Good stress? Have you ever heard stress is a good or bad type? Often people have no idea about good or bad stress, they always think that stress harms the human and disturbs personal life. But wrong stress is also a good type that leaves a good impact on human health with an easy life. Let’s read how good stress works.
Overview
Stress is a concept that is immersed in our daily lives. Let’s start at an earlier age, mostly we believe that adult life is very stressful and with this mindset, we also thought that adulthood needed a lot of responsibilities which is fulfilled by challenging ourselves with full stress. The conventional view of stress inferred that if an individual has no stress, it means they are not striving to make their future better. Stress affects our mind, bodies, and daily life and it is important to study. In this content, we understand the concept of eustress and also changes the mental level by changing the perceptions of people “all stress is not bad for you”. Eustress term refers to the useful and beneficial stress (by psychological, physical, or any biochemical). The term Eustress was first used by endocrinologist Hans Syele and this term consists of the Latin prefix (eu- meaning “good”) and here stress means “good stress” which is beneficial for your health. Eustress is a positive response that gives positive feelings to an individual. In 1974 Hans Syele clarified the difference between stress and eustress by using terms referred to as “bad stress” and “good stress”.
What is the psychology of Eustress?
The Eustress is the positive stress response, which is involved in the appropriate levels of stimulation. Basically, eustress is the type of stress that results from challenging but attainable, enjoyable, or full of worthwhile tasks.
Eustress is proven beneficial effect by initiating a sense of achievement, development, mastery, and best levels of performance, even though stress is fundamentally outcome of the earlier reaction which is known as fight-or-flight and the mechanism of this reaction are: when there is any stressful event arising, instant response is activated by Autonomic Nervous system and this response also triggers the sympathetic nervous system with releases the cortisol and norepinephrine hormone, then this hormone enhances or boosts the sense, to increase heart rate with increasing blood pressure and your brain suddenly goes in a state of hyper-awareness (more alert to stimuli than normal condition).
Due to hyper-awareness, the part of your brain, which is responsible for feelings, emotions, and relaxation, is overburden. Due to this neurological cocktail of hormones imbalanced, your brain is over-activated with full of anger, anxiety, aggression, and emotions, while this reaction might be useful in real danger conditions and it rescues early humans from dying. If you recognize the stressful conditions, you can easily deal with your threats and ensure the reactions. Always remember, either the condition is life-threatening or not, releasing of hormones is the same, and there is a possibility that the individual will experience intense physical symptoms.
If we do not desire this fight and flight response to rule, then it’s important to acknowledge about eustress. Eustress is that type of beneficial stress that leads to emotional balancing, attention, and rational thoughts, while distress leads to impaired attention with confusion, disorganized behavior, and boredom. You can encourage your brain to recognize the situation as eustress because it might be an induced state of flow which is an induced state of health challenges.
What are the positive effects of Eustress?
As we know Eustress is a good type of stress and it can give beneficial effects. Here are the following aspects which influences positive impacts of stress, these are:
1. Boosts Brain Power
Beneficial stress produces low levels of stress that are responsible for the production of chemical in the brain and nourishes the connection between neurons in the brain, because it is a basic mechanism that is responsible for productivity and also boosts the concentration (such as physical exercise). Previous studies also suggest that good stress also boosts the learning scope.
2. Motivates you to succeed
Eustress is also proved beneficial to motivate you or to work more efficiently because this stress makes you feel every time about your work deadline and you always try to do your best to get achievement, and you stimulate your behavior to handle all situations efficiently and productively. Sometimes stressful conditions give you a challenge to finish your job on time. According to researchers, it is suggested that mild stress motivates you on the level of success and enhances your ability in every field of life.
3. Massive Mobilization
When your body is in the state of stress, then it prepares for the probability of any injury or infection, and it also produces the extra amount of interleukins (it is a chemical that regulate the immune system to work properly) helps to give defensive energy because the mild type of beneficial stress-producing massive mobilization of immune cells into the bloodstream.
4. Makes you more liable and resilient
Dealing with mild stressful conditions makes it easier for you to manage situations in the future, because continuous exposure to a stressful condition makes you strong, liable, and also sharpens your senses (either physiological or psychological) to make strategies for handling your work.
5. Enhances child development
You always worry about your child’s development and it seems to be natural that your anxiety negatively impacts your child. During the pregnancy, your stress impacts your babies, while if you calm yourself and keep your mind free from stress your babies also show a positive impact.
