said, referring to Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio — a particularly heinous calumny that began on social media and was spread by his running mate, JD Vance. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” When the moderator David Muir pointed out that local officials had seen nothing of the kind, Trump said he heard about it on television.

Throughout the evening, in moments just like that, Harris was able to do something that Biden had failed to do when he was campaigning for re-election: push Trump in ways that exposed his spattering of lies and wild fantasies.

This was even true about the frightening attempt on Trump’s life. There has been no evidence that it was politically motivated, but that didn’t stop Trump from claiming it was. “I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things that they say about me,” he said, referring to his false claim that the indictments against him were evidence of “weaponizing” the justice system.

And asked about his role in undermining the democratic process, he said it was actually Harris who had done so, by usurping Biden’s role atop the ticket. “You talk about a threat to democracy — he got 14 million votes, and they threw him out of office. And you know what? I’ll give you a little secret. He hates her. He can’t stand her. But he got 14 million votes. They threw him out. She got zero votes.”

The debate was an unqualified success for Harris not just because she was able to define herself and her plans but also because she was able to push a few buttons and let Trump show off his truest self.

On Abortion, Trump Floundered in Fantasy Land

When running for office after taking away the reproductive freedoms of roughly half the American public, the best thing to do may simply be to lie about what you have done.

That was the political calculus made by Donald Trump during Tuesday night’s debate. His bald and outrageous lies about abortion and his role in overturning Roe v. Wade were fantastical, even for him. There’s lying, and then there’s the world of fairy tales, and he chose the latter.

Trump said Roe v. Wade had “torn our country apart” and that “every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative” wanted the issue to be sent back to the states.

This is a lie. A majority of Americans supported the protections for abortion under Roe and still do.

He accused Democrats of supporting killing babies. “In other words, we’ll execute the baby,” he said. This is another lie, and one of the ABC News moderators, Linsey Davis, called him on it. He accused Harris’s running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, of saying “execution after birth” is “absolutely fine.” This, too, is a lie.

Trump misled those who were watching the debate, saying he believes in “exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.” Yet it is thanks to Trump that states have been able to enact abortion bans that include no such exceptions.

Vice President Kamala Harris, rightly, pointed out that a majority of Americans believe in a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body and pointed out the pain that has been caused so many women in Republican-led states since the Supreme Court’s decision.

Abortion bans are a losing issue for Republicans, and Trump did nothing to change that.

I’m Hearing Huge Relief From Democrats Over Harris’s Debate Performance

Within the first half-hour of the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, I heard from four veteran Democratic presidential campaign officials, and all of them had the same reaction to Harris: a strong and confident performance that often put Trump on the defensive, with the potential to win the face-off as he sputtered over abortion rights and students loans.

Harris went on offense from the start, as she strode across the stage to Trump’s podium and reached out, shook his hand and introduced herself. Her performance was — in pretty much every way — a total contrast to President Biden’s in the June debate, and if Trump had a playbook to win the debate, it wasn’t clear as he scrambled to fight back against her attacks over the economy, tariffs, in vitro fertilization and China.

Trump’s go-to line — “another lie” — probably pleased many in his MAGA base, but I’m skeptical it was persuasive for many undecided and swing voters. That’s because a lot of those voters have told The Times that they are tired of Trump’s complaining when they want to hear specifics about what he would do in office.

Time and again, Harris laid the bait, and Trump took it. “People start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom,” Harris said at one point. When the ABC moderators tried to ask Trump about immigration, he said, “First let me respond to the rallies.” But Harris also found ways to send Trump off on tangents, like when he pushed the lie that migrants in Ohio are killing pets for food. The moderators fact-checked him, but he wouldn’t let it go. And then Harris lowered the boom.

“Talk about extreme,” she said, laughing.

The Democratic strategists were struck by how much Harris owned Trump, who raised his voice more and more as the debate unfolded. They saw her as strong but likable and substantive on the issues. As for Republicans, one Trump ally argued that the former president spoke with confidence and strength and that many voters would still be unforgiving of Harris over the Biden-era economy.

The first 20 to 25 minutes of a debate are often the most important part: America is a country with a short attention span where first impressions count, where politicians try to set the tone and tempo of a debate from the start, and you can often tell quickly if someone will have an off night. Trump is often at his most disciplined (relatively speaking) at the start of a debate; as time goes on, he tends to meander in his answers and get snappish.

