Imagine you are happily walking through the woods. It’s a beautiful spring morning, the sun is shining, snow drops and crocuses are peeping up through the peaty soil, and the only sounds you can hear are those of birds chirping in the leafy trees all around you. Bliss right?
Suddenly, the floor trembles and you look wildly around, confused and scared. Up ahead, you can see branches breaking, and someone or something is crashing through the trees and getting closer by the second! Before you even have a chance to turn and run, the dark shape of an extremely focused, massive grizzly bear appears into the puddled sunshine, it’s your worst nightmare charging towards you at high speed!
You are now in the sympathetic dominant state of Fight or Flight because the brain has sent the appropriate messages to your body to prepare you to run or fight for your life. You may experience:
~An increase in heart rate ~sweaty palms ~bladder relaxes. ~pupils dilate ~airways in lungs widen to make breathing easier ~release of energy stored in the liver ~adrenals pour out stress hormones such as adrenalin and cortisol… and wait for it- ~your digestion shuts down. Seriously, who is thinking of eating when being chased by a bear?
It takes a lot of energy to digest food and your body needs that precious energy right now for something a little more crucial, like surviving!
Hopefully your body cranks into fifth gear as you start to run. Sweat prickles the back of your neck and you nearly wet your knickers as you can hear him getting closer. But, as luck would have it, the bear trips and falls down a hole and you escape to safety. Phew!
That’s when the parasympathetic division of the ANS kicks in.
~Heart rate slows down ~palms stop sweating ~digestion switches back on ~pupils constrict ~adrenals stop pumping out those stress ~hormones and breathing normalizes. You are no longer in Fight or Flight as your body automatically calms down.
Isn’t the brain a beautiful thing!
We are built that way so that we can cope in a crisis. The important thing to know is that our minds and bodies were designed to regain equilibrium from PANIC MODE to CALM, quickly and efficiently.
Fight or flight is the perfect example of ACUTE stress. It is immediate and has to be dealt with urgently. But here’s the problem: most of our stress is of a CHRONIC nature, often building up over time, especially in the modern day of COVID, job pressures, political division, climate change, relationship problems, instant gratification and/or overwhelm dictated by social media. Many people are constantly in a state of fight or flight, but with nothing to fight and nowhere to flee!
OR… a serious event might initially trigger our stress responses, such as (again) COVID, loss of a job, divorce, relationship break-up, death in the family… but what appears to be happening with more and more people is the mind doesn’t recognize when the danger or stressful situation has ended… and that snap back from emergency mode to normal has been confused, damaged, even deleted – so that the bear is always there, maybe not chasing you anymore, but skirting the outskirts of the wood, a constant threat pacing back and forth. In other words the mind is locked in acute stress mode, sending constant “high alert” messages to the body. Which means it is unable to return to that healthy, relaxed parasympathetic state; we remain anxious, our frazzled nerves burning through precious nutrients, digestion is sluggish, we lack peace and clarity.
Brains crammed with too much information or disturbing images, will eventually process them into a series of small crisis turning into bigger crisis forcing the body to respond with the automatic fight or flight actions sparked by being chased by that darn bear all over again.
Except for there is NO BEAR TO FIGHT And NOWHERE TO FLEE.
If we stay in this high alert state… pumping out cortisol like there is no tomorrow… the detrimental effects on the mind and body can cause any number of problems such as:
An inability to cope/difficulty concentrating
Trouble sleeping
Relationship problems
Anxiety/Depression
Digestive issues,
Allergies,
Headaches/fogginess
High blood pressure
Tiredness/aches and pains…
Stress will eventually suppress the immune system, and can cause inflammation, a pre-cursor to disease.
So we MUST be aware of the stress we experience, how that stress is affecting us, and crucially be able to recognize when we have gone into FIGHT OR FLIGHT, and how to get out of it.
How does knowing all this help you?
The Autonomic Nervous System or ANS is part of the nervous system and divided into three main parts:
1. sympathetic, 2. parasympathetic and the third we will get to later, the enteric nervous system. The autonomic nervous system regulates involuntary body functions such as heartbeat, blood flow, breathing, and digestion. Understanding this and learning how to tap into it means that YOU can actually control how stress affects you. YOU can CHANGE how stress affects YOU. In other words, when something alarming happens, instead of feeling stuck or even falling apart you will be empowered to consciously control those automatic responses and not let stress get the better of you. Remember it’s not the stress that’ll kill you, it’s how you deal with it that is the game changer.
DO YOU WANT TO LEARN HOW TO TAP INTO YOUR AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM AND TAKE BACK CONTROL OF HOW STRESS AFFECTS YOU? CLICK HERE