Tag Archives: good stress

Challenge/Stress/Anxiety

Anxiety is a natural response to stress or lack there off. Most associate anxiety with the presence of stress, however, the absence of purposeful goals (with their associated stress) can also be worrisome.

While anxiety is typically a feeling of fear or apprehension about what’s to come a lack of naturally occurring challenges or potentially stressful scenarios drives us to find things to worry about.

Making it up

In the absence of things that create stress we will often imagine potential worrisome scenarios. Interestingly, having nothing to do can be as stress as the more commonly recognized scenario of having too much to do.

Our minds are always active with conscious and unconscious thought. Thinking is a constant activity, we cannot avoid brain activity. If your environment is not stimulating you, often you will imagine issues – a car running out of gas, slipping on ice and hurting yourself.

Stress drives behaviour and sometimes is harmful, however no stress can cause us to make up stressful scenarios because we need some stress.

It’s a Balance

Too much stress can affect your help, lead you to unsocial or even unacceptable behaviour while too little stress can actually have the same results.

The key is finding the careful balance between too much and too little stress. In essence this equates to manageable or unmanageable stress.

Anxiety arising from manageable stress can be resolved and in and of itself the resolution activities are healthy. Unmanageable stressful situations should be avoided, both circumstantial but more particularly those of your own design.

Focus on Mental Well Being

While diet and exercise can be two key methods of maintaining good physical health, mental tranquility is the foundation of good health.  

Stress on your brain can weaken your entire body and regardless of your overall physical health, make you susceptible to disease or inexplicable aches and pains.

Managing Stress

Contrary to common belief, all stress is not harmful to your well being, in fact, a lack of good stress or eustress can be detrimental.  

The research of Hungarian/Canadian endocrinologist Hans Selye into our response to stressors showed that certain stress events led to positive biological reactions, while others, which can be labeled distress, were negative. 

(Note:  I  have simplified his concepts) 

When managing your stress it is important to classify the stressor a eustress or distress (this can vary by individual) and calculate your response accordingly.  

Eustress or Distress

Consider the retiree.  Eustress studies revealed those who retired and did not replace their daily purpose (work) with other activities (hobbies, travel, etc), were likely to die within 9 to 12 months of retirement.  

While some talk about the stress of work, worries about events, schedules, finances, in fact, these provide a biological incentive to the body and thus in a sense are life-sustaining, their lack is detrimental.

On the other hand, stresses with the negative impact that we consider out of our control (e.g. loss of a loved one, loss of employment) are the ones to both avoid if possible, or if unavoidable, (at a very minimum) accept and move on. 

Distress spirals out of control and can be very damaging to our well-being unless we can defuse it.  Basically accepts those things that just “are what they are” and move on. 

Eustress – gotta have it (as opposed to distress)

Janos Sayle, working at McGill University in Montreal Canada discovered and documented two distinct kinds of stress.  A simplified version of  these types defines them as a stress reaction resulting from good news (eustress) or resulting from bad news (distress).

Living without eustress

A colleague commented today how it nice it would be to have no stress.  Relaxation, now that is the goal.  Personally I am not totally certain how beneficial this perspective is.

There have been numerous studies which appear to definitely demonstrate that retiree’s who do not experience eustress tend to die earlier than those that do.

Good stress is motivating.  Simply it give you a reason to live and so supports your desire to do so.  Bad stress can result in undesirable physical impacts, lack of good stress also does.

Wandering Aimlessly

Intuitively wandering aimlessly with no pressures, demands, purpose or constraints,( for example being a beachcomber traveling the world searching for the perfect climate, pace, culture)  might seem like an ideal situation.

In reality this is really not the case, even the beachcomber has some stressful activities – the search itself for the beach for example is not fully without stress.

Back to Balance

Of course the level of eustress must be managed and balanced with low stress situations (whether good or bad stress).  That being said though, there is a strong case for the benefit of experiencing some level of eustress .

Avoid it altogether at your own peril.