3 Effective Ways to Deal with Stress
Covid 19 brought us new sources of stress and anxiety: working from home, the uncertainty of the economy not to mention the possibility of being infected with the coronavirus. To manage these rising levels of stress need to understand what it is and find ways to work with it.
What is stress
Stress is a non-specific physiological response of the body linked with perceived threats.
It is an emotional reactivity that happens first in the brain’s limbic system.
When we feel in danger, the amygdala sends a distress signal activating the sympathetic nervous system bringing about a dramatic physiological via hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. At the same time, all non-essential bodily functions are shut down, in particular the digestive and reproductive systems.
These physiological changes are a legacy feature of our body from a time when we were facing a lot of physical threats, they enable us to react quickly rather than discriminately and enhance our physical strength rather than our mental acumen
These responses are a short term turbo booster to be used sparingly. Staying in this mode for protracted periods is not only unpleasant but also unhealthy.
Why do we stress so much?
Because the limbic system in our brain does not know how to discriminate between inputs from our senses (real stuff happening) and inputs from our well-developed neocortex (thoughts, memories, and fantasies).
That means that every time you google covid 19, recall or imagine an unpleasant confrontation, or think about the future of the economy (or the planet for that matter), your fight or flight response gets activated.
Stress 2.0
Stress is cumulative: exposure to several smaller stressors accumulate and can lead to unsustainable levels of hormonal imbalance. To counterbalance this built-in weakness of our stress response, we need to undertake a number of steps that together bring our cumulative stress to acceptable levels.
Here is what we can do to upgrade stress:
1. REDUCE ACTIVATION
Isolating ourselves from all potential stressors is unrealistic (and frankly sad, see: living in a bubble), we can train our brain through meditation to reduce its stress responses by improving self-regulation. This means training in and becoming better at:
attention control (what we give our attention and for how long).
emotion regulation (how and when we react to stimuli).
self-awareness (more attention given to sensory inputs and less to mental chatter).
You can start with a simple Focused Attention practice where you quietly observe the physical sensations associated with breathing, get distracted (don't worry this happens by itself), notice that you got off, and move your attention back to the breath.
2. MODULATE RESPONSES
Learn how to talk to your limbic brain via the ‘bottom-up’ pathway: increasing activity in the parasympathetic nervous system counteracting the sympathetic nervous system fight-or-flight stress responses.
A simple way to activate your parasympathetic system is to take a deep inhale followed by a long exhale and repeat this three times. You can do that anywhere at any time to calm your nervous system down when you feel is spinning out of control.
3. MAKE FRIENDS
If we focus too much on the negative impact of stress we turn it into a stressor, the cause of further stress reactions, creating a negative catch-22 quite difficult to escape from. More helpful is to look at our stress reaction as a benevolent attempt to help us out in difficult situations. Stress is a well-meaning but clumsy friend that has helped our ancestors to survive, enabling them to pass on their genes to us. She just needs some help to keep doing her job better.
Kelly McGonigal suggests that changing the way we apprehend our stress response makes it less unhealthy. Specifically, while the heart rate stays high, by interpreting the feeling of stress as a supportive reaction intended to help us, our blood vessels do not contract, thereby mitigating the negative effect on the cardiovascular system. She also observes that oxytocin (the hormone that encourages us to be social) is released also in stressful situations. So next time you feel threatened instead of closing up and isolating yourself, try reaching out and sharing your worries with others, your body will thank you.