Why does moderate stress makes us tougher?
Previous studies suggested that experiencing stressors might be proven good for us, and here are possible reasons to experiencing stress makes us tougher, these are:
- By going with a moderate stressors, it may help you learn new skills (such as patience, and calm), which help you later in life.
- Feasibly experiencing mild stress makes you harder, tougher, also gives you the strength to tolerate anything, and makes you able to adapt to life’s difficulties.
- You may also gain confidence by managing your stress (for example, as fast as I did this task I surely be able to do another difficult task rapidly).
- You may also adopt a positive attitude towards stress, and guide you on how you grow-up because mild beneficial stress helps you to perform all tasks (such as public speaking).
- An individual who never experiences any mild or moderate stress,he/she never takes any reasonable risk in his/her life and sometimes fail to set goals.
How does good stress becomes a bad type of stress?
If you experience too much stress rather than a mild type of good stress then you may convert your good stress into a bad level of stress. Continuous higher levels of stress triggers your brain and also damages your brain and becomes chronic stress. By taking stress your brain works more actively rather than normal because of this activation your whole body comes into a stress condition that repeatedly triggers your brain. Taking stress in useless things just to waste your energy and give pressure to your brain you may experience anger, aggression, and anxiety. You should eliminate all types of stress in your life and just focus on your future to do your work efficiently and effectively.
How does bad stress becomes good stress?
Yes, it is possible that bad stress becomes good stress by your efforts but remember not all types of bad stress can become good stress. There are chances or possibilities to change your perception of stress. Whenever you are in stress, your body perceives threats strongly but if you do not perceive any kind of threat that means your stress can easily change into good stress because you take all things as challenges instead of threat or fear. You can shift your perception by:
- Strengthening yourself
- Focusing on your challenges
- Having positive mindset
- Having potential benefits
- Handling situations efficiently
It’s good to have beneficial stress in your life. Try to eliminate bad or chronic stress, and live a comfortable life.
What is the difference between Eustress and distress?
Eustress is referred to as positive stress that has a beneficial impact on your life. Eustress continuously gives you positive pressure to grow and build an improvement on yourself. This positive stress motivates you to achieve your goals by working harder. Whenever you are in a mild type of stress your nervous system makes you more aware and alert. Eustresses tell you how to work in hard times, and how to accept challenging tasks in an easy manner. Eustress boosts your energy by setting your mind.
While distress is the version of negative type of stress that badly impacts your health. Distress is not good, it’s your mental health. Little amount of distress has a similar type of effect as eustress but the long duration of distress leaves lots of side effects. Chronic distress suppresses the person’s ability to cope with all circumstances and they also lose their patience with experiencing anger, anxiety, and aggression.
Eustress teaches you to face the challenges in your life, and distress diminishes your ability to deal with all challenges.
Examples of Eustress
As you know all stress is not a bad type of stress. Mild type of stress changes your body’s response to make creative things. Usually, we use the term “stress” in our daily life by negative manners but we are not aware of its positive impact on our life. The examples of Eustress (good stress) are:
- Improves daily life performances
- Initiating a career without worrying
- Starting a new job with full willingness
- Moving on in life
- Concern about education
- Buying home to secure future
- Marriage
- Challenging yourself for new tasks
- Family planning
- Holiday sessions
- Productive meetings
- Time management
- Staying away from conflicts
- Job security
- Making effective presentation
- Traveling
- Making Hobbies
- Life changes
Change your perspective by maintaining balance
Whenever you are in stressful conditions, you should divert your mind, focus on positive aspects and approach your stress as a challenging task to manage and save your energy by handling all situations wisely, without feeling irritation and anger. You should change your perceptions and thinking for maintaining your health and life too. By balancing between your working activities and health activities you’ll definitely lead a comfortable life.
Before you leave!
Always remember eustress is also stress but it enhances and motivates an individual to do work more effectively and efficiently. But excessive stress is proved bad for you. You should balance your good and bad stress to do your work properly and fulfill all challenging tasks without facing any difficulties. By reviewing this content you are aware that whenever you are in stress, the activity of your brain exceeds more than in normal value. Keep your stress level in control and try to use mild beneficial stress in your challenging aspect to fulfill your jobs efficiently, deal with all changes properly, and live a better lifestyle full of motivation and success.