Let’s talk about stress
Stress.
We all experience stress. Every day. In varying degrees.
Many of us actively hate stress, and wish there wasn’t any.
Others will unconsciously hate stress and just live with the pain and discomfort it brings.
When I hated stress, whether actively or unconsciously, my entire body felt it. I clenched my jaw, and wore a biteguard to protect my teeth. I had a lot of knots and cramping in my stomach. My heart beat fast. I often felt exhausted. My body produced more phlegm and I was often congested. My bowel movements were irregular, and I urinated frequently. My muscles and fascia were seemingly tight everywhere. To make matters worse – and this was me at my worst – I was impatient, defensive, a constant worrier with difficulty in concentrating or finding joy in anything.
Does any of this sound familiar? I know this list is not exhaustive. While we might share some similarities, each person reacts to stress in their own way.
Wouldn’t it be nice to not have any stress?
But life would be quite boring if there wasn’t any stress. Truly.
If only I didn’t have to hate it so much.
Perhaps it is better to think that there is good stress and bad stress, and therefore some stress is okay.
There is a line of thought in psychology which makes that distinction between eustress and distress.
Eustress is a word created in 1974 by Dr. Hans Selye who apparently was a famous Hungarian Canadian endocrinologist (although I had never heard of him before) who studied stress and stressors. He distinguished between “good stress” – eustress – and “bad stress” – distress. The term came from his combining the Greek prefix eu- which means good with stress. Fascinating, no?
Let’s explore this a little further.
The following diagram from Positive Psychology provides a helpful guide to understanding eustress and distress. You can see how eustress is where we have focused attention, emotional balance, and rational thinking. Hmmm, that sounds like being in the present, doesn’t it? We certainly won’t have that if we are stuck with regrets from the past or with worrying about the future.
There is also the element of how much stress there is. When I first looked at this diagram I was drawn to what happens when we don’t have enough stress of any kind – I recognized impaired attention and boredom! I had come to the realization that I needed more stress in my life for stimulation and motivation. I guess having been with too much distress for so long, I had to find that sweet spot. It is a little like being Goldilocks who would find that too little stress is distressing, and too much stress is even more distressing, but somewhere in the middle of all that is eustress which is just right. If only we could stay there all the time!
From Positive Psychology
Maybe we can stay there all the time…if we make that choice.
Dr. Ellen Langer believes we have the choice to make eustress the frame of mind for looking at stress.
“We can choose how to think about things. By rethinking, or reframing a thought from different angles, we can achieve a new level of personal control.”
We can also choose to stay with distress – but who would really want to do that if they knew they had a choice?
Having said all of that, I know it is really hard to stay in eustress all the time. The more I engage with others in various settings and activities means I find it hard to maintain that focus all the time. The key for me is to try to maximize my opportunities for eustress by starting my day with that mindset, and being alive to what contributes to eustress – that activates our selective attention to filter out what I deem unnecessary (1). This helps me make better choices throughout the day.
There is another element to take note of in this above diagram which is the importance of stress: stimulation and motivation from stress are connected to behavioral efficiency. That means stress is actually necessary for us.
Morgan Housel talks about this in his book Same as Ever and more specifically in his chapter on “When the Magic Happens” with the tagline “Stress focuses your attention in ways that good times can’t”:
“A constant truth you see throughout history is that the biggest changes and the most important innovations don't happen when everyone is happy and things are going well.”
Hmmm. If we look at what has happened in the past – like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, world wars, and the Great Depression – and how significant changes occurred and set the stage for future development, it makes it look like we shouldn’t fear periods of more stress. However, Morgan Housel goes on to caution us:
“There is a delicate balance between helpful stress and crippling disaster. The latter prevents innovation as resources are sapped and people turn their attention from getting out of a crisis to merely surviving it.
And perhaps just as important is what happens when we have the opposite. When everything is great – when wealth is flush, when the outlook is bright, when responsibility is low, and threats appear gone – you get some of the worst, dumbest, least–productive human behavior.”
Maybe Morgan Housel is really pointing out eustress is the perfect place to be after all.
When we see stress as both positive and necessary, we also hold a belief that we have what it takes to deal with whatever stress comes our way. Doesn’t that sound amazing?
It’s like finding our homeostasis point. Or where our lifeboat sits: perfectly balanced.
Do you know what that does for us? It’s good for us, believe me. In this space, there are immense emotional and physical health benefits when we have a positive mindset, and we believe we can handle whatever comes our way. Our bodies calm down, and everything begins to work as it should.
That is a beautiful place to be.
Resources
Langer, Ellen. 2024. The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health. New York: Ballantine Group. p. 218 of 284.
(1) I love how Dr. Tara Swart talks about this in her book The Source, which I am currently reading. She describes this as “the cognitive process in which the brain attends to a small number of sensory inputs while filtering out what it deems unnecessary distractions. It is the part of the limbic system called the “thalamus” which manages the brain’s selective filtering.” (p. 34 of 272). I will need to go back to my previous post to see what needs to be updated!
Housel, Morgan. 2023. Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes. New York: Portfolio/Penguin. pp. 96, 107.
Image by Tammy Brimner/TLBVelo Photography
