Knowing when anxiety needs medical attention

- Did you know that not all types of stress are bad for you? Some stress may even be helpful. And differentiating the good from bad stress is important when deciding if and when to get help. Good stress is called eustress. It's the kind of stress that keeps you on task. It also motivates you to win, stick to deadlines, or respond to emergencies. When we have this kind of stress, we often say that adrenaline is flowing, which can be a good thing. Tennis great Billy Jean King has said that pressure is a privilege. And without it, the highest achievers wouldn't have the drive to excel. At work, eustress is your friend. However, eustress frequently turns into its evil twin distress, which is the harmful form of stress. When this happens, it can be toxic, counterproductive, and paralyzing. When you're distressed, you may become distracted or overly focused on your work so that you become oblivious to other things that you should also be paying attention to. You may also feel like you're walking on eggshells, and even the slightest disturbance at work may set you off. In some cases, distress may fill you with dread for no reason. It's as if your mind has to be on guard all the time. Let me tell you about a former client named Jack. He was a high-achieving new hire who wanted to prove himself. He stayed at work after hours, going above and beyond to exceed the desired results. When he was driven in this way, he was taking advantage of his eustress. But when he saw nothing else and became so fixed on his work that any distraction or derailment threw him into a panic, his eustress turned into distress. Simply being stressed by a challenge is normal. But as in Jack's case, sometimes the stress grows until you become anxious about it. That's when it's time to seek help. Remember, though, anxiety is not always conscious. Your heart doesn't have to be pounding for you to be anxious. Anxiety may be impacting your work without your realizing this consciously too. That's because in your brain, the anxiety processor and thinking centers are connected. And when anxiety is unconscious, you don't feel it, but it shows up in problems with your thinking, such as difficulty making decisions, feeling slowed down or exhausted, and making more mistakes than usual. In these instances, anxiety may be wreaking havoc in your brain, and you don't know it because you can't. So take a look at your stress and ask yourself, do I have eustress or distress? Is the distress affecting my life negatively? And is my work quality compromised? If the answer is yes to any of these questions, consider seeking help. You may have an anxiety disorder. And even if the answer is no, you may still need help. You see, when your anxiety symptoms fall below the clinical threshold, they may still impact your sleep or social functioning. This is called subclinical anxiety, and there's help for this too. So if you're at all concerned about your anxiety, see a professional to discern whether there's an intervention that could help you decrease your anxiety so that you can be the best version of yourself in all aspects of your life.