How to Stop Hating Being Stressed

When I was 25, I was deep in grad school, and starting to doubt everything.

I was living in Washington, D.C. working toward my Ph.D. in clinical psychology. I was wondering if I was only there to make my parents proud. Maybe I should've been a photojournalist? A filmmaker? Someone doing something that felt more alive.

Meanwhile, friends who skipped grad school were already making real money while I was sinking deeper into student debt. I was struggling with the research side of my Ph.D. I was making big mistakes in stats, feeling like every failure was a reflection of why I didn’t belong here.

It didn’t feel like I was steering my life. It felt like life was steering me.

For a long time, I carried that feeling everywhere. It showed up in how I studied, how I doubted myself around friends, how I questioned every big decision. Stress felt like a heavy pressure that pulled me further and further into isolation. I kept imagining that doors were closing behind me, one by one, and I just stood there, too scared to move forward. 

I didn’t have any big breakthroughs. It was smaller than that.

I heard about a local photography festival. A chance to submit a few photos and get feedback on how to improve. I hadn’t touched my camera in months. I signed up and submitted three photos: a long exposure, a portrait, and a landscape. 

It felt good. Fun, just to be around people who weren’t doing psychology.

Then I found out about something called Project 365. One photo a day, every day, for a year. It sounded impossible. I did it anyway.

Every day, no matter how stressed I was, I found something to capture and shared it on Facebook, back when it was only four years old and still felt exciting and supportive.

It didn’t remove my stress or solve my problems. But it gave me something that was mine. Something I felt good about. 

Taking those daily photos made me feel like I existed again and that I was in control. 

That small act, choosing one thing for myself, every day, changed me.

It reminded me that stress wasn't proof that I was broken or failing. Stress meant I cared. It meant I wanted a future. And when I stopped fighting that feeling, when I let myself feel it and do something about it, the heaviness lifted, just a little.

It’s like what psychologist Dr. Kelly McGonigal says in The Upside of Stress:

“Stress happens when something you care about is at stake. It's not a sign to run away. It's a sign to step forward.”

When you realize that, you stop seeing stress as the enemy. You start seeing it as part of the process.

I’m sharing this because many of you are feeling overwhelmed right now. You feel trapped under constant pressure. You’re constantly losing motivation. Can’t figure out a way to move forward. And everything happening in the world is making you feel even more powerless. 

Stress isn’t proof you’re a screw up. It’s proof you care. And caring gives you direction. 

You can still create something meaningful inside this terrible, overwhelming feeling.

Over the next 5 days, I’m going to show you:

• How to understand your stress
• How to work with it, instead of against it
• How to use it as a signal for what matters most

What is one thing your stress is trying to tell you?

In the next lesson, I break down how stress traps you and the one key that can get you moving again.

Talk soon,
Dr. Ali

P.S. If you’d like to learn about approaching stress this way, Dr. McGonigal has an excellent TED talk about how to make stress your friend.

P.P.S. I never became a full-time creative. But sticking with photography gave me the skills to launch a YouTube channel and eventually, it led me here, connecting with you.