I am only a layman so take my words with a grain of salt. I have huge stress in college currently. I try to avoid a relapse.
I realized I am under a lot of pressure currently. It is pretty hard to cope with. Even my usual mechanisms to cope don't really work. Always when I try to relax I am still thinking about college. So college is "negative stress/distress" for me. I take sedatives and other medication to stay somewhat stable. But I want to add more than just taking pills. And here comes eustress into play. It is a long time ago I read about it so I rather link and quote an internet source.
www.healthline.com
What is eustress?
Eustress is usually a product of nerves, which can be brought on when faced with a fun challenge. Genovese says this is important because, without eustress, our well-being can suffer
"Eustress produces positive feelings of excitement, fulfillment, meaning, satisfaction, and well-being," Lee said. He explains that eustress is good because you feel confident, adequate, and stimulated by the challenge you experience from the stressor.
What is distress?
In terms of opposites, distress and eustress are on either end of the spectrum. Unlike eustress, distress can make you feel overwhelmed because your resources (physically, mentally, emotionally) are inadequate to meet the demands you're facing.
College is for me most of the time negative stress. I have kind of the impostor syndrome and I have very high expectations of mine. My abuse story triggers me so much when I am faced with performance pressure at college. It feels like my life was endangered this is why I need addictive medication to cope.
Like today I still try to integrate some fun challenges in my schedule. Situations with positive stress which feel exctiting and can let me forget college for some minutes. I can really say when I was so emotionally involved in them I could fully forget college. And afterwards it felt cleaning because it showed me that there are more things in this world than to show the perfect performance in exams.
So for me two things were distracting and exciting at the same time. There was an event in a gacha game I play. Gladly I am not susceptible of getting scammed with money otherwise this would not be a good advice. I was pretty excited about the event and it gave me a thrill when I played it. I completely failed and got a little bit frustrated. But the benefits of it was worth the frustrations by far. This game let me become a child for some minutes. Thrilled by a video game forgetting the world around it (for some brief moments).
Then I played at the evening Fifa. Not that exciting but a challenge for sure because I was in a finale. Fifa has for me some elements of PsyOpt - psychological warfare. I am pretty good at it but I tend to overthink things like penalty shooting. For me it is not that serious but I like to annoy my opponents. Maybe that is not that friendly but for me it is only a game. By the way I lost the finale. But the frustration was not as bad as with the gacha game.
In these two instances the challenge in the game could make me relax for some minutes. Which is worth a lot with my hypervigilant brain.
I think eustress increases the resources one has to cope with negative stress. It can make one more resilient. I think you can train to develop such coping mechanisms. We talked in clinics a lot about it. But it is many years ago I read literature on it. I think education on the mind can help a lot when one is confronted with mental illness. So I hope I did not spread any misinformation so far.
One anecdote. I have think about an incident when I was for the first time in a mental hospital. We had mental health education and the proffessional said well there can be times when someone feels too good. I was confused and really wondered that something like that is a thing. I was quite young a kid with no experience on mental health. After the lesson I went to the staff and asked "How can one notice whether one feels too good?" The staff had to smile. Maybe that was a coincidence. Maybe I showed them with this question that I am kind of reflective. Prior to my stay I was in a manic episode and this is what the doctor alluded to when mentioning feeling too good. It is insane I can remember that unnecessary details from my past. My therapist said this is not that seldom because events that affect certain parts of our memory and then last longer. I don't have knowledge on that maybe I will read about it in the future. So the anecdote was pretty long and unnecessary but people who read my threads are used to it. I still have some education to do to improve my knowledge on the brain and how it functions.
I realized I am under a lot of pressure currently. It is pretty hard to cope with. Even my usual mechanisms to cope don't really work. Always when I try to relax I am still thinking about college. So college is "negative stress/distress" for me. I take sedatives and other medication to stay somewhat stable. But I want to add more than just taking pills. And here comes eustress into play. It is a long time ago I read about it so I rather link and quote an internet source.
Eustress: The Positive Type of Stress, Examples, and More
Eustress, or good stress, includes feeling happy, accomplished, and excited. It's the opposite of distress. Here's what to know about eustress, including examples and ways to make it a part of your every day.
www.healthline.com
What is eustress?
Eustress is usually a product of nerves, which can be brought on when faced with a fun challenge. Genovese says this is important because, without eustress, our well-being can suffer
"Eustress produces positive feelings of excitement, fulfillment, meaning, satisfaction, and well-being," Lee said. He explains that eustress is good because you feel confident, adequate, and stimulated by the challenge you experience from the stressor.
What is distress?
In terms of opposites, distress and eustress are on either end of the spectrum. Unlike eustress, distress can make you feel overwhelmed because your resources (physically, mentally, emotionally) are inadequate to meet the demands you're facing.
College is for me most of the time negative stress. I have kind of the impostor syndrome and I have very high expectations of mine. My abuse story triggers me so much when I am faced with performance pressure at college. It feels like my life was endangered this is why I need addictive medication to cope.
Like today I still try to integrate some fun challenges in my schedule. Situations with positive stress which feel exctiting and can let me forget college for some minutes. I can really say when I was so emotionally involved in them I could fully forget college. And afterwards it felt cleaning because it showed me that there are more things in this world than to show the perfect performance in exams.
So for me two things were distracting and exciting at the same time. There was an event in a gacha game I play. Gladly I am not susceptible of getting scammed with money otherwise this would not be a good advice. I was pretty excited about the event and it gave me a thrill when I played it. I completely failed and got a little bit frustrated. But the benefits of it was worth the frustrations by far. This game let me become a child for some minutes. Thrilled by a video game forgetting the world around it (for some brief moments).
Then I played at the evening Fifa. Not that exciting but a challenge for sure because I was in a finale. Fifa has for me some elements of PsyOpt - psychological warfare. I am pretty good at it but I tend to overthink things like penalty shooting. For me it is not that serious but I like to annoy my opponents. Maybe that is not that friendly but for me it is only a game. By the way I lost the finale. But the frustration was not as bad as with the gacha game.
In these two instances the challenge in the game could make me relax for some minutes. Which is worth a lot with my hypervigilant brain.
I think eustress increases the resources one has to cope with negative stress. It can make one more resilient. I think you can train to develop such coping mechanisms. We talked in clinics a lot about it. But it is many years ago I read literature on it. I think education on the mind can help a lot when one is confronted with mental illness. So I hope I did not spread any misinformation so far.
One anecdote. I have think about an incident when I was for the first time in a mental hospital. We had mental health education and the proffessional said well there can be times when someone feels too good. I was confused and really wondered that something like that is a thing. I was quite young a kid with no experience on mental health. After the lesson I went to the staff and asked "How can one notice whether one feels too good?" The staff had to smile. Maybe that was a coincidence. Maybe I showed them with this question that I am kind of reflective. Prior to my stay I was in a manic episode and this is what the doctor alluded to when mentioning feeling too good. It is insane I can remember that unnecessary details from my past. My therapist said this is not that seldom because events that affect certain parts of our memory and then last longer. I don't have knowledge on that maybe I will read about it in the future. So the anecdote was pretty long and unnecessary but people who read my threads are used to it. I still have some education to do to improve my knowledge on the brain and how it functions.
