The word stress is associated with negative implications, but scientifically speaking, stress is neither good nor bad. Learn what Eustress is and how to use it to overcome stress.
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Stress is defined as the body’s physiological response when one has to face a more threatening or serious situation than usual. This reaction consists of a fight or flight response of the nervous system to find an escape route when facing or fleeing a threat.
Therefore, the nervous reaction is neither good nor bad. What happens is that our body can not always live in stress. After a while, the body will return to its normal physiological state. This is known as homeostasis.
Stress becomes a mental health problem if you are exposed to constant or frequent stress for too long. But actually, stress can also be a positive emotion.
two faces of stress
It’s normal to talk about stress simply, but in a nutshell, there are actually two different types of stress-related emotions, one positive and one negative.
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EUstress or positive stress
The word Eustress comes from combining the Greek prefix EU, which means good, with STRESS, which refers to force or pressure.
Eustress is a natural adaptive process that consists of the short-term activation of sensations and reflexes, in the face of exceptional threats and other types of situations that require more effort.
In this case, a stressful situation generates positive feelings, impatience if what we expect is good, strengthening self-esteem in unusually demanding situations, self-realization, etc.
Distress or negative stress
Instead, distress exceeds the potential for homeostasis or balance and causes fatigue, irritation, anxiety, or anger.
If negative stress is maintained for a long period of time, physical problems can occur due to weight loss and gain, lack of defense, high blood pressure and increased energy expenditure resulting in headaches for example.
Differences in symptoms
There are some differences between distress (or what is commonly known as stress) and positive stress. One of them is how to live it.
In the case of stress, it is often accompanied by fatigue, irritation, anger and anxiety. In addition, it is accompanied by a habitual feeling of obstruction that interferes with decision-making and the development of tasks that only exacerbate stressful situations.
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In this line, Eustress is an experience that on an emotional level provides greater satisfaction, vitality, energy, optimism and self-esteem. These sensations lead to a better quality of life.
How to manage stress and turn it into eUstress
In some cases, the stress that some people experience reaches a point where it becomes a health problem and requires professional help. If you find yourself or think you may be in this situation, it is best to see your doctor.
But if things aren’t quite there and you think you can try to turn stress into positive feelings, here are some tips to help you do just that.
1. Manage negative thoughts
We can be our own worst enemies by compounding highly demanding situations with negative thoughts that exacerbate stress and anxiety. It is not easy to avoid this, but it is not impossible. For example, instead of looking at everything that could cause problems in any of these situations, think about everything that has already been done and what you know about how to solve it.
2. Trust yourself and your decisions
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You can seek opinions and advice from someone you trust in their judgment, but you should not override your opinion or gut feeling. We often know more than we want to believe, although all decisions require a bit of self-confidence.
3. Don’t magnify the problem
Most of our worries are not as big as we usually see them. Don’t get caught up in unnecessary worries. You can also relativize the problem by comparing it with many others that surround you and that are more important.
4. Physical activity and relaxation
In many cases, due to stress, long-standing problems, work, exams, and family responsibilities, people give up physical practice. And this is a mistake.
Areas of physical activity, especially those that are helpful for relaxation, such as yoga and Pilates, are good ways to turn that stress into eustress, cope with commitments in other ways, and cytokine positive emotions in your daily life.
5. Find the moment you like
There are other things we stop doing at times of great stress, like when we get together with friends and family or spend time on hobbies like sports. Turn our entire day to day into a monothematic session of work or study, eliminating the good things that our life has. We can’t dedicate as much time to them as we would like, but we encourage you to never take these day-to-day activities out of our lives so we don’t get stressed.
