GOOD STRESS /BAD STRESS -
KNOW THE DIFFERENCE
How to identify the Good stress from Bad one?
Contrary to popular beliefs, stress is just not a harmful agent. It can, if mastered and anticipated, become a real engine in all areas of your existence. For this, it is necessary to learn to distinguish what is the nature of our stress and to assess what intensity is acceptable to us.
Sensation or reaction?
In psychology, stress refers not to a sensation but a response of the organism to aggression. It is broken down into three phases:
- Alarm;
- Adaptation or resistance;
- Decompensation, by exhaustion of resistance capabilities.
The first two phases are necessary and beneficial (“good stress”), the third is characterized by the inability of our organism to cope with the significant energy expenditures when the danger persists and becomes chronic. It is the “bad stress.”
Recognize the right stress
When we talk about good stress, we speak of a mild and positive stimulation. What results from it above all is an increased energy and a desire to do battle.
If you want to move mountains and take a whole team with you, then it is the bad stress living inside you. However, if the goal is to meet your personal aspirations entirely, and if at the end of the day you feel like you have accomplished a lot of things is that you are suffering from “Positive stress.”
Also noteworthy: this one is of short duration, and leaves the place, once the goal reached, to a sense of accomplished duty and of deserved rest.
Symptoms of bad stress
The bad stress, the most widespread alas, is the one that leaves no respite: it pursues you all day like a diffuse and stuffy feeling. It does not even leave you alone at night and can prevent you from sleeping or even giving you nightmares.
It tires you, therefore, and makes you irritable. You lose your appetite, or you eat poorly to compensate, especially too sweet to unconsciously seek a little comfort. It can go as far as burn-out, that is, to the point of no return, where you will not be able to act.
No doubt: you are a victim of bad stress, and you have to act.
First, a question of intensity
What differentiates first the good stress from bad stress is its intensity. Unfortunately, we do not always decide the pressure and responsibilities that fall on us!
It is, therefore, up to you that you to “let in” the acceptable amount of pressure.
How to cope with stress?
You surely know people who confess “work well only in an emergency”: you too can become one of those, for whom the pressure is not inhibiting.
First of all, it is essential to have some shields: a balanced life, the possibility of doing sport, in particular, emotional compensations in your family life.