Feeling in control makes stress easier to handle

Stress doesn’t always come from experiencing major disasters. Sometimes it’s a clogged toilet, a nasty email from your boss, or your child forgetting their homework again.

Everyday life brings enough stress on its own – but what makes some people better at handling it? New research points to something simple but powerful: the feeling that you’re in control.

What helps people handle stress

It’s not always about what happens to you, but rather about how you respond. That’s the focus of a new study that looked at how people deal with everyday stress. This was not stress from major trauma, just from the usual junk that piles up in daily life.

The researchers wanted to know whether a person who feels as though they have control over a situation is more likely to actually do something about it.

Turns out the answer is yes. When people felt more in control than usual on a given day, they were 62% more likely to take action to resolve whatever was bothering them.

This might have meant making a tough phone call, having a difficult conversation, or just crossing something off the to-do list. And as people got older, that effect got stronger.

Control helps you handle stress

This isn’t about pretending everything is fine. It’s about recognizing that on some days, even when things go wrong, you feel more capable. And when you feel more capable, you’re more likely to step up and fix things.

Researchers from Penn State, South Dakota State University, and other institutions tracked over 1,700 adults who took part in the National Study of Daily Experiences. This is a long-term look at health and well-being across the U.S.

For eight straight days, participants answered questions about what kind of stress they had dealt with in the past 24 hours and whether the problem got resolved by the end of the day. They rated how much control they felt they had – from “none” to “a lot.” Then they did the same thing again 10 years later.

The team found that a person’s sense of control changed from day to day. It wasn’t fixed. And that changing sense of control made a big difference.

Even a small increase – like going from feeling “a little” control to “some” control – made people more likely to resolve their daily stressors. This effect held true across all types of stress: work issues, arguments, overload, or even stress from other folks’ problems.

Getting older seems to help

The researchers found that the older the participants got, the more powerful their sense of control became.

When the study began, 61% of people were more likely to resolve a stressor on days when they felt more control than usual. A decade later, that number had risen to 65%.

“This work also begins to show that as we get older, not only do we have more control but that control helps us get better at handling stress,” said Dakota Witzel, lead author and assistant professor at South Dakota State University.

You can train yourself to have control

Perhaps the best part of the study was that this sense of control isn’t locked in. You can actually improve it.

“This research shows that even small boosts in how much control people feel they have over everyday hassles make it more likely that those hassles actually get resolved,” said David Almeida, professor at Penn State and senior author of the paper.

“Learning to find and act on these pockets of control in daily life may not only reduce stress but also support long-term health and well-being.”

Simple strategies to take control

Almeida pointed to simple strategies like setting priorities, breaking tasks into chunks, and using lists or time blocks to track progress. These aren’t miracle cures, but they can help create a sense of momentum and control – which can lead to more action and less stress.

It’s also okay to ask for help or delegate. The goal is to feel supported, not to carry everything alone.

Even a short, end-of-day reflection – what went well, what didn’t, what you’ll tackle tomorrow – can help you reset and feel more in charge the next morning.

What about chronic stress?

So far, this study looked at daily stress – the kind that comes and goes. But the team is interested in how these findings might connect to more serious, long-term stress.

“In this study, we’re talking about daily stressors, the minor inconveniences that occur throughout the day, but there’s also chronic stress where people are continually impacted by stressors again and again,” said Witzel.

“Exploring the idea of whether resolution can be a mechanism that decreases the effect of chronic stress is an interesting area to explore.”

The research shows that feeling like you have a say in how your day goes isn’t just a nice thought – it’s linked to what actually gets done. And that might just be one of the most helpful tools we’ve got.

The full study was published in the journal Communications Psychology.

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