What Is Eustress?

 

Stress can differ; some stress you face can damage your well-being, and some can benefit your well-being. Eustress is one type of beneficial stress, which is directly opposite to distress. It can help physically and psychologically, but eustress tends to be short-term—people who perceive eustress as manageable, motivating, and even exciting. Eustress physically often resembles distress in multiple ways, like you might feel nervous, your heart might pound, or your thoughts may race. The differences between the form of physical sensations are perceived. During distress, you might feel overwhelmed and uncomfortable; but during eustress, you might feel a sense of anticipation or excitement. The eustress is beneficial and necessary for overall well-being; it contributes to positive stress to feel optimistic about life. 

Eustress impact

Eustress can have numerous positive impacts in life, like:

·   It helps you to concentrate and focus

·   It encourages you to face new challenges

·   It motivates you to chase your goals

·   It enables you to be more resilient in facing difficulties

·   It gives purpose and meaning to your life

·   It makes you feel happier and healthier 

A specific amount of stress benefits motivations and performances. Yerkes-Dodson law states that the moderate rush level leads to an optimal level of performance, but only until a certain point. Different tasks may benefit from varying levels of rush and stress. 

Though eustress is beneficial, it's crucial to remember it's still a form of stress. So, it can also lead to distress, or even chronic stress, if it turns too intense or lasts long.

Eustress examples

Since eustress often produces positive outcomes, unlike distress, eustress gives excitement and challenge rather than fear, panic, or anxiety.

·   Significant life changes can create eustress, like starting a new job, a new relationship, or even parenting a child for the first time.

·   Minor challenges like a roller-coaster ride or a scary movie.

·   Experiencing new things can also create eustress. Though it may involve unfamiliarity and discomfort, it paves the way for many discoveries and anticipations.

How to identify eustress and respond?

It's crucial to manage your stress level and identify the differences between eustress and other types of stress. It is not always straightforward; they might resemble each other. But understanding eustress can help you to manage further stress. When an event is identified as a threat, people tend to respond differently if they see it as a challenge. 

Threats create a more significant stress response and severe anxiety, but challenges generate excitement and positive outcomes. So threats are scary, and challenges are opportunities to accomplish and learn. 

So understanding and identifying stress can help you to treat stress as a challenge rather than a threat. Following are some strategies for you:

·   A positive pep talk to yourself can help you change how you speak to yourself about challenges.

·   Try focusing on what's under your control so that you will know the resources you have to handle challenges.

·   Adjust your mindset and approach threats as a challenge whenever possible. 

Eustress pitfalls

Eustress is not chronic stress since chronic stress is long-lasting, persistent, and damage psychologically or emotionally. But an intense amount of eustress can damage your system and make you feel overloaded. It happens when you are not allowing yourself to be relaxed and have a work-life balance. 

Change your perspective to help your stress management, since if you have multiple challenges in your life, even eustress can turn to chronic stress and burn you out. Following are some ways to deal:

·   Learn your limitations and maintain work-life balance

·   Avoid unnecessary obligations

·   Adopt yourself to habits that promote less reactive to overall stress

·   Be more comfortable in saying no to activities that don't serve you good

·   Practice proactive lifestyle

How to lead a proactive lifestyle?

Following preventative healthcare should be your utmost target since dealing with stress may affect your body if you are not entirely prepared. Track and monitor health from your comfort and privacy with Optimists Healthcare. Optimists provides at-home self-blood testing that pushes you to preventative healthcare for a better tomorrow and allows you to face your challenges healthily.