Stress v Anxiety: What’s the Difference?
Last month on the Porus Blog (Managing Nerves), we discussed Managing Nerves and those feelings that can arise when we are about to do something. This blog will be about a slightly different topic, although something that is often used as an interchangeable term for anxiety or nerves, stress. Recently, at a Mental Health workshop I was facilitating as part of the GAA/GPA and Movember Ahead of the Game Programme, my co-facilitator Liam Brady asked to question to the audience, “What is the difference between stress and anxiety?” A few blank faces looked back so Liam perfectly described the difference, “Stress is worrying about something in the present, anxiety is worrying about something in the future.” Summed up perfect, blog done. But it is worth exploring this difference in a bit more detail and looking to understand stress that bit more.
Stress is widely seen as a negative. “I’m stressed out, I can’t do my work/I can’t perform well.” We’ve all said or heard something like this during our work, sporting, or daily lives. But all stress is negative, that is just distress. This is when we feel like the weight of the world is on us and we can be overwhelmed. Eustress is the opposite of this. Eustress is the stress we feel when we know we need to get an assignment done and its due in an hour, so we focus and work to do it. Put crudely, eustress is a positive kick up the arse to get us moving in the right direction. As with a lot of things in performance psychology, we have a choice over which type of stress we focus on. The way we frame or see stress has an impact on the hormonal changes and responses in our bodies. A paper by Ranabir and Reetu (2011) showed that stress can induce changes in some hormone levels such a growth hormone, but overexposure can lead to endocrine disorders like obesity.
Our view of and the view of the people around us, towards stress, can influence how we perceive it. If we perceive stress as a challenge, eustress, instead of a threat, distress, we are able to perform better and achieve more desirable outcomes around health and productivity. The language we use his so important. “I have to win this match today” is a key example of this. I worked with a team recently around this very language issue. Straight away, the use of “I/We have to win today” adds a sense of pressure to perform and achieve things that are not fully in our control. Simply changing that language to “I/We want to perform today” or “I/We get to perform today” reduces that focus on an uncontrollable outcome, while also linking to internal motivation and eustress to perform for yourself/your team by working to achieve controllable outcomes.
How can I manage my stress?
Two main strategies are used to help manage stress, elective hardship, and down regulation. Elective hardship is simply choosing to do hard things to challenge yourself and expose your body and mind to what you can do. A well-used example of this is cold water immersion (ice baths). This could also be exposure to a hot sauna, any way that opens you to stress to allow you to build capacity to it. Over time with continued elective hardship, the body and mind will grow capacity and adapt, creating a new baseline for stress.
While elective hardship builds capacity by exposing yourself to stress on purpose, down regulation works to bring yourself out of stress when you are in the middle of feeling it. Down regulation has four main types. The first is physical down regulation which can be done using a body scan, mental working through your whole body, starting from the toes and going right to the top of your head. This allows you to take control and ground yourself. Mental down regulation is a way to calm the mind which can be racing during periods of stress. Breathing is a powerful tool for mental down regulation. Dr Andrew Huberman highlights the effective double inhale breathing technique in this video which can be used easily during any mentally stressful situations on or off the pitch. The third type of down regulation is emotional. We can often become overwhelmed during periods of stress and feel like nothing is going our way and it never will. Dr Michael Gervais presented a concept in a recent stress workshop called the ‘Researcher of Amazing’. This idea requires the person feeling that emotional stress response to actively look for the good things that are happening in their life right now in the present moment. By doing this, we can realise that we have a lot going for us and that we take it for granted too easily. Showing that gratitude and appreciate for all the good things we have can reduce that emotional stress we place on ourselves. The final down regulation type is spiritual. A massive way to connect with our spiritual side is by connecting with nature. Getting out and being in nature is a great way to do this, but even by just looking at a picture or nature or even imagining it, can provide some of the desired spiritual down regulation we want (Brown, Barton & Gladwell, 2013).
Stress is stress in how it impacts the body no matter where it comes from. By understanding it more, reframing from distress to eustress, practicing elective hardship to build capacity and using the four down regulation methods, we can take back control from stress and perform the way we want to.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post. If you did, please share it on your social media platforms and tag @omacperformance. If you would like support for yourself or your team, please reach out via the Contact section.
Thanks,
Oisin
References:
Brown, D. K., Barton, J. L., & Gladwell, V. F. (2013). Viewing nature scenes positively affects recovery of autonomic function following acute-mental stress. Environmental science & technology, 47(11), 5562-5569.
Ranabir, S., & Reetu, K. (2011). Stress and hormones. Indian journal of endocrinology and metabolism, 15(1), 18-22.