The Many Faces of Stress

by | Mar 11, 2014 | Self-Care, Stress Management, Wellness Tips & Information

By Donna L. Hamilton, MD, MS

What if you found out you actually have more stress in your life than you thought? Maybe that could explain why your attempts at relaxation and stress management haven’t worked as well as you hoped. You might need a little more self-care than you thought in order to effectively balance all the disruptive forces you actually face.

Recognizing the many ways stress shows up in your life can help you manage it more effectively.  Why does stress management matter? It matters because adequately dealing with life stress can help reduce negative health risks associated with the strain chronic stress plays on your body. In order to sufficiently address the stressors in your life, however, you first have to recognize how its many faces manifest.

Believe it or not there are three types of stress: eustress, neustress, and distress. Eustress-or good stress-occurs when positive things happen in your life causing euphoria and motivation.  For example, falling in love, starting a dream job, or taking a luxurious vacation could all create eustress.  Because these experiences bring pleasure and joy you might not realize when they create a stress response in your body.

If the exhilaration of new beginnings starts to turn into sleepless nights because you’re too excited to settle down, or if you’re so giddy you can’t eat, you might want to pull a few stress management tools out of your personal wellness toolkit.  Effective and timely stress management can help bring your body into a more balanced state and decrease the risk of experiencing negative health effects from stress induced strain.

The second type of stress is called neustress or neutral stress. This kind of stress occurs when you’re exposed to situations that have no direct effect on you.  For example, hearing about devastating natural disasters in another part of the world can create neustress.  You might not directly experience it but the news can still create a stress response, especially for empathetic people.

Prolonged exposure to neustress can lead to distress, the third type of stress.  For example, hearing excessive news coverage about an event can lead to feeling fearful or angry, two emotions that frequently trigger the body’s stress response.  Recognizing this can help you better support yourself when being barraged with information, especially if it’s unpleasant news.

Distress, or negative stress, is the most commonly acknowledged form of stress.  This is what most people mean when they say they’re feeling stressed.  Distress can occur over a brief, intense period or over a long, subtle period. Either way it’s important to be aware of when you experience it so you can effectively manage it.

Recognizing the subtle way stress shows up in your life empowers you to intervene before you start to experience health problems.  Simple personal wellness habits like remembering to take slow, deep breaths or taking a short, relaxing walk can help reduce stress affects.    Stress prevention or reduction can’t always happen, but effective stress management can help reduce its negative effects.

Be well,

Dr. Donna

© 2014 Donna L. Hamilton, MD

 

The Ultimate Health and Wellness Guide Dr. Donna Hamilton, MD has a mission to help everyone live the healthy, satisfying lives they’re meant to lead. A dynamic holistic wellness speaker, Dr. Hamilton passionately teaches what being healthy really means and how to do it in a way that fits your unique needs. Her easy, practical tips assist you with assessing the entire wellness landscape and appropriately planning your personal wellness journey. Her workbook Wellness Your Way combines evidence based counseling and coaching skills with her primary care medicine wisdom to assist readers on this journey.  For more information or to book Dr. Hamilton for speaking engagements visit www.DonnaHamiltonMD.com or www.ManifestExcellence.com

Donna Hamilton, MD, MS, FAAP
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