What is Eustress? And Distress?
Stress is usually regarded as something very negative, causing only health problems. We have a shaped notion of stress as of something harmful and dangerous. The most popular idea of it is the one of great mental or emotional overstrain. A typical example would be that of an office worker who has to deal with a number of files and an urgent report to write for his boss, while his secretary is asking him to sign an important contract which he has time only to skim, at the same time his wife calling on the phone to tell that he had swapped the home with the car keys and she cannot enter home…
Stress however does not mean exactly this. It is a very broad and not easy to define term.
We assume here and will use the definition of stress given by Hans Seyle, the founder of the theory of stress. His theory is the classical scientific explanation of this phenomenon and we strongly recommend that you read his book “Stress and Distress”. This book is the genuine source about what stress is in general termsand what we will do in this chapter is to retell the major points in brief.
Stress is “the nonspecific response of the organism to any pressure or demand”(citation from “Stress and Distress”), where “nonspecific” stands for standard, identical, one and the same. Thus stress means certain body reactions in response to extraordinary circumstances. What is peculiar about these body reactions is that they are one and the same, no matter what events triggered them. And they are triggered only by extraordinary events – such as great fear or sudden change in the power of sound.
Most of us however associate the word stress either with those factors which cause the nonspecific response or with its short- and long- term negative effects on our organism (mental strain and stress-related diseases). Stress is an identical response to all diverse kinds of irritants, no matter what their nature is. Stressors may be: fear, anger, a nightmare, muscle tension, muscle wrick, pain or happy events, as well. No matter the stressors, no matter whether they evoke positive or negative feelings in us, our organism automatically responds in one and the same way – and this way is relatively well studied. In brief it is: secretion of various hormones, mainly those which control blood pressure and heart rate, perspiration rate, emotions, the immune system, as well as three stages of reactions in the organism: 1) "alarm" stage, 2) adaptation and 3) exhaustion. A more detailed explanation about what each stage means you will find in the next chapter.
Studies after Seyle have proven that according to the different situations some hormones are also different and in this respect the stress response is not “so nonspecific”(for further information go to http://www.unl.edu/stress/255N/part2.html ->“PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY OF STRESS SPECIFICITY“.
Note that the psychical reactions are not one and the same in all stressful situations, only physiological reactions are.
Stressful situations and stressors in general make the organism respond also in a specific way. However it is our aim to discuss primarily the nonspecific response. Probably you are interested to know why when the organism can respond to any demand or pressure in a specific way, it also uses an automated nonspecific response. This is a question related with the very nature of stress and we will discuss it further, but not exactly in this chapter.
Seyle calls the stress evoked by any positive
emotions or events “eustress” and the stress evoked by
negative feelings and events “distress”.
Distress refers to the baleful effects of stress,
with long-term negative impact. Distress may appear either when
stressors are too strong or moderately strong to weak but
frequent. Whether a certain stress will turn into distress and to
what extent depends greatly on one’s own physical and mental
resistance, which is different for every individual.
Stress as a state of the nervous system.
The brain always responds to stressors and whatever irritants, in a specific and as much as possible adequate way. We can’t talk of a biochemical reaction or reactions in the brain cells, that are one and the same for all different “demands and pressures” exerted on the brain.
We will discuss what happens in the brain both at the time it perceives stressors and after the organism responds to those stressors in a nonspecific way. The biochemical changes in the organism during a stressful event may have significant short- and long- term impact on the brain, which in turn can affect our reasoning abilities, memory and emotions.
suggest additional material/new interpretations on the subject
Books:
Seyle, H. (1956). The Stress of Life.