I might be wrong, but I think they might be trying to say that if you go flying when you are already stressed, that then you are more likely to make mistakes. Not that flying itself is stressful.
Personally I’d agree with a comment quoted by another pilot in the article that flying is a form of stress relief. Yes, it might be challenging at times, but in a way that makes you focus on the task completely. When I go flying, I’m 100% in the moment. I’m concentrating on the task at hand. If I’ve free time to think, then I’m thinking about what’s coming next. I’m thinking about work, not getting text messages, or phone calls, or worrying about other things. All ground based issues are out of my mind.
That can be a big relief from other stresses of life. It can be a welcome break from life’s stresses, while a the same time being challenging in itself.
dublinpilot wrote:
When I go flying, I’m 100% in the moment. I’m concentrating on the task at hand. If I’ve free time to think, then I’m thinking about what’s coming next. I’m thinking about work, not getting text messages, or phone calls, or worrying about other things. All ground based issues are out of my mind.That can be a big relief from other stresses of life. It can be a welcome break from life’s stresses, while a the same time being challenging in itself.
“I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things.” ~ Antoine du Saint-Exupery
It’s very true.
Flying can be so different.
Flying itself is a joy, that’s why we fly.
But flying brings some risks and constraints.
And sometimes, some feel flying brings new stress.
Flying stress usually comes from silly reasons : let’s say you have a 1-hr block in a busy rental and personal schedule, at a busy controlled field, surrounded by strict Class A, with a curfew (either by airport or from covid regs), weather is marginal, you found the plane with minimum fuel, and it’s your last occasion to fly otherwise you will need to renew your rental authorisation with an FI, who is super busy and you don’t know how many months you will take to find a suitable appointement.
You will have fought with your agenda, begged a date to your family, just to refuel a plane, wait at the hold-short line, make a large circuit, close the club and wash the plane. 3 hours of work for 20 minutes of fun. 
Sometimes you just want to say “screw it, why is flying so complicated ?”.
It’s not that you don’t love it. It’s just that too many constraints make flying just doable but not enjoyable even if you love it.
To the contrary, if you can in 10 minutes go to the airport, preflight and start, and enjoy a beautiful sunset or launch an adventure to a scenic place.
I guess who writes “stop flying if its stresses you” don’t know their luck 
Funnily, I found gliding in the congested hostile UK SE patchy airspace & bad weather to be peaceful and relax, YMMV
Compared to say gliding in La Cerdanya valley empty airspace & sunny weather where I am more tense than stick
Should I see a doctor? or I am acting recklessly?
PS: GA flying, it’s not for everybody
I think it depends also on what one means with ‘stress’… Some here mentioned that it would be better described as ‘challenging’, but are we not talking in fact about the same thing? Let’s take an example, a flight I made last summer: I flew to Vinnu airstrip for the first time. This strip is 500m grass in a deep valley at the end of a fjord, so at sea level or almost. As I try to always make things as safe as I can, I spent quite some time preparing for the flight, much more than usual, and I would say that I felt what I would call stress while getting the plane ready and then during the approach and the circuit and landing. From what was described by others earlier, maybe I could qualify it as ‘challenging’, but isn’t stress a consequence of being in a challenging situation? If the amount of stress is reasonable, then it is not a bad thing either, from what I understand of what stress is.
Possibly semantics.
For me stress occurs when I am well outside my comfort zone. If I loss my AI and TandS in IMC I suspected I would be stressed.
Approaching a new short strip in contrast might be challenging, but having been into many short strips before I would hope it was essentially within my comfort zone, so, yes I would be concentrating especially hard, I would be especially alert, and hopefully ready for the unexpected, but I dont think after the event I would have felt I was stressed.
but yes, it is perhaps semantics!
Fuji_Abound wrote:
but yes, it is perhaps semantics!
They should have defined what they mean by stress. Stress, IMO, is normally defined as a more long term thing, and not physical. For instance, bills stacking up and you never have enough money to pay them causes stress, especially if it goes on over a long period of time. However, the article clearly is about flight related “stress” that occurs while flying.
I imagine getting an unfair airspace infringement causes quite a lot of stress for GA pilots.
Off_Field wrote:
I imagine getting an unfair airspace infringement causes quite a lot of stress for GA pilots.
And the risk of getting one. A real party pooper for sure
A key bit is this
When it came to suffering from an illness, having equipment failure or missing a seatbelt, the researchers found that pilots tended to make a “no-go” decision. When it came to missing sunglasses, missing a checklist or being stressed, on the other hand, pilots were more inclined to make a “go” decision.
This is really interesting. It’s not obvious to me why that should be. Perhaps these things are seen as less important, and they are.
Well, except for stress, which can be a big distraction. I have found, on a recent flight, that stress due to a piece of avionics showing some sort of intermittent failure caused me to make what could have been a big mistake. Nothing actually happened, and the said item was replaced before the next flight!
I imagine getting an unfair airspace infringement causes quite a lot of stress for GA pilots.
I think worrying about doing one does cause a lot of stress. I have minimised this by no longer doing significant VFR flights in UK airspace, especially with passengers, and given up all forms of mentoring, but most would not find this a useful way to go forward.
Especially as most infringements are due to a distraction i.e. they were not errors in a preplanned route.
