How Stress Can Affect Us
Have you ever received an email and felt your heart rate increase, or your breathing go faster? Or fell sick with a common cold when you are at your busiest? That’s what we call “Stress”, an all too familiar occurrence in all of us.
Do you know that living with stress is much more prevalent than you would imagine? Stress can act on different levels – physiological, psychological and social. As you may expect, all these levels actually interact with each other, our body and our mind. You can also read more about how I fell victim to stress here.
The good news is -- our bodies are hardwired for survival! In the 1950s, Hans Selye pioneered the term Stress when he examined what happened when animals are placed under unusual or extreme conditions. Today, Stress is used as an umbrella term to note all the different forms of pressures we face from day to day.
Our Automatic Nervous System (ANS) is made out of two main parts: the sympathetic nervous system activates the “fight-flight-freeze” response during a threat or perceived danger, and the parasympathetic nervous system restores the body to a state of calm or what we call the “rest and digest” mode.
In today’s world, we no longer need to run away from a sabre tooth tiger but the pressures we face are ones that involve daily pressures like dealing with a pandemic, or avoiding a car collision. Our “fight-flight-freeze” response attempts to help us survive it by coming into a state of acute hyperarousal.
It then sends oxygen to the rest of our body, and the brain registers the threat like an alarm system to protect us and sends a message to the body to release adrenaline and cortisol, hormones that get our heart pumping and causes physiological changes in the body. Any bodily systems that are not necessary for our survival, like our digestive system / immune / reproductive system takes a “back seat” or shuts down. Isn’t our body amazing?
Over time, once we have survived the “stressor”, the different systems will come back into balance, or “homeostasis” – a term used by Walter Cannon to describe the innate wisdom of the body to come back into balance and so that our bodies can maintain proper function – our digestion, immune and reproductive systems start function properly again.
In our world today, in our busy modern day city lives where we are bombarded with stressors, might you wonder if it would be harder for the bodies to come back into Homeostasis?
I particularly enjoy the definition of Stress by Richard Lazarus, who defines Stress as “a particular relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his/her resources & endangering his/her wellbeing”. He also emphasised that a fruitful way of looking at stress was to consider it as a transaction between a person and the environment.
Looking at Stress in this manner, it also implies that the way we interpret an event can determine how we respond to them and how much distress or suffering we will experience. How many of us feel like we don’t have control over things regularly? And I quote Thich Nhat Hanh here: “If suffering continues, it is because we keep feeding our suffering”.
This transactional view of psychological stress allows for us to be more resistant to stress once we build up resources to enhance our wellbeing – through mindfulness practices like movement, mindful eating, and formal dedicated sitting practices.
So we can see here that there is a choice – the choice to move from Autopilot to Awareness. Instead of staying trapped in Stress Reactivity, this ability to cultivate attention and awareness fully has its benefits.
The million dollar question is - how do we manage all these Stressors or perceived threats in our lives? One of the ways is to take part in practices that allow for us to come into Intentional Rest!
Very often, when we think we are resting, the body is however not in a restful state. For example, when we are watching TV/ Netflix, are we really resting? Or when we head out into the mall to “de-stress” or shop, we are still bombarded by stimuli.
Some of the ways we can respond more skillfully to stressors is come into dedicated practices like the Body Scan, where we cultivate awareness and attention of the body, mindful breathing, self-care practices, or anything that involves de-cluttering our busy minds!
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.
Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.
