What is Stress?
What is Stress?
Stress is the body’s reaction to the demands of life. People tend to think of stress as only negative but even positive events can cause stress. Stress is neither good nor bad. It is just a physiological response to life’s events.
A caveman or woman had three responses if it faced danger, fight, flight or freeze. This allowed his or her body to be primed in seconds to do more than normally expected of it. This alarm (stress) response worked well for early man whenever he was faced with a life-threatening change in his environment. Modern man has the same stress response. However, our “attackers” are primarily emotional – deadlines, traffic jams, bills, childcare hassles, not enough time, etc. Even though it is not appropriate or effective to fight or take flight in response to these modern stressors, our bodies tend to respond to all threats physical or emotional, real or perceived, in this way.
Our bodies are designed for survival. When we are under stress, our body produces the stress hormone, cortisol to turn on our fight or flight response. When early man or woman ran into a saber tooth tiger, blood would stop going to the stomach to stop digestion and flow to their extremities to bring oxygen and nutrients to the muscles so he or she could run fast. Platelets will build in our blood to help clot if we get injured. After the tiger went away, the body would calm down. The problem with modern stressors is they don’t go away. We don’t get a chance to calm down, so these normal survival responses stay turned on and don’t shut down. This can cause health problems over time. This is why it is critical to learn calming techniques to interrupt the stress response and help the body realize the danger is gone.