Letter: There are different types of stress

A while back, a salesman friend of mine remarked, 'I don't know what we did before we had stress.” He was referring to what he viewed as over-coverage of stress by the media. We have all seen articles concerning the causes of stress, health effects of stress, how to avoid stress and so forth.

This leads me to remember a discussion with my nephew about his career goal. Although my nephew was a gifted student, he had decided not to pursue a career as an attorney as he judged the study of law to be too stressful. I wonder how many people have discarded potentially rewarding challenges and careers because of their perception that all stress is bad.

The type of stress we encounter when taking on a challenging project is valuable, and carrying the project to successful completion is rewarding from both a physical and emotional perspective. This is the type of stress that motivates all of us to do what we need to do to be successful as a human. It is technically called eustress. The type of stress that may be physically and emotionally debilitating is called distress and could occur due to the death of a loved one or some other personal catastrophe. It is important to distinguish between the two.

Robert J. Boes

Ely