How to turn off that automatic stress response!
Your reaction to a perceived threat is fight or flight, this is your inbuilt auto stress response. Unfortunately, in the 21st century it is not always the appropriate response; it is rooted in our genetic makeup and buried in our ancestral brain but we are no longer cave dwellers threatened by sabre tooth tigers! Some of us are more predisposed to this stress response and it can play havoc with our body mind and spirit.
“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” William James Click to Tweet
If you’re resistant to change, easily annoyed, nervous, agitated, even bored, it could be your stress response. The question is how do we stop allowing that to control our life?
Stress is a normal physical response to events that make you feel threatened or upset your balance in some way. When you sense danger—whether it’s real or imagined—the body’s defenses kick into high gear in a rapid, automatic process known as the “fight-or-flight-or-freeze” reaction, or the stress response.
http://www.helpguide.org/articles/stress/stress-symptoms-causes-and-effects.htm
Stress can actually influence us on a cellular level and even mess with our biological systems. “Our bodies change our minds, and our minds can can change our behavior, and our behavior can change outcomes,” (Amy Cuddy, a Harvard University social psychologist)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/17/popular-science-stress_n_6678710.html
The Pain Body and the stress response
Eckhart Tolle describes the pain body as an energy within each of us collected as a series of unhappy, painful, negative experiences or thoughts that pile up causing an energy that can actually take you over. You know, when you find yourself over-reacting to a situation, or doing or acting in a way that you’ve told yourself a thousand times you would not do again. That painful lump that appears in your throat every time you hear a particular song or even smell an old familiar smell. That feeling of “down in the dumps” that comes on particularly around a time of the year or a particular type of outing or event. Or even certain words or phrases that strike a chord with you but wouldn’t necessarily with another. That’s all the “Pain Body”. The good news is that everyone has one and you can manage it! You need to learn to release that pain body so as to stop the ongoing damage it is doing. Pain Body Release- Teachings and Meditations
Signs of Stress
Stomachaches: The brains nervous system is actually linked to the “gut” so you may have noticed sudden onset of stomach pain or even IBS during times of stress.
Hair loss: You may have found more hair on your brush or pillow around 6 months after ending a relationship, having a surgery, death of a loved one and almost anything else you can think of that disturbed you at the time.
Twitching Eyelids: One or both eyes can be affected. Normally this only lasts for a short period of time but often it is stress related.
Pimples: Yes, past those pesky teenage years you may find yourself with a painful eyesore of a breakout. You probably can link it back to a difficult situation or event.
Back Pain: The fight or flight stress response pumps hormones into your body causing you to tighten your muscles. The result – body and muscle aches.
You’re probably all too familiar with all of the above and may not have needed me to point out the obvious but it’s important to recognize when you’re stressed so that you can do something about it.
How our stress response affects our behavior
The effects of stress (some listed above) can lead to behavior that leads to more stress. Such as, your skin breaks out and you don’t want to leave the house for fear of being seen. When you do finally go out you feel all eyes on you.
You’ve just broken up with a love partner and instead of getting out and exercising you feel unworthy and un-lovable causing you to hide. You have translated the pain of rejection into a stress response- in this case flight from the outside world.
A common “fight” response is to attack those who would help you overcome your stress- not literally- but by pushing away their help. It is not uncommon for uncontrollable anger to be a stress response and verbal abuse of those who seek to comfort you can be the outcome.
You had a recent surgery that scared you and now you fear every ache or pain as approaching death. This means that your stress response has taken over your logical brain- you are in full on self protection mode!
The fight or flight response is caused by the primitive brain which now associates any of the above changes as cause to fear death. The primitive brain was originally dealing with pretty clear and evident danger and did not have to rationalize it much. Hunger, physical violence, a dangerous animal, natural disaster such as flood…all of these required either fleeing the threat or facing it. Even in today’s’ modern world there are real dangers so we don’t need to look at this stress response as always a bad thing. Many times that response has kept us from actual danger! The point here is to recognize when the stress response is actually valid; in other words, is the danger real?
Isn’t some stress good for you?
There are those who claim to “thrive” on stress; especially in the corporate “jungle”. They see the adrenaline rush as keeping them sharp, on top, ahead of the competition. I my opinion the benefits of this are probably very short lived, rapidly followed by exhaustion, both mental and physical, as you come down from the high. This is a situational stress response, and “A-type” personalities almost deliberately pump themselves up into a false sense of anxiety to get the motivation going for that killer deal etc.. This is not the stress response of the buried pain body, or primeval brain, it is calculated and a technique which, with long term use has long term damage. Our bodies are not designed to live with stress hormones flooding our organs and blood system- it is bad for them!
Upgrade your primitive brains’ stress response
So our brains have not quite caught up with the 21st century and it’s lack of dangerous ferocious beasts!
We can learn to train our brains to moderate that stress response. Click to Tweet
It’s freeing to recognize true danger and manage the “false signals” that our memories, our past traumas, our pain body is sending. Part of the process of doing that is to understand what situations trigger our stress response. Knowing what they are in advance helps us to be prepared. Then as we stay grounded in the Present Moment we stay very aware and the Pain Body / Stress response won’t take us over and obliterate our good sense.
My radio guest this week has some really helpful and valid thoughts on how our primitive brain acts and he shared them with me, here http://www.blogtalkradio.com/
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