Stress is a natural part of life, and everyone has different ways to handle it. It is our body’s natural response to changes in the environment, perceiving a challenge. Stress comes in various forms, with chronic stress being the most debilitating. While the negative impact of stress on our health is beyond doubt, there is a type that drives you to do better.
Uncommon Facts About the Causes of Chronic Stress
Before that, it is generally known that chronic stress has a wide variety of causes and effects, and each can’t be covered in one topic. Common effects of stress are mental illnesses, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, and gut problems.
Stress can even cause a tight jaw, leading to inflammation that connects to your throat, nose, and ears. An increase in earwax production is also a stress indicator. If it ends up clogging your ears, you might need ear wax removal treatments like microsuction. Remember that irregular heart rate or blood pressure can directly affect the ears, creating unbalanced fluids inside and making them swell. This results in inflammation, leading to an improper formation of wax.
The point is that various health problems come from chronic stress that can even affect your ears, out of all body parts. Of course, some are more common than others.
Eustress Is the Good Stress
Eustress is what we can call positive stress. It can be advantageous and is actually a required component of a person’s overall well-being. Eustress is the kind of stress that keeps us excited when we, for example, ride a roller-coaster, watch a horror movie, or do fun activities with friends. It has something to do with the adrenaline that runs through our veins.
Having this type of stress is important because one would become constantly bored with life without it. You wouldn’t feel any excitement, rush, or nervousness. Worst of all, you could feel empty and depressed without eustress.
Identifying the Difference Between Eustress and Distress
To identify when events are triggering your eustress or distress, you should also determine whether the scenario you’re in is a threat or a challenge. A threat induces distress, which also causes your anxiety. Therefore, it’s bad for you. When you think something is a challenge, you drive your eustress to activate, making you excited rather than stressed out.
Threats are events that affect you negatively and allow you to think that nothing good would come out of a situation, even if you’re trying to take over. May it be a loss of a loved one, a failed major exam, or getting fired from a job that meant a lot to you. An event is a threat if you think of it as a situation where no action can solve it or lift you from it, that all you can do is accept it and move on at your own pace.
Whereas some challenges may be complex, activating your eustress makes you believe that you will overcome the challenges you’re facing, letting you know that you can change and control the situation and turn it into something extraordinary. It can be learning a new skill, doing an intense workout, or performing a professional task—anything difficult yet beneficial. A challenge is something you can turn into a win, which is why it excites you.
Reframing Your Perspective on Stress
We are taught that stress is entirely a bad thing. The fact is that it can be something you can change and control unless you have a mental illness, such as depressive and panic disorders.
Recent studies have informed us that you can control your stress by looking at a situation as a challenge instead of a threat. One study concludes that your growing body is a piece of evidence that suggests that learning the importance of usefulness and benefits of stress can improve your mental responses, performance, and well-being.
Stress is only damaging if you perceive the situation as a challenge wherein you don’t have the resources to handle it. If you think of stress as a drive, you’re more likely to handle difficult situations well. This is how you can use stress as a tool rather than a hinder.
Finding the Balance Between Stressors
Setting your perspective to have a positive outlook can specifically help with how you manage stress, but it’s not the only way you can do it. Of course, you can control everything, especially if there are too many hardships in your life that even eustress can become too much and lead to chronic stress. Eustress can burn you out too. This is why it’s important to find your balance and stay realistic about your reactions to different situations.
Since people are different, there is no one way of finding your balance. It really depends on your needs and how you can find resilience, whether learning new healthy habits or declining an unnecessary part of your life. This takes time to find the practice that can improve your stress levels in a way you can handle.
