Positive Stress: Stress can be so beneficial for us

by Nurin Nafisah

In this modern era, we live in a fully scheduled list of activities. Of course, this life that is full of deadlines, waiting list, or demands makes us feel stressed or depressed. For many people, stress is always a monster that whenever can consume our health. For them, the term stress has negative meaning but most of us are not aware that stress also can affect us positively. 

A pioneering stress researcher, Hans Selye, differentiated two types of stress; damaging stress (distress) and positive stress (eustress). Distress is a long-term stress, while eustress is a type of  short-term  stress. The latter type of stress can be managed as the beneficial things for us.

Eustress is an excellent way of initiating the invention and problem solving process by providing more creative solutions. It helps us to overcome the problems when we need to adjust to the stressful changes in our life. That is why some people tend to be motivated more to do something when they are under stress or pressure. Many solutions are achieved when they are positively stressed. This stress helps individuals to change their daily routine better. Then, actually the positive stress is something that is good, productive and effective when confornted with certain challenge.  They who live with stressful lifestyle say that coping from stress is a challenge to be accomplished, not a problem to be solved. Psychologists explained that our performance level is directly related to the stress level we experience. This theory shows that low or high levels of stress will decrease performance, while intermediate levels enhance performance instead. In other words, we are capable of peak levels of performance when under a moderate amount of stress. Moderate stress levels help us realistically appraise and anticipate our circumstances. Low levels of stress, on the other hand, lead us to be unrealistic and unprepared, while high levels of stress lead us to be so anxious that we could not cope. Thus, positive stress in  moderate levels, of course, is something that we do  not need to worry about. Instead, this stress can motivate us to do our best and to perform better than if we are under no stress at all.

Eustress is a healthy stress that we do not need to bother ourselves with consuming antidepressant. After all, a Professor of Harvard Medical School stated  that consuming anti-depressant sometimes made us more anxious and too much drugs could damage our kidneys. In addition, Phillip Hodson, as a fellow from the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy emphasized that what has been damaging health was unrelieved stress. So here, in the case of eustress or short-term stress, no need to consume anything to cope it, we wil instead get the benefit of stress itself. Furthermore, the stress response is the body’s way of protecting us. When working properly, our nervous system responds by releasing a stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones rise the body for emergency action. Stress  will spur our heart pounds faster, muscles tighten, blood pressure rise, breath quicken, and your senses become sharper as well. These physical changes, as what Dr. Mark Goulston –psychiatrist claimed, are going to increase our strength, immune system, and stamina. So, positive stress (eustress) is a simple and effective way to keep our body healthy, and imagine if we never feel stress, we would feel as if this life is so flat and without any pulse.

Thus, there is nothing to be dissapointed in having stress. Positive stress (eustress) is the short-term stress that gives us the benefit for our mental and body’s health. Therefore, we should smartly change our old paradigm about stress and manage it into a better creative function to accomplish our solutions. Now, this is the perfect time to make our body and mind being challenged by our stressful life!