Types of Stress


Everyone of us would probably experience different types of stress at one time or another. It could be some personal stress arising in the work place, strained family relationships with teenage children, emotional stress caused by financial problems, post traumatic disorders after an unhappy event like an accident or even feeling stress when you are on holiday!

All these various types of stress and many more, can however be group into four main types of stress.


Have you ever (I'm sure you have) felt:

- The thrill and excited feeling while watching a horror movie
- The feeling of excitement when you won a game or race
- The excitement when you bought your first car
- The accomplishment of a challenge
- The proud feeling of being a first time parent
- The happy feeling of being loved
- The excitement of going for a holiday

These feelings sure make us feel good and they are the so-called "good stress" or "positive stress". They are able to exert a healthy effect on you. It gives one a feeling of fulfillment or contentment and also makes one excited about life. Unfortunately, it is a type of stress that only occurs for a short period of time.

Eustress is also often called the curative stress because it gives a person the ability to generate the best performance or maximum output.



Just like everything in life, when there are good or positive stress, there are also "bad" or "negative stress". These types of stress is the opposite of Eustress and it's called Distress

Distress is a “negative stress”. It is a stress disorder that is caused by adverse events and it often influences a person’s ability to cope. Some events leading to distress are:

- Death of a loved one
- Financial problems
- Heavy work responsibility and workload
- Strained relationship
- Chronic illnesses

Distress can be classified further as acute stress or chronic stress. Acute stress is short-lived while chronic stress is usually prolonged in nature.

The remaining two types of stress are:



When a person is pushed beyond what he or she can handle, they will experience what we called hyperstress.

Hyperstress results from being overloaded or overworked. It’s like being stressed out. When someone is hyperstressed, even little things can trigger a strong emotional response. People who are most likely to suffer from hyperstress are:

- Working mothers who have to multi-task, juggling between work and family commitments
- A wall street trader who are constantly under immerse tension
- People who are under constant financial strains.
- Generally people working in fast pace environment.

and the extreme opposite of hyperstress is



Hypostress stands in direct opposite to hyperstress. That is because hypostress is one of those types of stress experienced by a person who is constantly bored. Someone in an unchallenging job, such as a factory worker performing the same task over and over, will often experience hypostress. The effect of hypostress is feelings of restlessness and a lack of inspiration.