Eustress VS Distress

When you hear “stress,” many people may remind of negative experiences causing you to feel stressed.

Some may think that stresses are bad, they can threaten your health physically and mentally.

However, there are also “good” stresses, which are called “eustress”.

They can help you motivated, improve your performance and/or make your life exciting.

On the other hand, as you may have imagined, stresses that cause negative effect on a person are “bad” stresses, called “distress.”

These terms, eustress and distress are described by Hans Selye who first introduced the term “stress” into the medical field.

He said, “it is not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.”

Before exploring how to manage stress along with what Selye said, let us look at the examples of eustress and distress.

Eustress includes;

• Receiving a promotion at work
• Starting a new job
• Moving to a new place
• Marriage
• Building a relationship/friendship
• Having a child
• Retiring
• Achieving a goal, etc…

Distress includes;

• The loss of significant others
• Divorce
• Unemployment
• Injury/illness
• Conflict in a relationship/friendship
• Financial issues
• Legal issues, etc…

You may now see why some events are called eustress and others are categorized as distress.

More or less, we feel stressed at almost everything that we do or occurs around us, even when the event makes us feel happy, such as a promotion at work.

Although it is a happy thing, you may feel anxious if you can perform well to fit the company’s demand. That can make you feel a good deal of pressure which causes stress.

In that case, remember what Selye said, “it is not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.”

If you take it as threat, the event becomes stressful, however if you take it as challenge, how would you feel?

By changing how you react to it, it can make you see the event more positively and motivate you to manage it, not being overwhelmed by it.

However, in my opinion, it is not always easy to take it as challenge.

Distress that I mentioned as examples above are negative and threatening.

You may not easily change how you look at the event, such that it is extremely difficult for me to take a loss of your best friend as a positive event.

It should also be noted that every individual is different, so stress that is taken as positive (eustress) by one person can be taken as negative (distress) by another.

Then, what can you do in order to manage such stress that we cannot change the way to look at?

As a counselor, I would suggest that, at first, you find things which can release tension of stress.

Let’s think about what would make you feel good.

Is it talking with friends about your feeling, listening to your favorite songs, eating good food, sleeping as much as you want, and/or any other things?

Take time and try to identify what makes you feel happy and relieved.

Because we instinctively try to make sense for every event which allows us to organize our feeling, thinking about meaning of the stressful event may also help you mitigate emotional tension.

You can also deal with stress by either avoiding, altering, adapting or accepting (Check “Stress Management – The Four A’s“).

After you are able to feel less stressed, then you shift to focus on modifying the psychological attitudes towards the stressful event.

Are you taking it as a threat or challenge?

Then, are you able to change to take it as a challenge if you feel threatened?

Again, all stress is not negative thus, it is important to see if stress you are having is eustress or distress in order to make use of it for your motivation and managing stress.