Why its important to understand Stress

Like many of us I have gone through stress on various occasions and know how it feels and impact life. What I learned from that experience is what I share with many through webinars, articles, coaching and mentoring. This article is the glimpse of some of the important lessons I learned.

 Stress is not good or bad in itself, it’s the intensity and duration of Stress that causes more damage.

Stress is not good or bad in itself, it’s the intensity and duration of Stress that causes more damage. With certain amount of stress performance improves, its Eustress. Its daily life stress that has positive connotation like marriage, promotion, graduation etc.

More stress than Eustress declines the performance and creates Distress. Distress is daily life stress that has negative connotation like divorce, punishment, injury, financial problems. Actual problem starts here. If not realized and attended at this stage, it leads to chronic stress.

 Don't let Eustress to turn into Distress.

Acute stress is a fight or flight response and body prepares to defend itself like encounter with snake. It takes about 90 minutes for the metabolism to return normal response is removed. Now you can understand, every time we encounter a acute stress situation how much pressure it puts on our immune system.  

 Stress related diseases are

cancer and cardiovascular diseases.

Prolonged stress creates Chronic stress, if unattended and uncontrolled, this stress affects immune system, health, and families. As per American Institute of Stress, 70-90% of doctor visits are due to stress related causes. Classic example of stress related diseases are cancer and cardiovascular diseases.

Having said that, its everyone’s responsibility to help self and support family, friends and coworkers to manage their stress up to Eustress threshold and not to let it go beyond that. Organizations, manager, leaders need to consider impact of stress beyond Eustress level and include it in employee welfare programs.

 Be kind to others, you don't know what they might be going through in their lives.

We can help each other manage their stress by being little more kind to them. If you know anyone around you going through some kind of stress, talk to them and support.

 Thank you for reading article.

Neetu Choudhary