Victorious Wellness

Is stress good or bad?

Stress is here to stay...and that is positive and negative. In a 2007 study, eight of ten people agreed that stress was a part of life. That's true for most of us. Stress is a part of our personal and professional lives. But, is that bad?

Stress is a word that connotes different meanings depending on the context of the conversation. Stress is a force or a stimulus in some cases. It causes us to pay attention to what we are doing to cause it. In that function, it is much like pressure or pain. The stress is a signal and our investigation into the causes provides necessary feedback. Even when the sensation hurts a little, it still has value.

For instance, after you perform a strenuous exercise routine your muscles may feel like Jello. That is fine because it is a signal that your effort was intense enough to tear down muscle temporarily. However, if you find that you always have a nagging ache that feels nothing like your usual post-workout soreness, then it is a signal that maybe something is wrong or worsening. The same can be said for the difference between feeling full of food and feeling as if you have food poisoning.

Use stress to help you

Stress at work or in your personal life can provide just as good feedback. You might be feeling overly fatigued or frustrated, noticing changes in your eating or sleeping patterns or recognizing other clues that stress is rising or high. Now, you must identify why it is happening and determine if your outcome is expected or questionable.

So, if you are overly tired because you work two jobs or twelve-hour shifts then it is more likely to be expected. But, if your job hours or productivity is relatively the same as before, but recently you have felt more frustrated, then you might want to dig deeper into why it is changing.

In that 2007 study commissioned by the American Psychological Association, a third of study respondents experienced extreme levels of stress. The top three stressors were work, money and workload. The Japanese understand how serious such a stressful work life can be. Karōshi is a word that means death from overwork and they include it as one of the measurable causes of death, as the U.S. does with diseases.

An automobile's speedometer tells us how fast we are traveling. The good side of stress is we can use it as feedback to inform us of how satisfactorily we are living. Unfortunately, negative consequences can occur when we do not pay attention to signs or notice, yet choose to ignore them. Excessive speeding in the car and excessive stressing in life often lead to unwanted results.

Stress is a fact of life. Maybe we cannot master or manage it, but surely we must learn how best to react.

What do you think about stress for good? Your comments are welcomed.