It's not what you don't know that gets you. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.

-Josh Billings, 19th century humorist

If you're old enough, you might have a childhood memory as I do of suffering a minor burn or a scald only to have some well-meaning grandparent or great aunt or uncle come at you waving a stick of butter to rub on your ouchie like you were an ear of roasted corn. Believe it or not, for generations, butter was a go-to first-aid treatment for a burn. Now, we know that grease traps heat and can make a burn even worse. Running cold water over the spot for 10-20 minutes cools the injury and relieves pain better than sealing the burn in cholesterol. But even though that particular myth was first debunked in the early 1960s, a lot of well-intentioned people had a hard time accepting that it was wrong and so, for decades after, it wasn't unusual for kids to get a burn treated by Land O' Lakes-wielding granny because myths are simply ridiculously resistant to facts and data to the contrary.

So it is with stress. Stress is everywhere. Everyone has it. It's all bad. It has to be managed. You need work-life balance or mindfulness, or relaxation techniques. Right? Well, actually, no. Or at least, not necessarily. More recent research on the stress response is making us rethink what we know but what ain't necessarily so. Here are 5 of the most stubbornly pervasive stress myths and what new research actually shows:

MYTH 1

1. YOU MUST MANAGE YOUR STRESS According to a Stanford University report, just the attempt to manage, avoid or eliminate stress can make it worse. Instead, shift your mindset to EMBRACING your stress as a sign that you live a productive and meaningful life. Just changing your beliefs from thinking of stress as a harmful experience lowers the chance that you'll cope with it using unhealthy response choices like avoidance and procrastination (which in turn just creates even more stress). Seeing it an "I got this" experience can lower your anxiety and increase your coping resources.

   MYTH 2

2. DON'T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF - New research shows that people who have a strong initial physiological reaction to stress (i.e. sweating the small stuff) show better long-term adaptation and that can protect against future PTSD and burnout.

   MYTH 3

3. STRESS DESTROYS HAPPINESS - Chronic distress is harmful but did you know that people with relatively high levels of stress also report some of the highest levels of life satisfaction? Because when that stress is related to a strong sense of purpose and is aligned with what they believe in their ability to cope, they tend to thrive. That stress, known as eustress, can be a sign of a challenging but meaningful life.

   MYTH 4

4. USE MINDFULNESS IN THE MOMENT - Even though mindfulness can be a good relaxation tool that has long-term benefits, practicing mindfulness techniques in stressful moments can actually increase it by deliberately focusing on the stressor. Practice mindfulness but with the intention of accepting your stress in a healthier way rather than with the intention of eliminating it.

   MYTH 5

5. YOU NEED TO RELAX - Forcing relaxation techniques like meditation and deep breathing in moments of acute stress can create a "should" mentality ("I should be calmer") that can make matters even worse for you. Alternatively, physical exercise or even tackling a problem directly yields better stress-relieving results.

   
   

The bottom line is that stress and our relationship to it is a lot more complicated than we might have been taught. Thinking of stress as an enemy to be conquered can lead you to efforts that are either doomed to failure or that result in the exact opposite of your intention. Stress is best understood as simply a relationship between the demands you face and the resources that you believe you possess to meet them. If you say that your demands are high but you're convinced that you have the ability and tools to handle them, not only is your stress experience destructive distress, it's likely a source of life enhancing eustress. Now you can update your own stress first-aid kit and tell the less enlightened around you that you got this and that they can put their butter back in the fridge where it belongs.