Walking through the deep forests of the African Savannah, our senses needed to be sharp. It was a dangerous place, and we had to be ready for action.
A tingle of tension coursed through our veins. Our heartbeat would echo in our ears like the sound of tribal drums closing for battle.
The snap of a twig, a slight movement in bushes, then the final cry of a companion – taken by the razor sharp teeth of the wild.
Reading this description, how did you feel? Was there a sense of tension, an increase in focus? If so, then you know how stress works. It sharpens our senses in threatening situations so we can react quickly to save ourselves.
One of our best developed survival traits is the Stress response. It’s saved our lives daily for thousands of years by keeping us hyper aware in times of danger.
Nowadays however, the arena has changed. We traded the wild predators for Cars, Bosses, Deadlines, Open spaces, Food, or just social pressures….
“to buy things you don’t need, so you can impress people you don’t like”
Our response to stress hasn’t evolved, we’ve just changed what we fixate on.
By recognizing what you respond to, you can retrain your emotional stress response. This is crucial to avoiding burn out.
To retrain our emotional stress response, we need to understand how Stress works…
The 3 stages of Stress response.
Stage 1 – Processing.
A part of your brain called the Amygdala is responsible for processing emotions. It helps you interpret situations, sounds, feelings and other sensory situations. If previous experience tells you that a certain situation may cause harm you, the Amygdala sounds the alarm.
Like a muscle, the Amygdala registers the situation as being negative so the next time it happens, you react quicker using the trigger just developed.
Warning of the impending danger, the Amygdala sends an emergency signal to your hypothalamus– this is the command and control center for the rest of your body.
Stage 2 – The Quick Response.
The hypothalamus receives the message from the Amygdala and immediately relays message through the Autonomic nervous system (ANS).
Once activated, the ANS stimulates a reaction that hits the accelerator and sends you into Defcon 1. This process is a very quick and automatic response.
It’s the same response which gives you the ability to react to immediate dangers like jumping away from a snake on the ground. You barely need to think about it, you register the stimulus and immediately react.
To make this happen, the ANS connects with your Adrenal glands which pump Adrenalin into your system, the result is an injection of Jet fuel which acts as instant energy meaning you’re ready for intense action.
The adrenaline coursing through your body increases activity in your blood vessels and your lungs so more oxygen gets to your brain, waking you up. It also releases glucose into your bloodstream so you have more energy ready for use in case you need to jump into action.
This system works great back on the African Savannah when on occasion you need to dodge a snake or quickly jump out of crocodile infested waters. But when it’s just another driver cutting you off, your body still responds in the same fashion.
Stage 3 – Sustained Action (HPA Axis).
As the quick surge of Adrenalin starts to wear off, your body needs to know if it should stay in a state of action or recover. If it still perceives a stress, then the HPA Axis takes over (Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal axis) from Stage 2.
The HPA axis continues Stage 2’s job by pumping out a cocktail of stress hormones including Cortisol – which maintains the red alert state for a longer but more sustainable period of time.
So what’s the consequences of prolonged or repetitive stress?
When Adrenalin is over used or the HPA axis stays activated for long periods of time, 2 things happen.
- Over use of Adrenalin eventually damages your blood vessels and arteries which causes an increase in blood pressure over time.
- Chronically high Cortisol has a longer and much more detrimental effect on your body.
The Cortisol Conundrum…
The side effects of excessive cortisol in your body are like erosion. It gradually breaks down your defenses over time, reducing your resilience to manage your health. Some of the worst consequences include…
- Cortisol Increases appetite: Cortisol Stops appetite in the very short term (during the acute stress), but then Increases appetite after the event has settled. You have a tendency to overeat post stress (for most people this is going to be in the evenings after work).
- Increases Fat stores: Cortisol signals the body to store the excess food you consume as fat. Your body is telling itself that danger is present, so storing fuel is essential to survival.
- Your immune system suffers: In the very short term, Cortisol boosts the immune system into overdrive. But over the longer term the effects reduce your ability to produce White blood cells, which are essential for health. It also reduces your Natural Killer (NK) Cell counts which are vital for killing off bad cells in your body (like cancer cells).
This excellent diagram by researchers in Basel, Switzerland shows the positive and negative outcomes of stress.
Copyright © 2009 by S. Karger AG, Basel
So if the results of repeated stress means A. Increased appetite, B. increased Fat storage, and C. Reduction in Immune system function.
So how can you start to take control of this process?
The solution starts at stage 1 – what we perceive as stress.
When the Amygdala interprets a situation as dangerous, it reinforces a stress response to work better in the future. This quickly develops into an automatic reaction.
To undo this automatic reaction and take control of your thoughts, you need to identify what you’re Amygdala is emotionally reacting to. You can then develop strategies to retrain your brain to interpret events differently, reducing the stress response.
This starts by awareness exercises. Taking notes about what you respond to emotionally (anger, urgency, fear, anxiety) helps you identify your points of stress.
Think about what events cause you to become hyper alert or reactionary. It could be a person, a place, a situation, another driver, a family member.
Identifying the common situations where you automatically respond will arm you with the awareness to be able to control your response.
Lastly…
At the start of this process you also need to be realistic, this is a process of gradual identification and reduction. It’s not a process of elimination. You won’t be able eliminate certain stresses in life and some would rightly argue that you need some stress, but you want to reduce the excess so you can get all the benefits of sharp reactions without the drawbacks of being
