Your Brain’s Response To Stress!

Are you someone that lives in stress?

Are you someone that lives for stress?

Do you know specifically what stresses you out in life?

Three-fourths of the human population undergo stress in varying levels in a 2-week period. The working population is particularly subject to emotional, physical, and mental stress.

These figures are rising each year and It is important for us to have the knowledge of what stress is and also some simple strategies to resolve it when we get overwhelmed.

What is stress?

Stress is a feeling that’s created when we react to particular events. It’s the body’s way of rising to a challenge and preparing to meet a tough situation with focus, strength, stamina, and heightened alertness.

The events that trigger stress are called stressors, and they cover a whole range of situations – everything from outright physical danger to making a public presentation or taking a semester’s worth of your toughest subject.

Stress and the way we think?

Generally in a so-called normal working life, much of our stress is subtle and occurs without obvious threat to survival. Most comes from things like work overload, conflicting priorities, inconsistent values, over-challenging deadlines, conflict with co-workers, unpleasant environments and having unrealistic expectations and so on. Not only do these reduce our performance as we divert mental effort into handling them, they can also cause a great deal of unhappiness.

What is the effect of stress and what the process looks like in your body?

The best way to envision the effect of stress is to imagine yourself in a challenging situation, such as being chased by a lion.

In response to seeing the lion, a part of the brain called the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) system is activated.
Steroid Hormones Release! The HPA systems trigger the production and release of steroid hormones ( glucocorticoids), including the primary stress hormone cortisol. Cortisol is very important in arranging systems throughout the body (including the heart, lungs, circulation, metabolism, immune systems, and skin) to deal quickly with the lion.

Catecholamine’s Release! The HPA system also releases certain neurotransmitters particularly those known as dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine (also called adrenaline).

Stress is a permanent feature of our lives, and across the world in many contexts of life it seems to heighten, whether it is at work, in our relationships, social and with finances.

This means so many people are spending way too much time in fight or flight mode. And it’s taking a toll on our bodies through weakened immune systems, high blood pressure, and heart disease. These conditions shorten our lives and lower the quality of what’s left.

There are lots of strategies for managing stress, but when stress blindsides us with no time to prepare, we don’t need a strategy. We need quick, practical steps that work fast and can be done anywhere. When you next experience an outburst of stress, try one of these: Breathe deeply and Observe.

Breathe Deeply

Breathing deeply could be the single most effective way to stay calm, and most people don’t do it when they need to. Everyone breathes, but a lot of us breathe the wrong way–shallow, fast, and high in the chest. This kind of breathing is restrictive, it increases our anxious feelings, and it fuels our body’s negative stress reactions.

Slow, deep breathing triggers a relaxation response, calming the body and focusing the mind. It increases the amount of oxygen in our blood.

Are you breathing the right way? To find out, try this: put one hand on your chest and the other on your abdomen just below your rib cage. Now breathe. Which hand moves? If it’s the hand on your chest, your breathing is too shallow.

The trick is to make the hand on your abdomen move. Inhale deeply while you slowly count to five. Try to get your abdomen to expand instead of your chest. If you have trouble making it happen, try it lying on your back. With a little practice and patience, you’ll be able to shift into a deep breathing pattern automatically.

Observe

We get emotional from being emotional, meaning that when we are feeling stressed or emotional and we are thinking of ourselves being emotional, we hold ourselves there.

“When we are emotional and we try not to be emotional we get more emotional”.

A very powerful technique is to just observe and tune into what is happening in your body. If you were to tune in, scan your whole body and breath at the same time the stress and emotions will shift. Because when you allow yourself to feel and not reject it, you let go.

If you are stressed than just stop and ask yourself where am I feeling this stress and find it in your body and acknowledge it, Then continue and ask the question again. In a matter of minutes you will feel calmer because you focus is on you just being,or you could even scan your whole body from feet up and in seconds you will see an effect. Instead of having an expectation to be a certain way like stressed you can just be.

They are two little simple tips to relieve stress when it appears, hope you enjoyed the read.

Michael