Spot the secret signs of stress
Feeling moody? Making silly mistakes? They’re all classic indicators you’re struggling— but there is a solution
Stress lies, I believe, at the heart of so much modern malaise — it causes insomnia, makes us bad-tempered and miserable, and makes us feel disconnected from loved ones and the rest of the world.
It’s behind that horrible sensation of being on the outside of life looking in, a mere observer to what’s going on.
the problem is many of us have become so used to being stressed, particularly over the past 12 months, we don’t properly recognise how nor-mal feels any more. Psychologists call the cumulative effects of adapting to more and more uncomfortable circumstances ‘background stress’.
Chances are that unless you have mastered the art of relaxing deeply, that is precisely what you are experi-encing right now.
the knot in your stomach, that foggy feeling in your brain — you’ve some-how accepted that’s just how you feel these days, instead of recognising it as a reaction to stress.
stress often goes unnoticed in the body for a long time, eventually surfacing in the form of bad moods, loss of sense of humour, headaches, bumping into things, making silly mistakes. Ultimately it can lead to depression, anxiety and illness.
this seems to be particularly true as we live through the Covid era, where we have had to keep going with a constant level of background stress, without a clear end in sight.
thankfully, we now have a vaccina-tion programme. But that could take a while to roll out. telling yourself: ‘When I’ve had my jab, when my loved ones have been immunised, then I’ll be less stressed,’ isn’t the answer. All that means is you’re relying on an external event to fix your anxieties.
As Dr HAns selye, the father of modern stress research, observed: ‘It is not the event, but rather our interpretation of it that causes our emotional reaction’.
And so, we must master the ability of controlling our response to stress. Otherwise, chronic poor mental health will be the lasting legacy of these difficult times.
Our bodies are truly miraculous. Without you paying any attention, your autonomic nervous system (Ans) keeps your heart beating, g, y your lungs breathing, ng, with just the right amount mount of blood and oxygen xygen being pumped ped around your our body to keep ep everything functioning.
the Ans s is made up of multiple parts. the most impor--tant of these e when it comes es to understand-d-ing and beginning ning to control your stress are the sympa-thetic nervous us system (sns) and the he parasympa-thetic nervous system (Pns).
Imagine yourself going for a walk in the park on a nice, sunny day. suddenly, a mad dog appears around the corner and is coming straight for you. Do you turn and run away or stay to defend yourself?
that’s known as the ‘ fight or flight’ response — and that is governed by the sns, flooding your system with adrenaline and cortisol and pumping extra blood and oxygen to your limbs so that yo you can run away more quickly or fight w with more streng strength. th the para-sym sympathetic ne nervous sys-te tem has a v very differ-e ent role to p play — it is w what helps y you to ‘rest a and digest’. let me explain how, using the same scenario as before. Imagine again that you are walking in the park on a nice, sunny day. But this time there are no dogs and just the right amount of people, with plenty of space for everyone.
you sit down to relax under a tree and your body begins to recharge — your heart beats more slowly, which in turn decreases your blood pressure and whatever food is in your system begins to be digested.
this is your body’s natural impulse to rest, relax and recuperate, and is technically known as the parasympathetic response. Or as I choose to describe it ‘natural relaxation’.
natural relaxation is the sweet, soft feeling you get in your muscles when you have finished some heavy work or vigorous movement.
you also feel a natural high caused by the release of endorphins, the body’s natural opiates.
However wonderful though that may feel, it would be virtually impossible to function if that’s how you always felt.
you’d be too relaxed to get going at all. And so both systems work in tandem.
Ideally, we would spend most of our time going in and out of a feeling of relaxed alertness.
When we wanted to relax deeply, say before drifting off to sleep at night, we could do so quickly and easily.
But if the situation called for it, we would get an immediate burst of ‘stress chemicals’ to enable us to respond appropriately to a potentially dangerous situation.
What we describe as ‘ being stressed’ is simply the result of one system (the stress response) doing too much and the other system (natural relaxation) not being used enough.
even if you forget about Covid, everybody has some stress in their lives but hardly anyone has the skills to deal with it.
In normal times, an astonishing 50 per cent of the reasons why people go to the doctor are stress related.
As we’ve already explored, the stress response originally evolved as something practical — a way for our ancestors to get a burst of energy and strength that would enable them to fight a wild animal or run away.
But today, the attacks from which our nervous system is protecting us don’t tend to be things that we can either fight or run away from.
Try thinking now about something you have been stressed about: work, a relationship problem or perhaps a financial worry. Chances are there was no real physical danger involved — just discomfort.
even with Covid, our fears are predominantly existential, there’s nothing tangible to fight or flee from.
unfortunately, the human nervous system cannot tell the difference between present danger and fearful thoughts.
This means that you only have to think of something bad happening to produce those very same stress chemicals which your body needs to fight or flee. And without the burst of physically activity they were produced to help you with in the first place, the body isn’t able to eliminate them.
over time the build- up of those stress chemicals becomes toxic to your mind and body.