Eustress

Let’s break a taboo and talk about stress being good.

When I started this bodywork blog I wanted to write about health through my perspective. While maintaining a focus on bodywork, health, and massage, I wanted the freedom to examine trends that I noticed. One such trend that I notice (today topic) is the demonization of stress. As a massage therapist, I am expected to parrot some over-enunciated mantra about how bad stress is. The problem is I don't want to. You don’t want any stress in this life? That sounds kind of boring and unhealthy.

Now, I fully admit stress can be a killer. Stress puts plenty of strain on our nerves, on our heart, and gastrointestinal tract. Stress breaks apart the social system we biologically need to be healthy homo sapiens. Stress causes us to seek out momentary relief in toxic food, drugs, and all sorts of unproductive compulsions. So yes stress has a shadow that we all should be aware of. But stress is also is an evolutionary gift that I think we should be a bit more grateful for.

To break down this concept better let's divide stress into eustress (good stress) and distress (bad stress). The “Eu” is a Greek prefix meaning good as in euphoria. It’s the stress we feel when we expand our capacities. If we challenge ourselves in any way we will feel a certain amount of eustress. If we undergo a challenging work out we will experience physical eustress. Maybe before the challenging workout, we will have emotional resistance that will require a certain amount of eustress to overcome. Eustress and growth are as inseparable as the north and south side of a compass. Desiring a stress-free life is desiring a life devoid of growth.

I feel that we are missing out on opportunities to have less distress (toxic stress) when we simply toss all our stress in the distress pile. Just as we sort our trash into what we want to rid ourselves of and what can be recycled into something useful we can separate our stress into that which creates value from which steals value from our lives. This practice changes the narrative we have about the stress. When we do this our stress becomes more manageable. As we classify more of our stress as eustress we end up with less distress. The eustress we do feel can be discomforting but is linked to feelings of growth. To challenges being met. I think this is a healthier way of managing stress than pretending avoidance is an option.

Anthony Bruni