Rethinking Stress: When It Helps, When It Hurts, and What to Do

Stress management, a vital sub-facet of the IS-WEL Model, emphasizes the ability to recognize, understand, and regulate stress to maintain overall well-being.

So, I guess to start… we have to figure out what “stress” is, if we are going to recognize, understand, and regulate it… right?

To begin, this article gives a really good historical understanding of how we started to use the word “stress” and how before 1915, no one would have likely used it in the ways we do now. So interesting! I’d say the majority of us, when we use the word “stressed”, we are often using the word with a negative connotation. We are usually trying to communicate that something that is occurring to us is negative and we are physically or mentally responding with overwhelm. Interestingly, however, stress is further broken down into two terms that help us better understand stress: “distress”— used as a negative and “eustress”— used as a positive.

Your next question is probably: how can stress be “positive?”

I remember the first time in graduate school when I learned of a little thing called “The Life Change Index Scale” or more simply, The Stress Test. When you take a look at the list of items that are considered “major life changes” and the most stressful events you can experience, you can see that many of these stressors are considered “negative” but there are also a good amount that are considered “positive”— for instance: marriage, retirement, beginning or ending school, or even an outstanding personal achievement! Why is this? It is because our body loves a thing called “homeostasis”. Homeostasis means that our body is pretty consistently trying to find a stable equilibrium and any major change to that equilibrium, throws our body out of whack just a little bit (or a lot). This is often why individuals who are experiencing distress or eustress might find themselves getting sicker more easily or feeling more "run down” than normal. What is happening is our body is sending all its energy to create cortisol so we can increase our energy and send inflammation to help combat the threats our body experiences to fight off infections. However, if the stress continues for a long period of time, increased inflammation has “nowhere to go” and “nothing to fix” and therefore builds up in our bodies. When this happens, inflammation actually does the opposite of what it is intended to do for a short period, it ends up damaging healthy tissue and organs. This is what can happen when people experience “chronic stress” without addressing it.

HENCE… the importance of recognizing, understanding, and regulating our stress so we can best help support our bodies in getting through those particular stressful situations so it can find equilibrium and use cortisol and inflammation in a helpful way, instead of harmful way, and do so as quickly as possible.

I think most people know ways to regulate their stress (perhaps they haven’t tried them yet, but I think very few people would be shocked to figure out what would help them with stress), the thing that most people don’t actually know how to recognize is when their body is stressed and they have very little understanding of how it shows up for them until it is much too late.

So, here are some things that you may want to pay attention to that might indicate that you are experiencing more stress than you might be normally. First, The Life Change Index above can be a great resource to help you check in and notice if any of those life events have occurred for you over a period of time. Sometimes seeing it on paper can be validating! After that, this article shows physical, emotional, and behavioral conditions to pay attention to that might indicate you are experiencing increased stress. Additionally, the more of these you check off, the more likely you are to be experiencing stress.

If you’re taking a look at those symptoms and going “THAT’S ME!”, take a look here for some options on ways to help you cope with stress… and counseling and/or coaching is always a great addition to some of these if you need additional support!