There is good stress and bad stress, as I'm coming to find out the hard way.
I also do very well in environments most would call "high stress" - I ran a medium-sized hosting company for many years, being the guy where the buck stopped if things went wrong. Sure there were days that were pretty terrible, but in the end I controlled the entire stack, the people working on that stack, and even which customers I took on. Yes, the work was incredibly hard, fast paced, and sometimes very stressful. But it was enjoyable because I had personal agency to effect change. We have a service going down daily causing escalations at 2am? I can put a couple guys on it and fix it, with a sane solution we all felt proud of. That sort of thing.
In another environment where I in theory had a "nice easy 9-5" with effectively zero external stressors such as customers yelling at me - I was the most stressed out I ever was. The job was entirely internal politics and jockeying for position with all the subterfuge and backstabbing that implies. Effectively being put in charge of outcomes I had practically no real agency over.
That latter time period of stress has likely damaged me long-term, and caused many forms of health problems I would not have expected. It is a long road to recovery from something like that, if it's even fully possible.
I'd say the dividing line is how much control you have. If there is short burst of stress for the amount of work you are sure to be capable of, the stress is nothing. The problem is with the duration and the uncertainty.
There is also a genetic factor: I remember there was a gene (or a base pair?) that is called "worrier or warrior", and if one has the warrior one, one performs worse without stress than with stress whereas the worrier one is the opposite.
I also do very well in environments most would call "high stress" - I ran a medium-sized hosting company for many years, being the guy where the buck stopped if things went wrong. Sure there were days that were pretty terrible, but in the end I controlled the entire stack, the people working on that stack, and even which customers I took on. Yes, the work was incredibly hard, fast paced, and sometimes very stressful. But it was enjoyable because I had personal agency to effect change. We have a service going down daily causing escalations at 2am? I can put a couple guys on it and fix it, with a sane solution we all felt proud of. That sort of thing.
In another environment where I in theory had a "nice easy 9-5" with effectively zero external stressors such as customers yelling at me - I was the most stressed out I ever was. The job was entirely internal politics and jockeying for position with all the subterfuge and backstabbing that implies. Effectively being put in charge of outcomes I had practically no real agency over.
That latter time period of stress has likely damaged me long-term, and caused many forms of health problems I would not have expected. It is a long road to recovery from something like that, if it's even fully possible.