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Defining Stress - and Distress
by James M. Read, Ph.D.
Stress. It can kill you. It can make you sick. Stress contributes significantly to the high incidence of heart disease in this country. People who live highly stressed lives experience cardiovascular disease at 23/2 time s the rate of those who live less stressful lives.

And yet, most of us can't live without it. We need stress. Think how dull life would be without a little good stress now and then - the kind of stress that Dr. Hans Selye calls "Eustress."

Eustress provides challenge, stimulation. In rising to meet the challenge we learn, we grow, and we become stronger for it.

Distress is the bad stuff that makes us weaker by wearing us down. It's the distress in our lives that we should reduce or avoid.

What causes stress? Lots of things - little things and big things. Change causes stress. Both negative and positive experiences cause stress.

Getting promoted causes stress. Getting fired causes stress. Getting married causes stress. Getting divorced causes stress.

Some years ago two stress researchers at the University of Washington found that they could predict people's illnesses by looking at the amount of change in their lives. T.H. Holmes and R.H. Rahe produced a Life Change Scale and assigned point values to various events in a person's life.

Death of a spouse leads the way with an assigned stress value of 100 points. Divorce is next with 73 points. Last on the list is "minor violations of the law" worth 11 points. Even Christmas earns 12 points!

If you add up more than 200 points in a given year, there is a good chance that you'll get sick. Holmes and Rahe found that in groups of people with over 300 Life Change Units in a year a high percentage got sick.

More recent research suggests that there is about a six-month lag between the onset of high stress and the increase in physical illness. Thus it seems while a body might be able to stand it for six months, thereafter it begins to pay.

It also may take as long as six months for the effects to subside and for you to return to normal.

So if you've been feeling dragged out and miserable, and getting more colds than usual - maybe it's the stress in your life that is partly responsible. There is even some research to suggest that subtle changes occur in our nasal passages as a result of stress: changes that make for a more hospitable environment for cold viruses!

How do you know if stress is a problem for you? The list of symptoms and signs is endless andyet, I find that people never have trouble identifying the stresses in their lives.

Fortunately, there are some very effective techniques for reducing the negative stress (distress) in our lives and hence moderating the harmful effects that stress can have on our health.

Building in more positive stress is but one way to balance distress. Maybe it is the terrific effect on self-esteem that meeting and overcoming a challenge can have. In any case, a healthy dose of positive stress does seem to protect against distress wearing us down.

Originally published in The Idaho Statesman, 6/30/82

For more information contact psychologist James M. Read, Ph.D. at: jread@jread.com

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