In this case, though, whatever discipline Trump had fell away pretty quickly in the face of a Harris onslaught. If she came under pressure, it was from the ABC moderators who pressed her on her changes in policy positions like on fracking. But I’m skeptical that the pressure from a moderator’s question will break through to voters like the pressure that Harris subjected Trump to on abortion and his proposed tax cuts for the wealthy.

Trump Is Provoking a Congressional Fight He Can’t Win

Donald Trump took time out from his pre-debate “ policy time ” on Tuesday to stick his out-of-joint nose into Congress’s fight over funding the government:

“If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET,” he raved on Truth Social . “THE DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO ‘STUFF’ VOTER REGISTRATIONS WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN — CLOSE IT DOWN!!!”

Such feistiness! Love to see it. Especially since the former president must know, or at least suspect, that he is spitting into the wind — shrieking at his minions to go hard on a poison-pill measure that has less chance of becoming law this season than JD Vance has of winding up the new V.P. of the Cat Fanciers’ Association . (The poison pill is a measure to require proof of citizenship to vote, even though the law already forbids noncitizens from voting, and Republicans have never shown any evidence that this is a problem.)

Then again, it’s not totally unreasonable for Trump to expect Republican lawmakers to blindly do his bidding. I mean, earlier this year, they tanked a serious bipartisan bill on what is ostensibly one of the party’s top priorities — border security — because Trump told them that doing so was in his electoral interests. Why not then force a government shutdown in pursuit of a measure that would cast further doubt on the integrity of our election system?

I’ll tell you why not. Because a government shutdown in the final stretch of a tick-tight, high-stakes election cycle would be political madness — especially if it looked as though the shutdown occurred not because of substantive disagreements over spending but because Trump was bullying his congressional team into indulging his delusions about election fraud. Again.

MAGA die-hards might be jazzed. The rest of the electorate, not so much.

Republican lawmakers may be loath to upset their nominee, but they value nothing above their own political fortunes. Most of them aren’t stupid enough to sign up for this kind of self-immolation.

Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer and Rachel Louise Snyder

3 Questions: When Women Kill Their Abusers

Alicia Wittmeyer, Opinion Special Projects Editor: You’ve written about domestic violence for years. For your latest essay , how did you end up focusing on the legal consequences for women who kill their abusers?

Rachel Louise Snyder, Contributing Opinion Writer: When I was writing my book “ No Visible Bruises ” I heard over and over how we didn’t know the number of women who were in prison for killing someone who was abusing them. I found this startling; this seemed like such a basic statistic. After I spoke about this at Stanford Law School in 2020, the executive directors of the Criminal Justice Center — Debbie Mukamal and David Sklansky — pushed for a large-scale survey of women in prison for homicide, which became the basis for the piece.

Wittmeyer: What was it like being in a prison as a proctor instead of a journalist?

Snyder: It was so humbling. Debbie made me go through training about not harming people while you’re talking with them and, honestly, I think it’s forever changed the way I interact with people. For example, when I do these incredibly intense interviews now, I never get off the phone with someone without asking what their plan is to take care of themselves. Will they call a friend? Go to church?

Doing this in person mattered. Formerly incarcerated women who were our consultants said that inmates get surveyed ad nauseam, especially through the mail: all these faceless, nameless people asking for the worst moment of their lives. Stanford ensured that clergy and/or a social worker was available on survey days so that the women would have some emotional support.

Wittmeyer: I know the researchers hope to eventually expand their survey to every state in the country. Ambitious, important — daunting! Any sense of the states that might be next on their list?

Snyder: To some extent, it depends on where we get permission — getting permission to do in-person research is a whole complicated process that, in our case, took nearly two years (in part, because of Covid).

California, Florida and Texas contain a huge percentage of the women who are incarcerated for homicide nationwide. But Texas is complicated because its facilities are smaller, and a survey would require visiting more of them, so just logistically it’s difficult. There are states with certain laws that make them potentially interesting to us, like Oklahoma and Illinois, for example. But it costs money to do this kind of research, and no one wants to fund it, honestly.

As a society, we don’t like messy victims. The anti-domestic violence advocacy world prioritized resources for victims who don’t get convicted of committing crimes. Incarcerated women simply don’t have a ton of people on the outside really advocating for them among potential donors. So, in part, the next state will depend on who is willing to fund this research.

Jamelle Bouie

JD Vance’s Outrageous Smear of Haitian Immigrants

Attracted by job opportunities around Springfield, Ohio, thousands of Haitian immigrants have migrated to the area in search of a better life. And while there have been real tensions — especially after a recent arrival caused a school bus crash that killed one child and injured 23 others — it is also true that the new Haitian community has revitalized a town that was on the path to terminal decline.

