feature | Stress is energy, adrenaline. Stress is what makes us achieve goals, what gives us butterflies, what drives us to go beyond our comfort zone. Stress has no value; it is neither good nor bad; it is just energy. An example is the Olympic Games, an atomic stress bomb which of course motivates athletes to achieve incredible results. Starting a new job, moving house, having a baby all at the same time? It is a great deal of energy, a great deal of stress, what we call positive stress or eustress. If we can direct it well, we can manage all these things at the same time. Of course, if we lived 24/7 in a context such as the Olympic Games or had too many challenges daily and si- multaneously to deal with, then this overwhelming amount of energy would become negative for us. It is what we often refer to when we speak about stress, neg- ative stress or distress. It is like a glass of wine, delicious; however, if you were to drink ten bottles a night, the wine would become something bad for you. The same is true of a delicious piece of chocolate, especially Belgian chocolate. If, however, you were to eat 10 kg in one day, it would definitely have negative consequences. The stress curve Fig. 1: Holmes and Rahe stress scale. As you can see, we need positive stress, since it is what gives us the energy or motivation to address challenges and experience the pleasure of the challenge and the result. If we take away these challenges completely, that is when we go into being under-stressed, or bored. This might lead to depression. Many people who have been unemployed for a long time have chronic depression. As a society, we have told them that we do not need their talents and that they are not a necessary part of building our society; they are not being challenged and have a really hard time because of it. period, but an exciting one as well. If we stay at this level for too long, we might fall in the red zone, the zone of neg- ative stress and distress. This is when we start experienc- ing all different kinds of symptoms. If we stay in that stage for too long, we can experience burn-out. People with burn-out are not lazy people; they think that they can do it all, all the time, and think of themselves as the least likely to experience burn-out. Then the body pulls out the plug without warning. Burn-out is not cured by staying home for two weeks; recovery involves a process that endures for many months and has an impact that can be life-changing. The message is not do not go into the red zone. In society nowadays, we often are in the red zone, often owing to work and private circumstances. The real message is make sure you can get out of the red zone. It is very pos- sible to be in that zone for a few weeks if you know that a project you are working on will be over soon, if you have a holiday coming up or if a colleague is scheduled to return from maternity leave to help you, for example. However, when you do not have a solution in the near future coming your way, then you may stay in that red zone for too long. Recognising symptoms Now that I have defined stress, when I refer to stress in the remainder of this article, I mean negative stress. Stress can have an impact on four levels: • physical (such as an irregular heartbeat, headaches, a digestive system that is out of balance, a sore neck and shoulders, and shallow breathing); • mental (for example, negative self-talk, negative thoughts, narrow-mindedness or a single pointed focus, and no longer seeing the light at the end of the tunnel); • emotional (crying a great deal, feeling desperate, feel- ing lonely, bursting into tears with no clear cause and feeling like a loser, among others); and • behavioural (for example, lack of contact, communica- tion, and addictions and destructive behaviours, such as excessive alcohol, drugs, sex and spending). Some will experience stress in only one level and some in more than one. If you notice in yourself or people around you any of these indicators, it is time to have a serious conversation. We cannot let anybody suffer burn-out if we can help. The price and the impact of burn-out are too high. Of course, many may say that they are fine and that they are not under stress and can handle it, but some- times we need to take decisions for others, to protect them. At the top performance level, we need to breathe deeply to stay in balance. This is when we feel we need to juggle to keep up with all the tasks and responsibilities we have in order to move forward. This can be a challenging Our stress responses are related to our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system is activated when we are faced with ortho 1 2021 33