How to Make the Most of good stress and Manage the Bad

Mental Health Training

How to Make the Most of good stress and Manage the Bad by Marissa Downes

Stress, or more accurately distress, occurs when the demands on a person exceed their abilities, skills, or coping strategies.

“Stress is a response to a threat in any situation and is the body’s way of protecting you,” says Laura Kampel, a Senior Clinical Psychologist at the Black Dog Institute.

It’s essential to recognise that stress is ‘designed’ to be a short-term experience and can even be helpful in many situations (more on healthy stress or eustress later).

However, too much stress too often, or chronic stress, can take a heavy toll on our health, wellbeing, performance and our relationships.

Stress levels in Australia are rising.

A survey conducted by the Australian Psychological Society found the wellbeing of Australians has been declining in recent years, with respondents reporting lower levels of wellbeing and higher levels of stress, depression and anxiety.

The survey on Stress and Wellbeing in Australia found:

• Younger adults between 18 to 25 consistently reported lower levels of wellbeing
• Personal finance, health, and family issues are the top stressors across all age groups.
• Pressure to maintain a healthy lifestyle was the fourth most common cause of stress.
• Most Australians surveyed felt that stress impacted their physical health (72%) and mental health (64%), but very few reported seeking professional help.
• More than one in 10 Australians (12%) reported that keeping up with social media networks contributed to their overall stress levels.
• According to research from Headspace and the National Union of Students, 83.2% of Australian universities and their students reported that stress negatively affected their health and wellbeing.

There’s more to stress because it is more than distress.

Today the word stress is synonymous with distress. There is a common belief that:

Stress is equal to distress and then perceived as a Health Risk.

With this prevailing belief, and ‘stress’ has become the equivalent of ‘distress’, many people have become stressed about stress! Obviously, as a stress management strategy, this is not ideal!!

While it is true that feeling stressed does push people into uneasy states, stress is more than distress, and the idea that “stress is bad” is problematic, if not harmful, to our health.

What is the purpose of stress?

The body’s Stress Response evolved to help us survive and to learn. The cascade of hormones released during the Stress Response primes the body for action, heightens your senses and improves your performance.

Stress impacts our minds and bodies. Any change that causes physical, emotional, or psychological strain engages the body’s Stress Response System – alerting us that the ‘stressor’ requires attention and action, for example:

• Exercise is a physical stressor that prompts us to rest, nourish and recover.
• Dangerous situations, such as a hot surface, warn us to protect ourselves by moving away from or leaving the position.
• When perceived as a threat, uncertainty may motivate us to seek certainty within or adjust our perception of uncertainty.

Stress can also contribute to understanding and memory by triggering the hormone Cortisol, an influential modulator of mechanisms involved in learning. Mild stress also causes the neurotransmitter acetylcholine to be released by nerve cells in the brain, and this is the same process when people concentrate on learning something new.

Healthy stress or eustress

Yes, stress can be healthy! In fact, we need some stress levels to grow, learn, and adapt. A lack of ‘healthy stress’ often leaves us feeling lost, directionless, and unhappy.

Healthy stress is sometimes called ‘eustress’, and it refers to stress that leads to positive outcomes and is often termed the opposite of ‘distress’. It contributes to feelings of confidence, adequacy and self-efficacy stimulated by the challenge and the accomplishment of the challenge experienced.