Eustress and Homeostasis

In traditional cognitive behavioral therapy, the ultimate goal for the client is a kind of tensionless self-actualization. You want to close the gap between the self desired and the self expressed. It’s not so different from the final aim of Buddhism, really. Peace with yourself and with the universe. It’s a natural conclusion for a field that sees stress and dissatisfaction as strategic enemies. So I must agree with that, right? I’ve talked a million times about the negative influence of stress on our bodies and minds.

Now watch me carefully, because it’s going to look like I’m perjuring myself: stress is good.

Or rather, to make things clear as mud: good stress is good.

Let me explain what I’m talking about here. Clinical, physiological stress refers to a state of tension in which the body’s growth systems are suspended and the individual enters a state of heightened confrontational readiness. This state is fear-based, and causes massive physical, mental, and emotional problems when it is regularly sustained. This is the kind of stress I talk about so often. However, it is not the only usage of the word stress.

There’s a term called “eustress” that gets thrown around a lot in health and exercise circles. The “eu” prefix means “good,” in case you didn’t know. It refers to controlled, beneficial stress which stimulates growth and is necessary for good health in the long-run. Small amounts of pain and damage, undertaken with intentionality, lead to greater overall wellbeing, not lesser. Resistance training causes microtears in muscle fibers. Weight training stresses the bones and stimulates osteoblast activity. Aerobic exercise puts mild stress on the heart and blood vessels… and the result of all this is stronger muscles, healthier bones, better cardiac and brain health, and more stable hormones. People who do not exercise, who never beneficially stress their bodies, begin to physically deteriorate as a result.

I believe the same principle applies to other areas of life than just the physical. For example, you can look at retirees. Elderly people who retire to a life of pure leisure are likely to sicken and die within a few years. In contrast, those who continue to pursue meaningful work—whether or not they make any money from it—often live to a good old age, with significantly less illness. Our minds need beneficial stress as well as our bodies.

This is the basic problem I have with traditional counseling and therapy. To be clear, I’m not denying its usefulness as a tool that helps many people. But I believe it is inherently limited by its secularity, because that naturally means that the values it strives to help you reach are self-defined. Like scripture, therapy seeks to hold up a mirror to our eyes. A trained psychiatrist is perhaps most valuable in their capacity to help us realize things about us that are obvious to everyone else. The psychotherapeutic mirror is for highlighting the gap between what we are and what is generally agreed to be mentally healthy. Its end point is, “You, as you are now, but healthy.” Outside of diagnosable disorders and explicit discontent, it makes no attempt to compel growth.

One of my all-time favorite books on psychology and the human condition is Dr. Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. Dr. Frankl was a psychologist, neurologist, and a holocaust survivor who wrote about his experiences in various concentration camps during the war, and what made the difference between those who were able to survive the experience and those who were not. According to Dr. Frankl, the core drive of humanity is not pleasure, as Freud believed, nor power, as Addler believed, but meaning.

In the book, he argued that happiness is best achieved as a side-effect of our pursuit of meaning, that when it becomes our main goal, we tend to paradoxically move further and further away from it. If you know me, then you will realize how well this parallels the concepts behind my own genie question. Nearly everyone initially gives an external circumstance as their first answer, and nearly everyone, by the end, tells me that their first answer was wrong. What we really want is always internal, not external.

But the thing about meaning is that it’s kind of inherently independent of ourselves. That is, if we believe in objective meaning, as I do. Subjective meaning can be self-defined… but of course, by the same token it is often wrong. The importance of a personal search for meaningful truth—the existence of God being the highest part of it—follows from our personal need for growth. Our happiness and healthiness are dependent on encountering and confronting that which is higher than ourselves: objective truth, a calling to that which is better, higher, and harder in life. It means trying not to feel better but to be better. It means, ultimately, letting the idea of satiated, tensionless self-actualization die, and embracing, perhaps even pursuing intentional, meaningful pain. A eustress of the unconscious mind and heart. This is the biblical attitude toward sin and righteousness.

Have a blessed, wonderful day!

Dr. Alex Loyd