Eustress vs Distress Worksheet
Can you differentiate between the different types of stress you experience on a daily basis? If you feel like distress frequents your life more than eustress, then you’re at the right place.
Here is a worksheet we put together to help you identify positive and negative forms of stress that your body generates when exposed to certain situations and emotions.
Sometimes the best way to make sense of stressors is by writing about them and exploring the ways they affect our lives.
To understand your balance of distress and eustress, a first step is to keep a ‘stress diary.’ This is a diary solely dedicated to writing about your experiences of stress. It can be a place for you to vent and process intense life experiences.
If you don’t know where to start, try to remember moments in which you felt panicked, overwhelmed, or let down. Recall a demanding situation or a nightmarish scenario, and how it felt to experience. Or, reflect on a time when all odds seemed stacked against you—and yet you succeeded.
Write about how those moments felt psychologically and physically. If you can remember them, make a list of the different thoughts that were going through your mind at that time.
When you are done, review your diary, and identify examples of eustress and distress, based on the following definitions:
- Eustress: a situation which feels stressful but you feel like you can handle it, despite feeling challenged; it makes you have positive thoughts about life and yourself.
- Distress: a situation that feels overwhelming and unlikely to result in satisfactory outcomes; you feel like your health is deteriorating and have negative thoughts about life and yourself.
EUSTRESS |
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DISTRESS |
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Create a table with four columns, using ‘Eustress’ and ‘Distress’ as headers, and leave two blank columns after each.
Can you fit an instance you wrote about in the diary in the columns?
Great. Now try to enter as many as you can until you have your list of experiences.
Now, next to both ‘Eustress’ and ‘Distress’ respectively, put the headers ‘physical and mental symptoms,’ and ‘stressors.’
Can you remember what symptoms you experienced in both moments of eustress and distress? What do you think the stressors were? Fill in as much as you can in the corresponding columns.
EUSTRESS |
Physical and mental symptoms |
Stressors |
DISTRESS |
Physical and mental symptoms |
Stressors |
I can only thrive in high-pressure environments |
This type of stress makes my heart pound, my thoughts race and I feel energized |
The heavy workload uncertainty and constant feedback |
Giving presentations makes me feel ill |
I start sweating, feeling nausea and anxious |
Public speaking, a fear of making a mistake or embarrassing myself |
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Taking the airplane is a difficult thing to do |
I get stomach ache, I feel nervous, irritable |
Losing control, feeling powerless, fear of heights |
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You have your table – now, look at the ‘distress’ column and highlight the areas of distress that trouble you the most.
Do you notice a pattern that repeats itself regarding the distressed situations? For example, do you experience distress when you feel like things are going out of control, or when you have to carry out a presentation in front of an audience?
The goal now is to find ways to convert distress into eustress.
How you physically and mentally respond to a stressor depends on a range of factors, but mostly your mindset and the kind of lifestyle you live. A lifestyle adjustment may include:
- Adopting a better diet
- Exercising more
- Sleeping better
- Meditating regularly
These can change, minimize and even eliminate a stressor.
A good support system and a healthy sense of self-esteem also are essential elements that keep stress levels low.
But even if such changes are made, the stressor and distress can persist—what matters is what you believe about the stressor and how it affects you.
This shift in examining our beliefs around stress can change whether your mind interprets the stressor as an ‘emergency threat’ or not.
Other coping strategies can be adopted ‘in the moment’ too. For example, breathing techniques release oxygen in the brain; this relaxes the muscles, slows the heart and breathing rate, and changes the body’s physiological response.
In this way, distress can be tackled and unlearned through a process in which you learn to react to the same stressors with positive emotions like gratitude, hope, and goodwill (Selye, 1987).
A Take-Home Message
Is it easy to change our reactions to stressors? No.
Is changing our reactions possible and vital for our health? Yes.
Positive self-talk and reaffirming statements to yourself can be extremely powerful and can disintegrate negative beliefs of certain stress responses.
Try different methods and see what works and what doesn’t for you – but next time you talk about your stress, let’s hope that you will not be referring to the ‘distress’ kind of stress, but your abounding eustress, instead.
For your own health, and wellbeing, as well as in many social and workplace settings, eustress has a lifetime of benefits waiting for you to explore.
We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Stress & Burnout Prevention Exercises (PDF) for free.
What our readers think
HI,
I am a licensed Clinician working on building a curriculum for my program. Am I able to use this material if i cite it?
Hi Theresa,
Yes, feel free to use the material for your curriculum. You’ll see that all or most are drawn from cited sources beyond this website, so just ensure you are referencing these in your paper (you’ll find the sources in the reference list at the end of the post).
Good luck with your program!
Kind regards,
Julia | Community Manager
Hi,
I’m currently working on a writing sample for my master in Psychology and I’m talking about stress, stressor’s and I would like to cite some of this article about Eustress.
May I have the references of this article or perhaps the PDF version?
Thank you.
Hi Danayth,
Yes! Although we don’t provide PDF downloads of our articles, you’re more than welcome to cite it. Here’s how you’d do that in APA 7th:
Moore, C. (2021, December 10). What is eustress and how is it different than stress? PositivePsychology.com. https://positivepsychology.com/what-is-eustress/.
If you scroll to the end of the article, you’ll also find a button you can click to expand the reference list.
Hope that helps!
– Nicole | Community Manager
Hi !
Thanks for a very absorbing useful article.
I took time out from my schedule to return back to it. Great write up!
I would love to share the links on my site with all citations and references in my write ups if it’s ok with you.
Dr S A Siddiqui
India
Hi Dr. Siddiqui,
So glad you enjoyed the article! 🙂 Yes, feel free to refer to and cite this post in your work.
Good luck with it!
– Nicole | Community Manager