Is Stress Unhealthy? How to Wield the Double-Edged Sword

Harnessing its Power, Minimising its Harm

Diamonds or Dust?

It's definitely a dirty word, but is stress unhealthy? Everywhere you look are strategies to reduce or even, concerningly, eliminate stress. It’s important to consider that when we talk about stress in therapy the goal is not to completely remove any trace of stress. Doing so wouldn’t be in our nature as human beings. Stress is a powerful brew that kickstarts our physiology, though unfortunately all too often in the modern world we imbibe too much.

The Diamond

At its best, stress (or eustress) is a primal, biochemical drive system to help us take action about something. Whether that is finding shelter, food, or (more familiarly) a new job. Stress is the way our body provides us with extra resources to achieve goals in our lives. The secretion of cortisol and adrenaline is a powerful mix that allows us to do things that would be much more difficult ordinarily.

This is evident in those who find they struggle to complete work tasks without a deadline. The added stress kicks their physiology up a notch and provides them the motivation to get the job done.

From personal experience, stress allowed me to push through discomfort, disgust, and fatigue in the ambulance service to help patients who were having the worst day of their life. Without it, I wouldn’t have made it through.

The Dust

Yet when stress becomes too much, or our ability to deal with it is not enough, it can equally be our undoing. We lose control of our emotions, our thoughts, and even our bodies. Anger, insomnia, self-criticism, headaches are all potentially symptoms of stress that is not being managed.

At this level, stress taxes our ability to communicate effectively and even perform mundane physical tasks, actively hindering our ability to get things done.

Any paramedic will tell you of the first-hand effects of this: hands shake, bandwidth reduces, and communication becomes monosyllabic or even non-existent. This alone can be the difference between saving lives or not.

The Balance

So, what’s the solution? This mechanism is hard-wired into our body, we have to learn to deal with it somehow. If we can find the balance, that sweet spot where stress enhances us rather than ruins us, then we can truly make the most of what it is both telling us about ourselves and what it makes us capable of.

Developing resilience and an ability to cope with stress is not second nature to us. Learning strategies to relax in the middle of chaos and activate abilities to break down and solve problems are key.

With CBH we develop these, and other problem areas, and use hypnosis to practice them so that when the events that normally stress us happen, we're ready for them.