Exploring Different Types of Stress

Stress is defined as our body’s reaction to demands or threats. What is considered a demand or threat varies from person to person, making stress difficult to quantify. Stress can be both short term or long term, but chronic stress over a long period of time can cause health concerns and lasting mental health impacts.

Different Types of Stress

Stress is a crucial instinct present in all human beings that helps us adapt and survive. It allows us to survey our environment and properly adapt to it. While stress is a normal biological response, it is important to understand how our bodies react to stress and how that impacts our health.

Some examples of the different types of stress you may encounter include:

• Acute stress: this is a short term stress that is usually associated with feeling upset or some type of trauma. This stress is a response to something out of the ordinary, such as natural disasters or traumatic events.
• Chronic stress: chronic stress is what we experience in our day to day lives. It can, at times, feel inescapable because of the nature of this type of stress. Some examples of chronic stress are job stresses and stress from bad relationships.
• Eustress: Eustress is associated with the fun and exciting things we experience. It is usually associated with adrenaline and energy. While this may be positive in some instances, without balance, this type of stress can be harmful.

Not All Stress is Bad

Stress is not always a negative thing. Some kinds of stress can help people stay safe from danger and can encourage growth and learning.

Stress can be the driving force behind our success and motivations. In moments of pressure, stress responses can help us succeed when a challenge arises. This helps build our motivation and our resilience in order to help us adaptively respond to future challenges.

Stress is also important in making sure we avoid unsafe situations. The stress we feel in situations that make us “uneasy” or “uncomfortable” is our body’s way of communicating perceived stress. This helps us learn how to keep ourselves safe and navigate discomfort. 

Too Much Stress

While not all stress is bad, if our stress levels are abnormally high, prolonged, or excessively repeated, this can cause adverse health effects. If our “fight or flight freeze response” is activated repeatedly and never truly comes back down to an appropriate level, we can get stuck in survival mode. This shift can cause many health concerns such as hormonal and metabolic changes, changes to our immune system, and accelerated aging.

Stress and Therapy

While too much stress can cause adverse health effects, there is some good news. Even after prolonged stress has been in place, its impacts are preventable and reversible. Many factors such as safety, connection, coping skills and learning how to regulate stress can help reverse these effects and avoid them in the future.

Coping and stress regulation skills are something that can be worked on in therapy. Our response to stress can stem from the skills we have learned to manage stress throughout our lives. These skills are something that can be explored in therapy. By becoming more aware of how we choose to work through stress and learning more helpful skills, we can have a healthier relationship with stress. Through therapy, you can learn the skills to better navigate life's ups and downs in a way that is healthy and productive. Therapy provides you with a safe space to explore challenges and difficult emotions while gaining self awareness and healthy coping skills. It also provides you with a non-judgmental support system.

Working through stress is a normal and healthy part of life. When stress becomes destructive and unproductive, it can have a negative impact on your overall health and well being. Therapy can help you learn the coping mechanisms and take control of your life! Take the first step and call or text to schedule now!