Eustress & Distress – The Good & Bad of Stress

Are you the one who thinks stress is bad and are up to find heart throbbing activities to shoo away the stress?

The word ‘stress’ often considered as villain of most people’s lives may have some positive impact too. Distress is a word most commonly used in terms of negative stress while stress could be subjective to being little positive. While some stress could leave you demotivated and may cause anxiety, others could actually help you push yourself through life to an improved version of your life.

Positive Stress- Eustress

Eustress is any kind of challenging stimulus that stresses the individual but with the result that they feel more energized, motivated or compelled to respond or make some kind of beneficial action for themselves.

The idea of positive stress may not exist in our dictionary but it is actually kind of exciting or positively stressful events or moments that can cause chemical response in the body. Eustress helps us work better in life and help in achieving our goals.
Examples of eustress could be moving in to new city, marriage, a new job, starting a new venture, buying a new home, learning a hobby or others.

Negative Stress- Distress

Stress which hampers your productivity and can cause trauma, anxiety or leave you worried is described as negative stress or distress. Distress could be long term and may leave the person in shock and doubt his abilities and approach.

Sometimes, habitual behaviour patterns could lead to distress like procrastination, not planning much in advance or failing to be assertive.

Some of the examples like work and employment could be common causes of distress like travelling far to work, unproductive time consuming meetings, job insecurity or bearing heavy losses in business. Some serious traumatic situations could be death of a closed one, bankruptcy, being abused or exploited, unemployment, separation from a partner, not feeling well and others.

How can Eustress and Distress affect you?

Eustress can put you in a position where you will be motivated to change your habits, move us closer to our dreams and work harder for our aspirations. Eustress can leave you feeling more positive and performing better at any task.

Distress can make you feel unpleasant and can cause concern and anxiety. It can lead to mental or physical problems. It can cause depression or developing negative feeling and further may decrease your performance.

Over to you

Remember, change is inevitable part of your life and with every change comes stress, it is up to you how you take it and make it into eustress. Whatever stress may come, don’t forget to experience feeling grateful and positive.