Often clients want to find a way to live life stress free. This request is not only impossible but displays a profound misunderstanding of what stress is and how it affects us.
The total absence of stress is not possible whilst we are alive. It is with us 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year. Stress as such, is neither good nor bad, it is merely the inevitable result of being alive.
So, what is it that people are referring to when they say I’m feeling stressed? After all, if it is with us all the time, then obviously we are always feeling it. What they are usually referring to is the feeling of being over stressed or distressed. Overstress or distress is not a good state to be in for any length of time. It can have damaging effects on our physiology and our overall wellbeing.
Sometimes what they are referring to is the feeling of being understressed. This too is an undesirable state to be in and it also has deleterious effects on our health and wellbeing.
Both states of overstress or understress are a result of our perception that our needs are either not being met, or possibly are under threat. When we believe we can’t cope, what is really happening is that we are out of balance. Our picture of how we would like things to be is not matching our perception of how they are. If we think there is nothing we can do to correct this, we will feel negative emotions and it will have a negative effect on our physiology.
Once we understand this connection we can cease to see under or overstress signals as a bad thing and use the early signs of them as an indication that we are out of balance and need to do something to correct this. If we try to ignore it and simply push on, we will exacerbate the situation and the imbalance will become greater.
So how does the term eustress fit into all of this? Eustress is the Goldilocks place on the stress continuum, the “just right” place we all want to be. Interestingly when we experience the right amount of stress it feels so good, we will often describe it as being unstressed. Learning to welcome the early signals of imbalance that understress and overstress are sending us allows us to make better choices in our life before we reach the serious stage where we really damage our health and wellbeing.