It's not an overstatement to say Americans are stressed. More than three-fourths, 77%, say the future of the country is a major source of their anxiety, according to 2024 data from the American Psychological Association. A whopping 65% said the same of housing costs and 55% said health care keeps them up at night.

If you find yourself plagued by external stressors, it's important to build up a healthy resilience. After all, regardless of what's going on in the world, work and familial obligations persist and the ability to forge through discomfort is often necessary.

But soldering on in the face of adversity isn't always a good thing, says Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, a Harvard physician and author of "The 5 Resets: Rewire Your Brain and Body For Less Stress and More Resilience."

Trying to do it all when your brain and body are fatigued often results in your ignoring signs of depression or anxiety. Nerurkar has a term for this kind of persistence: toxic resilience.

"Toxic resilience is a manifestation of hustle culture," she says "Keep going at all cost , no matter what. Productivity at all costs." 

Unlike toxic resilience, true resilience doesn't push your mental and physical limits. In fact, the key to being more resilient is understanding how much you can do and setting realistic expectations for yourself.

"True resilience is your innate biological ability to adapt, recover and grow in the face of challenges," she says. "True resilience honors your human limitations for rest and recovery. It really understands your boundaries and it celebrates your ability to say 'no.' It also really is centered on this idea of self-compassion."  

If you want to increase your resilience without slipping into a toxic pattern, Nerurkar has a couple suggestions.

1. Don't multi-task

Nerurkar says that multi-tasking is the "perfect example of a manifestation of toxic resilience," because our brains are wired to only do one thing at a time.

"There is no such thing multitasking," she says. "Scientists call it task-switching because what you were doing is two separate tasks in rapid succession."

Multi-tasking weakens your aptitude for complex problem solving. But doing one thing at a time, or "mono-tasking," as Nerukar would call it, allows your brain to work at full capacity.

2. Take a 'brain break'

Between tasks, take a minute to yourself and just breath. These "brain breaks" can help you reset your mind.

"When you take these scheduled brain breaks, when you schedule them throughout your workday, it has a cumulative effect on your stress, engagement, cognition and memory," she says.

These pauses don't have to be long. Even three seconds of deep breathing before you enter a meeting, Nerukar says, can help you manage stress or anxiety.

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