Your body is hard-wired to react to stress in ways that are meant to protect you in a life-or-death situation. A couple million years ago, this was absolutely necessary. Our ancestors primarily dealt with immediate threats, such as a lion looking to you as their next meal.
When the danger passed, we were safe to return to baseline and go about our business. In the modern world, we rarely find ourselves up against predators but that doesn't mean that we don't face dangers; they're just more subtle. Unfortunately, our body still recognizes and treats these events as attacks.
The release of cortisol, our primary stress hormone, causes a number of changes that help to protect us in the face of a threat. For example, it mobilizes energy (in the form of glucose) and increases heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, muscle tension and the availability of substances that repair tissue. It also temporarily alters the immune system and suppresses our digestive and reproductive systems, as these functions are not necessary for immediate survival (e.g., running from a tiger).
In the short term, the changes we experience in response to stress are adaptive for survival. Acute surges in cortisol calm inflammation, enhance memory, focus and decision-making, and efficiently rev up metabolism to replenish our energy reserves. However, if we experience repeated stress over many weeks (we'll talk about different types of stressors later), we can alter our sensitivity to stress.
Frequent stress impairs the ability of the hypothalamus to turn off our stress response, resulting in an accumulation of stress hormones that wear and tear on the brain and body. While our bodies are extremely adaptable and can continue to function under very high levels of stress for a prolonged period of time, we do so at the expense of other regulatory functions.
Our immune system, digestive system and reproductive system become chronically downregulated and may shut down completely. Unfortunately, this is usually a subtle, slow build and we often don't notice that something is wrong until we are experiencing a number of uncomfortable symptoms, many of which you probably don't readily associate with stress.
Common Signs of Stress Overload:
I'm willing to bet that most of you have experienced at least one or two of these symptoms in the last month. They may be common, but that does not mean that they are healthy. Do not accept them as everyday parts of life!
Your body is trying to communicate to you that it needs some support, and you are fully capable of providing that with a little awareness. But stress is part of life. You are never going to magically wake up and be rid of everything difficult, so the first step is to be able to identify unnecessary stress triggers and learn how to keep them in check.
Stress Reduction
The easiest way to conceptualize your body's limit is through the bucket analogy.
Imagine you have a bucket, which represents you. Water, representing each stress event, is poured into the bucket. Most buckets have room to hold some water, but if water continues to pour in, the bucket will overflow.
This is our breaking point, and as the water level inches towards the top, we begin to experience symptoms of chronic stress. Luckily, our bucket has a tap at the bottom which represents coping techniques and things we can do to mitigate the effects of stressors. The more readily we can open the tap, the easier it is to keep the water at an optimal level.
Next, we need to identify what is filling the bucket. If you are going to take away one point from this entire post, it should be this: Stress isn���t just limited to daily demands, like taking on a huge workload, deadlines, relationships, money, etc. Stress exists in various forms, and our bodies are constantly bombarded with things that trigger a stress response, adding to our bucket drop by drop.
Here are some common sneaky sources of stress:
In our next blog we will look at how you can start to take control of some of these other triggers...
SPEAK TO A COACH