Stress is a great thing, stress is what has kept us and our ancestors alive for generations and generations. Without stress we may not be here today, what has changed though is what we use it for. I intend to talk about stress in a way that does not involve intense biology in order to make you the reader understand it a bit better.

Stress is what keeps us alive in the Jurassic age, when we were confronted with a dinosaur depending on how we were brought up and who we were as a individual. We would make a decision whether to run for our lives, stay and fight or freeze. Hence the expression fight, flight or freeze. To put this in clearer terms;
Fight
If I choose to fight the dinosaur my body will send energy rich adrenaline straight to my arms so I can fight the dinosaur! This adrenaline is so powerful it is the determining factor of those stories you hear about parents lifting cars off of their child in the event their child has been run over. It is immensely powerful and we should all consider ourselves lucky we have this mechanism built into our biology.
Flight
If I choose to run from the dinosaur my body will send energy rich adrenaline straight to my legs so I can flight from the dinosaur! Have you ever been running from somebody and have reminisced back on the situation and were surprised about how fast you can actually run? This is because the purpose of this response is to make you run fast we are incredibly lucky to have this built into our survival mechanism.
Freeze
Freeze is slightly different in that this is the decision we make in indecision. We don’t necessarily see a way out of avoiding the dinosaur so we freeze and hope for the best. This has its own victories however particularly when you consider that a dinosaurs eye sight was not very good. Keeping very still means they may not see me. Or some animals like a bear for example will stop killing you if they think you are dead!
I want to reassure you as the reader that dinosaurs have been extinct for a very long time and unless we see some Jurassic Park real life re-inaction, we are not going to be confronted by dinosaurs anytime soon. The problem with our stress response system today is that it is utilised in a way that is not how mother-nature intended.
What I mean by this is today’s stresses include things like being sat in traffic, having to manage money to pay bills, worrying about being made redundant, relationship problems, meeting deadlines, moving house, having too much work, getting married, worrying about our loved ones, working too hard because we have too, political unrest to name just a few of the things we get stressed about today.
I don’t mean to undermine these things they are all extremely challenging in their own right but they are not exactly about to be eaten by a dinosaur…………………. Unless you were talking about relationship problems with my Grandma whom is often referred to as the dragon! That can feel a bit life and death!!
The point I am trying to make is today’s stressors are rarely about life and death however our responses to them are just that. Opening a letter to discover a large unexpected bill can send our stress responses through the roof. This combined with moving house whilst on the brink of being made redundant or any number of stressors combined can really hang heavy on us.
How do I propose we change this? The thing is if you are feeling a bit stressed about meeting a deadline the stress response is giving us the little bit of energy we need to meet that deadline. Increasing our awareness giving us the energy to get on with it whilst also decreasing our appetite so we don’t have to stop and eat. This sounds pretty useful right? If we recognise what is happening and use that energy accordingly then I would say that is a pretty effective way of using up that stress.
Often though stress comes to us in a way that feels pretty uncomfortable but I believe that is as a result of not recognising what the energy rich adrenaline is and what it is to be used for. Therefore we resist it and that’s what makes it have a negative impact on our insides which results in stomach ulcers, digestion problems, heart attacks and ultimately death!
A way of combating the negative effects of stress is having a better understanding of how stress presents itself in our bodies. Recognising what the energy is for and accepting it and working with it opposed to rejecting it because we don’t understand it.
I strongly recommend if stress is impacting you in a way that you consider unwell for your well-being, to in the very least find your way of taking care of yourself. Go use the energy up, go for a walk, go for a run, go do the thing that you do to use up energy. Of course some of us may not know what our thing is and of course that is part of the problem.
Talking can be a good way of coping with stress and can also be a good way to recognise how we respond to it. This can be done with a careful listening ear but of course but if this is not enough perhaps a professionally trained ear might be what you need to unravel your stress responses and change your thinking towards how you respond to stress.
I can offer this service at brighter-pathways.co.uk counselling and my experience of course stretches to my own life experience also. Whatever your decisions towards managing your own stress I wish you the best of luck because when it comes to stress trust me I have been there and I know………..
Thank you for taking the time to read this if you would like to get in touch you can do so via my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/brighterpathwayz/ or my website www.brighter-pathways.co.uk where you will find my contact details.