When most people say ‘I’m feeling super stressed right now’ or ‘I’m dealing with a lot of stress at the moment’, it is rarely meant as a good thing. You’d rarely see anyone announce how stressed they were with a big excited grin on their face.

Stress is definitely considered a bad thing: something to be avoided, cut out, and removed from your life as much as possible. But that’s only partly correct. Some level of stress is beneficial— even essential to our everyday functioning.

Not only that, but some kinds of stress can actually be enjoyable. Let’s break it down.

Stress is our motivator

In its simplest sense, stress is the body’s way of telling us that we need to do something. It’s the feeling we get when we are alerted to a threat, an opportunity, or something that requires action.

When this happens, the stress response activates, we feel our attention sharpen, and our body gets ready to respond. The muscles get ready to move, the lungs and heart start to work more quickly, and our mind focuses on whatever it is that needs our attention.

This aspect of stress is very useful in helping us get things done. In fact, without any stress at all, we’d struggle to achieve any of our goals and lack any real motivation.

Chronic stress is the problem

The stress response is useful in the short term, but if it goes on too long then it can start to have negative consequences. Chronic stress occurs when we constantly experience threats which activate the stress response without having the opportunity for it to deactivate. This is quite common in today’s world, where sources of stress such as work, difficult relationships and money worries are constant companions.

The result of chronic stress is that the body stays in an alert, life-or-death state, leaving us feeling tense, irritable and unable to focus. While in this state, the body cannot perform many of its resting functions, such as digestion and sleep, as effectively, so our physical health can start to suffer too.

So while stress is useful, even essential, as a short-term response to help us respond to problems and achieve our goals, over the long-term it can take a serious toll if not dealt with properly.

Why is this important?

Why does this distinction matter? Well, if we think of stress as purely a bad thing, then our goal will always be to get rid of or avoid it as much as possible. This is tricky when we understand that stress is actually part of your body’s normal response to things. Avoiding stress is like trying to avoid bowel movements or breathing: not really possible, and not even that good an idea to begin with.

Avoiding stress isn’t a good goal. Instead, we should be aiming to regulate stress so that it doesn’t build up over time. Ideally, we want to enjoy the benefits of the short-term increase to our physical and mental capacity that the stress response brings, and then allow it to deactivate so that we experience none of the long-term problems.

This isn’t always easy, but once we understand this to be the goal, it becomes possible. You can learn to notice when you’re feeling stressed and try to identify the source so that you can deal with it. Failing that, you can learn stress relaxation strategies to manually deactivate the stress response before it becomes harmful.

Understanding stress in this way allows you to work with it, rather than seeing it as the enemy.

What is good stress?

Finally, let’s look at a related concept which provides another example of how stress can actually be positive. Eustress, or good stress as it is also known, is a special kind of stress response that occurs when we feel excited and amped up. It is essentially the stress response but without any sense of threat or danger.

We experience good stress when anticipating a challenge or exciting event, such as a performance or sports match, or when on a first date. We also experience it in adrenaline-inducing situations like rollercoasters, bungee jumping or when watching a horror movie.

Good stress helps us feel energised and motivated, giving us a ‘spark’ to help us enjoy and perform well in these kinds of situations.

A bit of good stress is essential for living a fun and engaging life. You can pursue good stress by doing things that make you feel alive and excited; things that challenge and push you in a good way. You don’t want to chase after it to the point of becoming an adrenaline junkie, always hankering after your next fix, but finding sources of good stress can be a great way to add some extra ‘oomph’ to your life.