For every problem — the migrants have overwhelmed key city services — there are also opportunities for both newcomers and longtime residents. As my newsroom colleague Miriam Jordan detailed in a recent article, Springfield is a microcosm for all that is good, and difficult, about immigration.

Part of this story is a furious backlash. Some of it is ordinary and even understandable resentment, and some of it emanates from the ugliest corners of American life. Last month, for example, an armed neo-Nazi group marched through Springfield denouncing Haitian immigrants in a display reminiscent of the deadly “ Unite the Right ” riot in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.

A responsible leader would use the situation in Springfield — the anger and acrimony from some, as well as the decency and generosity from others — as an opportunity to try to bring people together and come, as much as possible, to a mutual understanding. A leader would see it as a chance to do democracy, to bring people together as equals so that they can figure out how to live together.

Senator JD Vance of Ohio is not that responsible leader.

Faced with troubles and tensions that could, under the wrong circumstances, escalate into outright violence, Vance fanned the flames.

In July, during a Senate committee hearing, Vance referred to Springfield as an example of how “high illegal immigration levels under the Biden administration” have raised housing costs, a highly contested assertion that rests on the false claim that the new Haitian residents of Springfield are undocumented. (The vast majority have legal residency under the Temporary Protected Status program.)

On Monday, Vance shared the outrageously false claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were abducting and eating their neighbor’s pets. “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country,” wrote Vance on X . “Where is our border czar?”

Vance was amplifying a lie that has its origins in a viral, and entirely fabricated, social media post spread by a Malaysia-based right-wing influencer . Springfield authorities say there are “no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.” The Trump campaign has not provided evidence to support the claim.

On Tuesday, Vance conceded that the smears may “turn out to be false” but urged his followers to continue spreading the lie.

Vance entered the political scene as a literary wunderkind of sorts. In highlighting this claim and spreading it to his followers on social media, he has shown that these days, he’s little more than a petty demagogue — the junior partner to another, even pettier demagogue.

The charge that a foreign people steal and eat pets is a classic attack meant to dehumanize its targets and legitimize persecution and removal. This is important to note because it comes just days after Donald Trump warned that the mass expulsion of immigrants from the United States — the centerpiece of his second-term agenda — will be a “ bloody story .”

JD Vance, it seems, is playing his part.

Kamala Harris Could Be in Trouble

In 20 years of covering presidential politics, I never saw a run of buoyant campaign rallies, boffo fund-raising, ecstatic social media and rank-and-file rapture for a candidate like Kamala Harris had in July and August, capped off by her Democratic convention speech. The next day, I sounded a note of caution about how joy is not a strategy , an argument that some readers disagreed with and some colleagues saw differently .

But a week after her speech, on Aug. 29, Harris faced her first real test — and, I’ve come to conclude, she fumbled it badly.

Her appearance that night on CNN — her first and only major interview since President Biden dropped out — was a missed opportunity: Harris gave canned or vague answers about why she had changed big positions from her 2020 campaign, she didn’t explain persuasively how she would lower the cost of living, and she responded blandly about what she would do on Day 1 as president. But most of all, I think, she didn’t leave strong positive impressions on undecided voters and lukewarm independents and Democrats.

The CNN interview looms large for me in part because Harris is running against a man who is unfit for office , who did enormous damage to the nation as president, who frequently veers into incoherence and lies in his news conferences and interviews — and yet who, for all that , is tied with Harris in leading polls .

Something seems to have happened in the past couple of weeks. As my newsroom colleague Nate Cohn wrote on Sunday: “Is Kamala Harris’s surge beginning to ebb?” CNN was one interview, not a trend, but I think it was revealing that a joy-driven campaign takes you only so far.

I checked in recently with our Times Opinion panel of young, undecided voters, which we are tracking through Election Day. Most in this group of 14 voters praised Harris’s convention speech; five said it made them more likely to vote for her . By contrast, seven said her answers on CNN made them less likely to vote for her.

“Harris did a poor job of explaining how she would ease inflation,” said Laura, a 20-year-old legal intern in Maryland, who was one of those less likely to support Harris after the interview. Lillian, a 27-year-old Virginian who gave Harris strong marks for her convention speech, could not come up with one positive takeaway from the interview.

For most in our group, Tuesday’s debate is critical in choosing a candidate. They want a better handle on who she is; they want stronger answers that build trust in her.

Big tent-pole events have an outsize impact in a tight race. The debate is one of Harris’s best chances to win over the doubters and undecideds and energize her momentum against Trump. No debate has ever felt more important.

