Stress and Momentum
There is a tendency for the stressed-out brain to create more stress. We see this fact in scenarios and situations that usually end up being spoken about in a therapists office: “I just can’t seem to calm down/get ahead”; “I feel so tired all the time, I find it difficult to do the things that are restoring to me”; “I find it tough to slow down because I feel guilty when I’m not being productive”. To the brain, stress can act as an object with momentum; it propels us further into stress and takes time and effort to stop. If you have ever felt guilty about not being able to tackle your stress load, you’re not alone; you are dealing with some very sophisticated neural technology that is deeply wired within you. In fact, Isaac Newton discovered this same physical behaviour at the atomic level nearly 400 years ago when he found that an object in motion, stays in motion unless acted upon by another object. Of course, he made this realization in regards to the physical world, however, you don’t have to look very hard to see this “law” across many modalities within science, especially when it comes to stress and the brain. We’re wired to get stressed, but without periods of deep relaxation, we can get stuck in a feedback loop.
When we are chronically stressed out, our ability to deal with continued stress is reduced. Our body continually perceives mundane and otherwise typical experiences in life as stressful, leading to constant activation of our fight-or-flight processes. Routine activation of our fight or flight systems, without a return to our restorative, rest-and-digest processes, leads to breakdown throughout our system, especially within the systems that are there to calm us down. I know, I know, what a silly mechanism to install into a “resilient” species. Believe me, I have a few pointers for whoever decided to build this into us.
Alas, not all is lost!
Despite the feeling of never being able to deal with this stress you’re battling, it is possible, and you can do it! It might even be easier than you think.
Now obviously there is a lot that goes into what creates and maintains stress in our individual lives, but there are some commonalities that are transferable and useful to nearly every case of stress.
I want to paint a picture here to help demonstrate my point.
If we look at the common themes that create stress, perhaps the most (or least) obvious is our reactivity. You’re driving down the road and all of a sudden a car juts right out in front of you, causing you to slam on your brakes, squeeze the wheel, hold your breath, maybe let out a scream; and not until the car drives away do you begin to think of how horribly that could’ve gone.
The only reason we get stressed out by something (99% of the time) is because of how we have perceived it. If something happens, and we perceived it as something threatening. That thing is now deemed stressful, and our body reacts as if it is stressful. Neurologically, this means that the incoming sensory information is “interesting” enough such that it activates parts of the amygdala (our emotional evaluation centre) which, so long as it remains active, communicates to the rest of the body that it’s time to fight or run. So what if that very same car cut you off, except your amygdala remained inactive? You would perceive the event as non-threatening and continue on your merry way without so much as a second thought.
The critical difference between a stressful event and a non-stressful event is our perception of it. Or more accurately, your perception is a product of your neurological activity in response to the event.
Perhaps you’ve heard the idea of the “hair trigger” amygdala. If you’re familiar with the term, this might bring to mind an individual who is easily perturbed, perhaps a little dramatic, or just plain stressed out and hypervigilant. What this individual is truly demonstrating is an un-inhibited amygdala.
In regards to stressful situations, the amygdala has 2 pathways that can be thought of as a “fast” lane and a “slow” lane.
The fast lane can be thought of as a first pass evaluation. Sticking to our example of being cut off in traffic, the fast lane is primarily concerned with immediate safety. As we see the car come into our field of view at a rapid speed, our initial response is to squeeze the steering wheel and prepare to veer off the road to keep us from getting hit. It’s a rapid, yet unsophisticated response that always assumes the worst is about to happen. If the fast lane had a motto, it would most certainly be “better safe than sorry”.
The slow lane can be thought of as a second pass evaluation. The same information that was delivered to the amygdala via the fast lane takes a brief detour up through our medial frontal lobes and hippocampal circuits, which do a quick “past experiences” check to see if anything like this has happened in the past and how we dealt with it then. If we are seasoned, well-slept, experienced drivers, our brain inhibits our initial plan to veer off the road, and instead slowly presses on the brake and easily deals with the situation.
Another example that you have more than likely experienced in your own life is when you were walking, perhaps at nighttime, and you look to your side and see what immediately appears to be a snake jumping out at you. You leap into the air and start to run, but then a half-second later you notice that it was just the string from your hat hanging down or a branch on a tree you hadn’t noticed. Your panic vanishes as quickly as it arose and you almost certainly let out a chuckle and look around to see if anyone noticed. You can literally feel this 2 tiered examination process unfolding within a second. You have a rapid, unsophisticated response to something that might be threatening (fast lane), only to notice a moment later that it’s nothing to worry about and your stress response is shut off (slow lane).
This is a simplistic example of the acute stress response and the built-in braking system our brain uses to keep us from freaking.
To quickly summarize, when “stressful” information enters our brain, either through vision, touch, smell, sounds, or thoughts, it is quickly delivered to the amygdala to prepare us to fight (fast lane) and is then looped up through higher-order cortical structures to analyze on a deeper more sophisticated level to see if what is happening is actually worth getting amped up for (slow lane). This is a naturally built-in mechanism that regulates our stress response. Interestingly, when we are chronically stressed, our slow lane becomes far less powerful and analytical; allowing things that would otherwise be perceived as non-threatening, as threatening.
You might be thinking, “but our true sources of stress rarely stem from being cut off in traffic or confusing branches for snakes, so how might this information be relevant in dealing with one’s actual sources of stress?”
This system donates directly to your levels of stress on a day to day basis because it causes you to categorize events throughout your day as stressful. In the same fashion as the examples above, our brain can fail to inhibit the stress response leading to a perception of having had a stressful day/week/month etc. So what can you do about these faulty braking systems?
You become the slow lane. By you, I mean your conscious mind. You choose to make an effort to analyze whether things are worth freaking out over. Now, this doesn’t mean that I’m saying that you’re only stressed out because you’ve allowed yourself to get stressed, or that you decided to. Nor does it mean that from now on, so long as you make an effort, you’ll never be stressed again. It just means that you’ve recognized, for whatever reason, that part of your brain’s natural stress braking system is a little underactive and has allowed you to perceive things as far more dire as they truly are. By consciously evaluating stressful situations, either immediately or well after the fact, you are effectively activating and increasing the power of your slow lane to naturally pump the brakes. Remember Newton’s law of motion; an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by another object. You, your thinking mind, is that other object, in relation to but not attached, to your stress.
You might be surprised just how quickly these changes can happen. In fact, studies using mindfulness have demonstrated that you can rewire and reeducate these parts of your brain in as little as 6 weeks! That means that after 6 weeks of actively paying attention to arising sensations of stress in response to certain situations, and analyzing/reality testing the legitimacy of the message, you could have a brain that is far more capable of handling stress behind the scenes, and more importantly, allowing you to get back to living life on your terms.
If you need some concrete examples to help understand what this actually looks like in day-to-day experiences, I’ll list a few here.
When you feel the sensations of stress arise, you could:
Pause and take a long, slow nasal breath
Relax any tensed muscles, especially near the face, neck, and butt.
Shift your attention to your feet
Say out loud or think of a pre-planned sentence or phrase that has a positive connotation to you. Something as simple as “it’s okay”, or humming. The more personalized, the better.
The entire idea behind Our Blue Sky Minds is focused on developing resilience, and what we just spoke about sits very close to the core of what it means to possess true resilience. So if you’re curious about what is talked about here and how you might benefit from these lessons, this is a great place to start. Work with your own reactivity, and move into a place where you are responding, rather than reacting.
Have a great week everyone.
