May

Some things just seem to go together….wine and cheese…shoes and socks…paper and pencil…peanut butter and jam…love and marriage…cream & sugar…ladies and gentlemen.   Each of these pairs represents a dynamical duo.  Each is important in relation to the other, and each stays in some degree of balance with the other.  Each can stand on its own; yet each is important in its pairing.

Stress, believe it or not, is a lot like this.  There is a dynamical balance in play with “eustress”---the good kind of stress, and “distress”---the bad kind of stress.  While they are both “stressors”, together, they make up “a dynamical stress balance scale”.

Not all news about stress is bad. Pioneer researcher Hans Selye said, “Stress is the spice of life.” He termed good stress “eustress.”  (Eu is a prefix…from the Greek… meaning ‘good’).  Stress can be a positive force, because eustress represents things that add to the enjoyment and satisfaction of being alive.  Intuitively, we are aware of things that bring a sense of eustress and we crave them in our lives.

The key to stress management is to remind yourself of the importance of balancing eustress and distress. It is therapeutic to find and integrate more eustress to offset the weight of distress---to maintain that dynamical stress balance in our lives.

When you add to the eustress side of your stress balance scale, you’ll discover some of your personal passions. Those things that bring you back into balance will be the things that you truly enjoy doing. You’ll discover that your eustress is elicited by those activities that bring you joy, ease and perhaps excitement, a true sense of lightness—the very things that lift you up and make you smile.

The distress side of the balance scale is driven by fear, anger, discontent, unease and a clear sense of heaviness—all of which are characterized by your complaining.  (What do your complaints say about your negative stressors?)

Stress signifies different things for each of us, and both the level of stress and how we handle stress differ. It is very much like the tension of a balance scale. Too much negative weightiness tilts us away from being right with the world. When harmony, coherence, enjoyment and positive lightness are added, we move back to being centered.  It is important to find the correct amount of eustress to balance out the distress, and allow ourselves to be centered most of the time.

So, let’s take a closer look at your Stress and see how well your Distress/Eustress stressors are balanced.  Draw a balance scale. On one side, list all the negative distressors that are currently weighing you down. Then, list all the positive eustressors that if you add them into your life, are sure to bring you back to center.
Some things just seem to go together….!