Jeneen Interlandi

Sex Trafficking Is Not a Hoax, Even if the Conspiracies Usually Are

Tim Ballard, the former Homeland Security agent who started a global anti-sex-trafficking nonprofit group that became the subject of a hit movie and made him an international superhero, is facing extremely credible charges of sexual predation and assault. His entire apparatus — Operation Underground Railroad, which claimed to conduct undercover rescue operations across the world — appears to be a grim ruse designed only to help Ballard (and possibly others) get access to and abuse women and children.

The charges, laid out in a searing New York Times investigation by Mike Baker on Monday, are as horrific as they are heartbreaking: Not only did the operation not rescue anyone, but by using loads of money to entice possible traffickers, Ballard’s scam actually helped create a market for more trafficking than might otherwise have occurred.

The revelations make Operation Underground Railroad just one more in a long roster of false heroes and false narratives to populate the national sex trafficking discourse. The sheer volume of such stories — from Somaly Mam to Pizzagate — make it tempting to assume that the entire issue is a mere boogeyman, that sex trafficking really happens only in the heads of QAnon’s most fervent loyalists.

But that would be a mistake.

Here’s a true story: By the time he was caught by a cross-border task force this past April, a Florida pharmacist, Stefan Andres Correa , had traveled to Medellín, Colombia, 45 times in two years — to rape girls as young as 9. He paid a sex trafficker $75 to procure the children and according to court records offered $75 extra plus an iPhone to at least one of the girls “if she behaved.” The case captured headlines in the United States and Colombia for its egregiousness, but officials in both countries say that it was not an anomaly.

As The Wall Street Journal has reported , the rise of work-anywhere digital nomads triggered by the pandemic and the growing perception of Medellín as a city that is finally safe for tourists have conspired to touch off a boom in child sex trafficking. The operation that led to Correa’s arrest turned up perpetrators from Florida to Ohio as well as some 250 underage victims, fewer than 100 of whom have been found and brought to safety so far.

The investigators working to track down the rest are up against dozens of crime syndicates — including an offshoot of the original Medellín cartel — and a slew of modern tools (Airbnb, digital encryption, cryptocurrency) that have made traffickers exceedingly difficult to apprehend.

They are also up against a profound blind spot. Encouraged by exploitative politicians like Donald Trump, Americans routinely work themselves up into a frenzy over the moral character of people entering their country. (Murderers! Sex traffickers! Bad hombres!) They pay considerably less attention to the havoc their countrymen bring to other nations when they leave here.

This is never more true than during election season. In the coming weeks, as anti-immigration rhetoric reaches its familiar fever pitch, voters and politicians alike will wring their hands anew over the type and number of people seeking to penetrate the United States’ southern border. They should bear in mind that an untold number of American men are flocking in the opposite direction, to commit exactly the kind of heinous acts they are most terrified of.

Editorial Board Member, reporting from Raleigh, N.C.

The Lonely Anger of Democratic Women in North Carolina

On the campaign trail here in Raleigh, N.C., Gwen Walz and Doug Emhoff turned on the charm on Monday afternoon.

Walz, in a peppy Midwestern lilt, encouraged Democrats to bake cookies for the volunteers at the phone bank for her husband, Tim Walz, and Kamala Harris. “We need treats!” she said. “And the next night, go in and make the calls yourself.”

Emhoff, the second gentleman, joked that he and Harris had resorted to going for a walk on the tarmac recently to try to spend some quality time together. “Aw,” several women cooed at the event, in Raleigh’s City Market.

The crowd of some 200 Democrats — largely women — received Gwen Walz and Emhoff warmly. But many of them were also in a fighting kind of mood.

“Meow!” one woman cried out at the mention of JD Vance, a reference to his whining that “childless cat ladies” were running America. The Democrats inside the City Market roared, and their strong feelings were no surprise.

A day earlier, a secret audio tape was made public in which Mark Robinson, North Carolina’s Republican candidate for governor, vowed to ban abortions. They are already banned after 12 weeks in the state, thanks to the Republican supermajority that controls the General Assembly.

If only Americans considering staying home on Election Day could talk to North Carolina voters, whose lives have already been significantly affected by Trumpism.

Many Democrats here said they come from communities — and sometimes even families — in which they are far outnumbered by Republicans. “My ex-husband is voting for Trump,” Michelle Miles, 49, told me. “He’s always been controlling.”

Andrea Woodin, the secretary of the Franklin County Democrats, said she and her son, who is transgender, faced social ostracism for expressing their political views publicly.

