Achievements, Travel, Weddings & Newborns: The Complex Nature of Eustress
Stress is unhealthy. We all know this. It kills us. Literally. It is (or should be) the top health concern of humanity aside from our unalterable (for now) genetics. Stress is bad; it is all bad, all of it. We hate it. Evil, evil stress!
Eustress is the positive kind of stress. It is the stress of dealing with the often happy and momentous occasions of our lives; it is the stress that follows accomplishments, new experiences, celebrations, and family transitions.
Because stress is experienced as negative, and events like graduations, weddings, and new additions to families are labeled as joyous occasions, eustress creates a frustrating inner conflict. Unlike the bad stress, eustress does not seem straightforward, and we start to feel all wrong.
We’re not very practiced at embracing the good with the bad. We’re very good at separating the two; it’s nice when everything keeps to its proper corner. We can’t have sad emotions running amok at birthdays; we can’t have laughter on the day of a funeral. Yet, we all know from our own personal experiences, the context is never just a “birthday” or a “funeral.” That’s a very simple way to describe an eventful day in the life of a human being.
Luckily, life never gives us eustress or distress exclusively; it just depends on the perspective you take. Dickens’s famous first line of A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, It was the worst of times,” could be the motto of life and humanity as a whole, particularly in regards to stress.
At least, I know it could for me.
The first time I ever personally knew someone dying, I was 20, and I was on my way to study abroad in England for four months. While I traveled to a dozen European cities, filling my world with new sights and new experiences, my grandfather slowly died of cancer back home. A perfect use of ill-fated timing by the universe. What I learned, however, was that it was possible to hold both things to be true at the same time, the travel eustress and family distress. I worked at it; I called upon my writing. I cried in the school library, in cathedrals, in museums, in cold hostel showers. Then, I turned around and stood in awe of grand statues, ate gelato every day in Italy, and ran naked on a Greek island. In many ways, my grandfather’s decline made me acutely aware of making the most of the opportunities abroad; he wouldn’t have wanted me to use that time any other way.
This past year, I had a lot of work-related stress while preparing for our wedding. Some people assumed that the wedding was making work more stressful, but the wedding was the positive force I was leaning on to get me through the work week. Once again, I called on the power of creativity, and I held both realities to be true and simultaneous, the wedding eustress and the work distress. I imagined all sorts of ways the wedding could not turn out as planned, but those “disasters” were all eustress, and that was comforting. At the end of the day there was a marriage of two people of two loving families. By the time the week of the wedding arrived, I had zero capacity for distress from other people let alone myself. It felt wonderful.
In both instances, I got lucky in the end. I made it back in time to see my grandfather for a few weeks before he passed away (though I had to jump right into attending my undergraduate senior seminar), and a friend set me up with a new job opportunity the Monday following our wedding, which came with more eustressful tasks…
But I was glad to have that class to keep me focused during my grandfather’s final days, and I was glad to have the new job despite having a hundred new forms and trainings to complete. That is how I choose to interpret those times — the way I choose to tell the story. The dance of eustress and distress continues on and on; we can never keep them to their corners.
As I conceptualized my own experiences and the experiences of those I’ve worked with in counseling, I’ve found the following things to be true:
1. It Is All Stress
Everything from breaking a dish to losing a loved one is on the stress spectrum. We’re all standing somewhere on the stress spectrum at all times. Just forgetting something is stressful. Allergies are stressful. Going bankrupt is stressful. Fighting. Running late. Illness. Bills. Inconvenience. Injury. Too much social interaction. Too little social interaction. Going to the doctor. Cold weather. Hot weather. Waiting.
From the moment we get up in the morning (some of us find this very stressful), we experience stress on our minds and bodies. Depending on our own experiences, our genetics, and the example of our families, we handle some forms of stress better or worse than others. Some people have a low tolerance for weather-related stress, others for anything that has to do with finances. Some people are wiped out for days by a common cold, others have no patience for filling out forms. Some people are petrified of speeches, others of commitment. For some of us, there’s road rage. For others, work-related trainings raise our blood pressure.
When I recently understood that everything is stressful, I saw that all the inconveniences, the mishaps, the struggles, the nightmares in life are inevitable. The distressing events will happen; it’s the suffering that is avoidable (a very Buddhist concept). Looking at it this way, the world is full of good problems to have because of the meaning those problems leave in their wake. All stress can be seen as eustress and distress, at different levels or overlapping, in a messy combination of the good, the bad, and the ugly.
It is healthy to see things from many perspectives, to find the good in bad situations and remain cynical of perfection. Be wary of the people who see mostly distress, who truly dwell in the ugly of any experience, great or small.
3. Whether It’s Good or Bad or Both, It’s All Hard
Just because we know suffering is avoidable and that there is always the possibility to make meaning of the negative events in our lives, it does not mean that the truly disastrous days are not deeply, painfully felt. While some people appear to be optimistic where others struggle to find a silver lining, both people are working hard to get through it in their own way. It is all hard, and we have to work at acceptance and meaning-making every day of our lives. For some, it may take many years, for others a few months, and still others, a lifetime. There may never be meaning for those who lived a certain devastation, only for those seeing it from another time or place. That’s okay.
For those of us who take eustress harder than others, who sometimes feel guilty that we are upset over things that others would be grateful for — give yourself a break. Good things are hard, too. A wedding is not an easy thing to pull together. Taking your baby to daycare for the first time is an emotional bludgeon. Making a valedictorian speech at your graduation is a lot of pressure. None of these events are bad — in fact, they are positive steps to take — and still, they are all hard. The best you can do is learn to be stressed and grateful at the same time. That’s okay.
It is all on the spectrum of stress; it is all good and bad; and it all takes work to move through it.
Excellent article! And so true! Stress greatly contributes to premature aging and death if we allow it. The next time I feel some stress(either kind)…I may have to come back and reread this. Thanks Ms. K!