Is Stress Good or Bad?

These days, people hear the word stress and think of someone tearing their hair out, screaming at the kids, taking headache pills, or dropping dead of a heart attack. Stress can often be seen as something horrific — something to avoid at all costs — while, at the same time, it’s an inevitable part of modern life.

With some people, if they aren’t under stress, they think something is wrong. They equate the word stress with productivity, success, and accomplishment.

Well, they’re right, and they’re wrong.

People are mistakenly lumping stress into one pile when it’s actually at least two.

Eustress is what we would consider “good stress.”

Good stress is the energy that gets triggered when you have a challenge to meet — that motivator helping you to reach a goal. It can help you get out of a bad situation when hair-trigger reflexes are necessary (that’s the old fight-or-flight mechanism coming into play). It can help you organize faster, concentrate more sharply, and hit that goal line.

But stress is only good when you use it in positive, self-building ways — such as pumping you up when you compete in a sports event or giving you that extra sparkle in an audition.

The occasional ping of good stress can strengthen your immune system, keep your brain cells at their ultimate performance level, improve heart function, and make surgery recovery go faster and smoother.

Good stress can make you more alert, better equipped to make decisions, and gets your heart, muscles, and blood flow running at peak performance so you can compete at your best.

“Wait a minute,” you’re saying. “All that stuff about heart rate and muscles and blood flow — isn’t that the bad stuff?”

Eustress turns into distress when it’s chronic. Here are some examples:

When deadlines feel like you will never meet them, and you are always saying “Yes” when you should be saying “No” (piling the mountain of tasks on top of an already overburdened schedule), that’s chronic stress.

When you second-guess yourself and others all the time, trying to figure out every angle of a situation out of underlying fear or anger, that’s chronic stress.

When you never feel you are good enough, and you become the constantly carping voice inside your own head, that’s chronic stress.

When you obsess over situations that have yet to occur or are just theoretical, that’s chronic stress.

When you are persistently anxious or depressed, that’s chronic stress.

Chronic stress is one of the most harmful things to which you can subject yourself.

Chronic stress opens the door to addictions, adrenal fatigue, back pain, cancer, chronic digestive difficulties, a depressed immune system, depression, fatigue, harmful behaviors, headaches, heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes…do we really need to go on?

There are subsets of bad stress as well: hyperstress (too much) and hypostress (too little).

Hyperstress

Hyperstress is the stress version of “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” You’re likely to have hyperstress if you work for one of those bosses who believes that taking lunch means you’re slacking, and work should be 24/7. Such bigwigs don’t believe in priority lists unless everything is an “A” priority.

Another place that hyperstress lives is in one-person entrepreneurial businesses: everything needs to get done, there is no one else to do it, and you can’t afford to hire an assistant, so you work like three people but give yourself no breathing space for even one.

When we are subjected to hyperstress for too long, we break.

It might look like an emotional breakdown. It might mean we show up to work one day with a gun. It might mean we strip off our clothes in the lunchroom and rant at the top of our lungs. It might even mean suicide looks like the only viable alternative.

These may sound like extreme examples, but under extreme stress, we can reach a breaking point where we are willing to do anything to stop the pain. Even a coyote will chew off its own foot to get out of a trap; this is the human version of that desperate decision.

Hypostress

Hypostress goes the other direction. We’ve all had days when we can’t find anything to settle on; nothing interests us, boredom seems overwhelming, and we simply can’t be motivated. We bounce from thing to thing. We wander around the house. We look aimlessly into the refrigerator twelve times. In this version of stress, you simply do not have enough challenging you in one of the good ways.

What are some of the ways bad stress will alert you that it’s been visiting for too long?

Anxiety, anger, fear, or nervousness always seem just one step away.

Headaches become commonplace.

Normal sleep is a thing of the past; you are either staying awake until the wee hours because your mind won’t shut off or sleeping far more than is normal for you.

Concentration is nearly impossible.

You have body aches that never seem to quit. They might even wander from place to place in your body.

You snap at small things, reacting out of all proportion to a minor setback or challenge.

Your appetite shifts. For some people it’s being unable to eat; for others, it’s compulsive overeating.

Your drive sputters out before a task is completed.

Your thought processes slow down; your mind grinds to a halt

So what do you do when bad stress seems to have taken up permanent lodging with you?

You stop. Right in your tracks. And you breathe.

The faster you can pull yourself into the present moment, the more likely it is that stress can lose its hold on you for at least that little morsel of time.

Focus on your hands, your shoes, or the view outside the window. Focus on a thing. Put your mind to work in objective observance.

There is no stress in examining a tree branch, a shoelace, or a pencil.

When you break the cycle of stress-scream-scared-stress, it is easier to keep hyperstress at bay. If you look at the span of time from birth to where you are now, you’ll realize that there have been other moments of stress, and you’ve gotten through those before.

You can handle this one too — either by plowing through it, letting go of some of it, or walking away from it.

Instant Stressbusters

Get up and move. If you’re already moving, move differently. Jump up and down. Do something that keeps you from thinking about your stress. Walk outside. Just the act of getting up from your seat and re-engaging with all your bones, muscles, and joints can move you into a different headspace.

Breathe. Dr. Andrew Weil has something called the “4–7–8 Breath” that is a relaxing breath. Trust me, I know from experience that when we are under enormous amounts of stress, we often forget to breathe. Breath is life. Please remember to breathe.

Grab your fur person. Hug them, wrestle with them, play fetch, play catch-the-catnip-mousie. Cats and dogs (as well as ferrets, guinea pigs, rabbits, and other small buddy critters) are some of the greatest stress-busters on the planet.

Meditate. Find some simple meditations you can tune into whenever the stress pulls you too tight. My absolute favorites are the ones by The Honest Guys, which you can find on YouTube for free. The meditations run anywhere from five minutes to several hours in length. If all you have time for is ten minutes, take the ten.

You will undoubtedly ratchet down your pulse rate.

Sip something warm and comforting. Ditch the heavy stuff. Go for something soothing such as tea, cocoa, or soup. Take your time. Sip, don’t gulp. Get into the aroma, the taste, and the savor.

Hug yourself. Really. Bow your head, close your eyes, put your arms around yourself, and breathe. Sometimes all we need is a loving touch to remind us we can make it through.

Find music that works for you. Listen to ambient or soothing music that calms you down. Perhaps it’s bhangra because it peps you up. Maybe it’s Broadway because those soaring voices become your voice. Whatever it is, if your music is your muse, feel free to indulge.

Set your boundaries. This stress buster is the most important thing you can do for yourself. You cannot work 24/7. You can’t. You’re not built that way. The more you grind your wheels, the more likely the wheels will come off at the least opportune time.

And as soon as it hits you that you simply aren’t doing your best work, or that you can’t concentrate, stop for now. Come back to the project or the list of to-dos when you can focus and get some of it done. Stretch. Remind yourself that life is supposed to be full of joy and want-tos, not have-tos.

Yes, stress can be a complicated friend — but like all good friendships, there are rules about keeping the friendship beneficial.