For many of us we go through periods of life that are more stressful than others. Maybe that is due to struggles at work, a health issue, a relationship on the rocks, the loss of a loved one…You get the point. There are all kinds of things in our lives that produce stress. But not all stress is created equal. There is a concept called, “eustress” that translates to “good” stress. Most of us are aware distress, the kind of stress that causes harm to us emotionally, and can have negative physical effects as well. What is the difference between the two? How is that some kinds of stress can be helpful or even good for us, while other stressors leave us with a diminished emotional capacity and weakened immune system?
The point of good stress is that it causes some kind of helpful adaptation. We undergo a threat perceived as a stressor, we respond to the threat, and as a result we become more adept at handling the stressor in the future. Distress on the other hand does not allow for a proper recovery and adaptation phase. Without the adaptation, we become depleted from the stress, often compensating, and not any better prepared to handle future stressors of the same type.
There are several key differences that once you understand can help you as you encounter various stressors throughout you day. The first difference is in the time or duration of exposure. Good stress, stress that actually helps us adapt is often acute, meaning it happens and then goes away. Now this doesn’t mean it can’t be repeated, but a key for adaptation to a stressor to become more resilient is the downtime between stressors that allows us to mentally, emotionally, and physically recover. During this recovery phase, we strengthen our mental frameworks, we learn from our mistakes, and integrate improvements into our belief systems.
A great example of this is going to the gym. Exercising itself is a major stressor on the body. It elevates heart rate, blood pressure, stress hormones in the body, and often our fight-or-flight responses are switched on. But this is for a set period of time. Depending on your conditioning and capacity it may be 20 minutes, or 2 hours, but the point is that it ends, after which we clean up, eat some food, and our bodies go to work repairing what was affected due to the stress of running, lifting weights, or playing sports. The point is that we undergo stress in the body, the stressor stops and then the body adapts to handle that stressor more effectively next time around.
A second key element to good stress is that it is by and large, chosen. Again, with the example of the gym, you may not want to go all the time, but when you do, you are choosing to enter a period of stress. From a psychological standpoint it means you have agency over your life, you are freely choosing to undergo the stress because you believe that in the long run it will be good for you. When we choose to enter into stress, even if the event itself is not enjoyable, we grow our locus of control, we focus on what we can control, and are empowered through our own agency. When looking at PTSD for instance, researchers found lower rates among military members of Special Operation Forces compared to general military members. Part of the explanation for the lowered rates of PTSD is the nature of the missions that operators like SEAL’s go on. They see plenty of action and traumatizing events, but because they are often initiating the action in order to complete the mission, they’ve done their homework, they have a plan and have chosen to engage in event. All this equates to greater amounts of personal control and agency. This is in contrast to other groups of soldiers who may be deployed but find themselves reacting to enemy action or patrolling without knowing when or where the fight will take place. In these circumstances the person doesn’t have the choice of when or how the battle will take place often leading to feelings of greater vulnerability. Life is full of stressors and responsibilities that we will be forced to encounter whether we like it or not we should at least choose to engage the stressor since it is inevitable. The psychological model of Existential therapy is largely based on this premise, that we are responsible, and must choose regardless of the circumstances we find ourselves in.
Finally, like a good workout routine, good stress should be varied in intensity. It is hard for us to adapt if the stressors we face constantly seem like a 10 out of 10. Likewise, is we only experience stressors at a level of 2 out of 10, that won’t be enough of a stressor to signal that we need to adapt. Good physical training has hard days, light days, and medium days, adaptive stressors for our mental capacities should have variation as well.
Distress on the other hand, often times comes as a constant, it doesn’t ebb and flow, it’s just always there. As a result, we never really get the down time needed to reflect and adjust and grow from our experiences. Distress then leads to emotional and physical breakdowns because it eats away at us, little by little. This can occur as well if we have a stressor and then don’t know how to not let that stressor continue to effect us. We might for instance get cut off on the highway, we slam on the breaks, our heart rate spikes, adrenaline flows, we swerve, miss the car and keep driving. But after that event we need to control our breathing, lower our heart rate and not ruminate on the event. If we continue to replay the event in our minds, or hang on to the anger that may have come out, we may not physically still be stressed, but our bodies will remain in a stressed status.
Distress can also be harmful when it crosses over in intensity into unbearable or traumatic events. These are events which we do not have the mental capacity to handle. Various forms of abuse can often be such intense forms of stress that we have to manage with other types of coping strategies that are more compensatory than adaptive. We get by, we close down, we turn to alcohol, or we become tentative and hesitant to experience similar things again in the future because rather than grow from it, the stressor seems to have left us broken.
The final element that leads to distress is lack of choice. When we see a problem or threat and rather than choose to face it, we do our best to avoid, ignore, or hide from it, the problem comes along nonetheless and now we experience the stressor and feel robbed of our agency in the process.
While there are many things in our lives outside of our control, and when it comes to stressors that is certainly true. But to the extent that we can make the stressors acute rather than chronic, varied levels of intensity rather than traumatically overwhelming, and chosen rather than forced we have a better opportunity to grow from the stress rather than letting it weaken us.