I bet you feel stress. 

Excess, continues stress that deprives you of sleep at night and reminds you constantly of that one thing wrong in life, so wrong, in fact, that you can not focus on the joys of life at all.

This is stress. 

 

 

You overthink, you worry, you are filled with anxiety to the brim, always lost within your thoughts. This prevents you from really paying attention to the life going on around you. 

People call this stress. But we’ll call this distress. Because there is something that acts opposite to this. Because clinical psychologist William D. Brown wrote in his book, Welcome Stress! It Can Help You Be Your Best, how there are two types of stress: Eustress (the angel) and Distress (the devil).

What is the difference between Eustress and Distress?

I think that both are always perched atop either of your shoulders, and constantly bugging you—about this and that. Eustress helps you grow. It’s the kind of stress everyone finds desirable, because Eustress helps things get done. It pushes you to do your best—to give your absolute best in everything you do, be it whatever task in any field of life. 

This is when you choose to do the better things (with higher returns and gain) even when they are hard to accomplish than the easy-peasy small tasks. The better job comes with more stress in the form of more responsibility—more levels of anxiety and cutting close to the deadlines. It’s hard, surely, but it’s good for you. It helps you grow and leads you to live a more fulfilling and better life. 

(We talk only about material gains here, but we can’t deny the fact that material gains are important in life, as almost all the necessities in life except love come from these. Remember how eustress is also present in matters of love and intellect. If a loved one is in danger or under harm, we don’t back away from stressing for them either.) 

Now, the other devil on your shoulder is bad for you. It’s bad for your health and your life. It gives nothing in return except anxiety and those bags under your eyes. Many things can lead to this feeling of distress, that’s a fact common enough, depending on every personal situation. 

But mainly the two causes of distress are these: 

1. When you worry about something too much. 

In other words, when you want something—too much, such that it’s all you think about.  Remember—too much of anything is not desirable for health at all. Even if you like ice-cream, you can’t eat it all day. That’s a miniscule example. 

The hard job can bring you eustress—I agree—but it can also bring you distress. There’s a very thin line between the two. This obsession brings you distress. It takes away all your freedom from life and you have no control over it anymore. 

2. When you’re holding a weight on your shoulders. 

Then there’s the other kind of distress—that comes with bottling up something inside and then walking around all day like everything’s fine. 

When you lie, cheat, do something wrong, then the feelings you have inside—that’s distress. Even though no one has any idea of your wrongdoing, you still know what you did, and deep within, your conscience is waking up. The weight on your shoulders is eating away at your mind.

Guilt. Guilt eats you raw. Guilt for something abominable consumes us out if it’s kept inside for long. This is when you think about thoughts that will bring you harm later on. 

 

Stress is good—just the right amount.

You can’t measure it with a scale, but there are some indicators in life which define when stress is becoming too much for you to handle, when it’s becoming too inconsequential, and when, at last, is it just the right proportion. 

Just like I pointed out how too much stress in life is never good (it decreases your inefficiency), I would also now say why too little stress is not advisable either. Don’t live like a monk saying you don’t worry about things, you don’t feel any particular emotion, you don’t really have any material desire at all. 

Because we are human beings. We are meant to be on this planet in this life because there’s some thing we are meant to accomplish, something we’re meant to do. 

We have a purpose we’ve come here for. Our mothers didn’t just be in discomfort and pain for nine months, all for nothing. There’s something you took birth for. Find that something, and then stress for it. Only if it’s important enough. 

If you have absolutely nothing to stress for in life, Seriously, people! What are you doing? Eustress brings us motivation—to do something, to get out of that stressful mentality, and work towards finding the solution for it. 

Have urgency in your life. No one lives forever. If you have no self-imposed challenge in life, no pressure, no deadlines, no urgency, then maybe you don’t have any motive either. Find the motive. Welcome the stress. Welcome the sweat, the sleepless nights. Welcome the caffeine, the passion. 

Welcome the burning desire to get something so badly that you come to love the stress that comes along with it. 

 

If it’s important enough, you get to worry

…except when you don’t.

All important things are to be stressed upon. That’s an unspoken rule of life. 

You worry about your family (because they’re important), you worry about your health (because it’s first and foremost) and you worry about your job or your passion or your livelihood. You worry about all those things that matter. This is basically what eustress is. 

But then there are the things that aren’t important, and still you are stressing about them. Almost with as much intensity as for the things you care about. The past, all the people and places and memories. These are important too, I understand, but is stressing about them going to get you anything? 

It’s something you can’t control. It’s something that’s already happened. It’s shouldn’t even bother you anymore. I know it still does, and that’s an irony we all have to go through.But what’s gone is gone, and is never coming back to you. The past doesn’t care about you.Let the past go. 

Another example is overthinking. It isn’t really important, because the imaginary scenarios you make up in your minds while overthinking are never really the actual outcomes. And then you realise that you lose precious time while imagining all these scenarios and thinking about things that weren’t going to happen. 

Now when you realise how much time you spent on all this fiasco—and you see how little time it seems to be left now—as a result, you go in distress again. You curse yourself for being so stupid and all the energy just seems to deflate out of you and now you have nothing left to do. Distress can be a really serious situation in life, especially if you let it consume you or control you in some way. 

Good thing there’s a way out then.

 

 

Understanding what is happening is sometimes the best solution you have available 

Imagine a person not realizing what is wrong with them. Not consulting any doctors or help. They don’t know what’s the problem, so they forget that there is one to begin with. It bothers them in the beginning—this condition and then they try to learn to live with it. Until one day it just strikes all of a sudden. This disease. There’s no way out now. 

There was something seriously wrong with them and they didn’t get any help so now it’s all worse. Now imagine this disease being a mental disease. This can be anything. Say, it’s stress. 

You were taking positive, constructive stress—until one day it just turned into serious, damaging stress that is not good for you. Of course. I wouldn’t recommend consulting a doctor. Hell, even I wouldn’t so early.

But if we just stop ignoring these symptoms and instead face them—face what’s all wrong with us and just battle it within our senses—then it might be loads more beneficial. 

We could just understand deeply what this distress is about—what is its cause, effect on us, and then we could try to eliminate it. Not avoid it, or ignore it. Eliminate it. Minimise it.

Often times we know we are going through difficulty, but are reluctant to address it. We don’t want to draw attention to it. Childishly scared it would increase to the size of a mountain, and trample us beneath. Of course this imagination is commendable, but childish. As grown up adults with adult problems, we also need to find mature solutions. 

Because sometimes, even Eustress is better than no stress. Our body has been made to survive and there is no survival instinct without any stress. A person who never worries, never goes into a fight or flight mode, never becomes anxious about anything—that is no person at all. It is either a monk or a ghost. 

This stress that makes our life so difficult today is an evolutionary demand. Only those of our ancestors who took enough stress to prepare for predators and disasters survived. It is an instinct that has passed down through centuries of natural selection. It is as important to take a healthy amount of stress as it is to not take too much of it. Balance is the key to life.

So, every time we find ourself in distress, instead of ignoring this feeling and the emotions behind it, we can instead face it. Face whatever demons we are housing, and battle them. Whenever this happens, it’s best to just close your eyes and relax your breathing, then shift your thinking towards a more positive subject. Turn the distress into eustress. 

Meditate. Write about it. Draw something (even if it’s terrible). Just take some time out of the monotony of daily life and something new. Something you don’t do everyday. Think about your purpose in life. Stress about the good things in life. Find a way to battle stress with stress. And don’t let the devil on your shoulder win.