“People yell at me from across the street,” Woodin said, adding that she home-schools her son for his safety.

In Southern battleground states like North Carolina, being a Democrat — or even just a woman — can take fortitude.

Thomas L. Friedman

The 23 Words Harris Needs to Say to Win

“Joe and I got a lot of things right, but we got some things wrong, too — and here is what I have learned.”

For my money, uttering those 23 words, or something like them, is the key for Kamala Harris to win Tuesday’s debate against Donald Trump — and the election.

Utter them, and she will hugely improve her chances to win more of the undecided voters in this tight race. Fail to utter them or continue to disguise her policy shifts with the incoherent statement she used in the CNN interview — that while her positions might have changed on fracking and immigration, “ my values have not changed ” — and she will struggle.

Madam V.P., if you say your positions have changed but your values haven’t, what does that even mean? And what should we expect from your presidency — your values or your actions? Our latest poll shows too many voters still don’t know.

It’s OK to say: “I learned a lot as vice president. I’m proud of our record of putting America on a sustainable path to a clean energy future. It will make us more secure and more prosperous. But I also see that we can’t get there overnight. For reasons of both economic security and national security, we need an all-of-the-above energy strategy right now. So you can trust that in a Harris presidency, America will continue to lead the world in exploiting our oil and gas advantages but we will do it in the cleanest way possible while making the transition as fast as possible.”

It’s OK to say: “President Biden and I inherited a cruel Trump border policy that included separating parents from their children. Maybe, out of an excess of compassion, we rolled it back too far. But we learned from it — we learned that only comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform can give us the solution we need, controlling illegal immigration — while continuing to be a beacon for legal immigration. So our administration sat down with one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate, James Lankford of Oklahoma, and hammered out a bipartisan immigration bill that would have done just that. And what did Trump do? He ordered Republicans to kill it, so he could keep exploiting immigration as a wedge issue. And you’re asking me if I’ve flip-flopped?”

Politicians always underestimate how much voters (and the news media) respect a leader who can say, “We didn’t get this quite right the first time, and I’m going to fix it” — something Trump can never, ever do. As James Carville recently put it in a Times Opinion guest essay, “A leader who can openly admit a change in her understanding would feel like a breath of spring air for a lot of voters.”

Katherine Miller

Opinion Writer and Editor

Which Trump Will Be on the Debate Stage With Harris?

It’s debate week. Presidential debates are sometimes explosive and shape the terrain of elections (like the one in June, or that first Biden-Trump debate in 2020). And sometimes they are intense, but except for a single moment that becomes a shorthand for a candidate’s appeal or limitations, they fade quickly from memory. Tuesday night’s debate may be the only one between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, who will meet for the first time. Will it change or harden how people view one or both of them, or will we be back where we began again this time next week?

As much as Harris’s newness and questions about her have shaped the last month, in the last week, Trump has called a news conference to revisit years-old sexual misconduct allegations against him and attack the women who lodged them, and posted at length about arresting various people if 2024 is like 2020, when he lost. That’s how Trump is, but is that how he’s going to be on the debate stage? More subdued, as he was in June, or more aggressive, as he was in 2020?

Last week, Trump’s meandering answer to a question about child-care costs wasn’t the first time he’s been asked about that in a public setting — he was basically asked the same question at the June debate and replied about something unrelated. The first debate ended up being consumed by President Biden’s awful performance and questions about his presidency, and voters’ expectations of Trump can seem fairly baked in, but not always. How he is on Tuesday could also shape the next few weeks in big ways.

On Sunday, the latest Times/Siena poll hit and, with Harris down a couple of points, there’s been some nervousness about choices her campaign has made in substance and strategy, though it’s hard to know anything certain in a race this close. On Tuesday, one of the more complex things she has to deal with is Biden’s presidency, which has often not been popular, but from which she hasn’t distanced herself too much, and can’t significantly do so anyway, since she’s a part of it.

Theoretically, the debate will force the issue a little bit, since debates tend to deal with the economic and foreign policy issues of the moment. But it’s often hard to know whether voters are looking for specific policies or a sense of command. Sounding decisive and clear about why she’s making decisions a certain way might be just as important on a debate stage as how she approaches some policy issues or broader questions.

After the debate, Harris will attend the 9/11 memorial in New York on Wednesday, and Trump may as well; Harris will spend the rest of the week in the battleground states. But even though Trump’s public persona can overwhelm everything, by the end of Tuesday night, there really might be a clear contrast between them on subjects like the courts, gun control, artificial intelligence and NATO.