Getting Stress Savvy Part 1: Good Stress V Bad Stress
All organic living systems seek to be in balance, and we are no different. When our human system is in balance, in mind and body, we think, feel and act our best. In the process of seeking balance, we are in constant flux adapting to the ever-changing environment that we live in. If that environment becomes too demanding or challenging, along with reduced personal resources to deal with the challenges and changes, especially a lack in self-belief, then this disrupts our balance and we feel stressed.
Sources of stress are many and include: work, relationships, discrimination, illness, study, marriage or divorce, becoming a parent, as well as the daily juggling of life roles or tasks.
“It’s not stress that kills us, it’s our reaction to it”
Stress isn’t actually bad for your health per se, but believing that stress is bad for your health, is bad for your health! How you think about stress matters. A certain amount of stress on our system is motivating, encouraging us to dig deeper, adapt accordingly and find more resources and strengths that we didn’t know we had, learning new things about oneself and growing from the experience. This is important in accepting how normal it is for our bodies to respond automatically to particular situations. Your body is energised and preparing you to meet a challenge through increased activation of your body’s nervous system. When stress enhances function it is called ‘eustress’ and we feel good.
But, if the pressure is persistent and unrelenting, and demands outweigh the resources we have to cope, then stress worsens function, and we can no longer adapt and we feel ‘stressed’ or even distressed; anxiety and depression may follow. Should the pressure continue long-term with little or no relief then eventually burnout happens, when exhaustion, disengagement and even numbness follow.
Tipping into a full stress response
Of course, it isn’t pleasant if this process tips further towards feeling distressed, with a body that feels out of control and a mind that can’t make sense of it, further adding to the stress. These are the overwhelming feelings of the fight or flight response, a natural reaction to fear that mobilises us to escape from a threat. But the threats, or stressors, we come across in modern life (bills, extra work, or a disgruntled partner) don’t require physical action. Yet, this is what our body is programmed to do when our brain perceives a problem; it revs up producing energy that has nowhere to go, because we are not physically moving!
Our brain is actually responding to the worried or angry thoughts, images and perceptions about all kinds of different and difficult life situations, and it gives the signal to ramp up the production of the stress hormone adrenaline. This suddenly increases our heart and breathing rates to fuel our muscles. The adrenaline demands more oxygen, but because we don’t use the oxygen (because we are not fleeing or fighting) then the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels become completely out of kilter, giving rise to dizziness, tingling and often disorientation, on top of our now hyperactive body. Then, if the stressor remains, a steroid stress hormone called cortisol gets added to the mix to deal with the glucose and energy demand of the body. Frequent and long-term activation of cortisol can cause problems in our bodies.
Th next blog, looks at the symptoms of stress in more detail and offers some tips to manage it.