Friendly Fire

You are enjoying the drive home from work. It has been a pleasant evening; suddenly some guy cut you off from the left side. You hit the brakes and honk at him. Your heart is racing, your forehead breaks sweat. Your hands have gripped the steering wheel like a gorilla. It was nothing serious, yet you are stressed out. The traffic on the road, a test, a looming deadline, a conversation with a nasty colleague, all these can cause your stress levels to spike up. All of this unpleasantness, over time, can raise your blood pressure, clog your arteries and make you prone to anxiety, depression and even addiction. Stress is physiological, not just in your head.

?Our stresses are a response to the flight or fight programming of our brains which evolved to help us survive threats in the wild. Imagine your ancient ancestors wandering through the thicket, a sabre-tooth tiger jumps them and the ones who reacted to the situation and either fled or stood to fight and lived passed on their genes.

?In response to acute stress, the body’s sympathetic nervous system is activated by the sudden release of hormones. The body reacts with increased heart rate, blood pressure and breathing. It focuses your attention, your senses sharpen; the stress hormones give you extra energy to extricate yourself out of the jam you’re in. Your body can stay in fight or flight mode for twenty to sixty minutes after the threat is gone, this is how long the parasympathetic nervous system takes to restore your body to pre-arousal state.

?For modern life all these reactions would, for the most part, be an overkill. You don’t need to fight your boss or flee from her when she’s giving you a piece of her mind. Our body reacts the same way even when there’s no reason to fret.

?The evolutionary benefit that helped our ancestors survive clear and present dangers is causing you trouble by constantly putting you in the fight or flight state of mind. This is where stress gets bad by putting you on the edge all the time. Living in this prolonged state of high alert and stress (when there isn’t any real threat) could be detrimental to your health, both physical and mental.

?Continuous stress has been shown to contribute to hypertension, coronary heart disease, gastro-intestinal issues, and lowered immune response. Cyclical infections and even dandruff are also not uncommon! The way we respond to stress may compel us to make unhealthy lifestyle choices. To combat stress we may over-indulge in high fat or high sugar foods, smoke, drink excess amounts of alcohol, resort to unhealthy sleep habits or withdraw socially.

?Counterintuitively, the only way to manage stress is not to avoid stressful situations. Avoiding all stress is counterproductive and impossible.

‘I don’t get angry, I grow a tumor instead.’ - Woody Allen

?Don’t repress your emotions, be mindful of them and let them out in a controlled manner. Confront the situations that stress you out. Stand up to that friend who’s bothering you; say ‘no’ when necessary. Condition your brain to handle stressful situations by taking on challenges like, say, public speaking. Your pre-frontal cortex gains power so that the next time you’re stuck in a traffic jam or the deadline hovers near, it shuts up the amygdala, the part of the brain that triggers the fight or flight response. You can now tolerate the stress. You are now resilient.

?But then again not all stress is bad. In fact, we love stress and pay good money for it, at the cinemas to watch scary movies and at the amusement park to take scary rides. Positive stress response are those that you experience when you start on a new job, or meet your flame, or host a big event. These stresses are motivating and energising although our body reacts much the same way when we experience negative stresses. Positive stress enables us to accomplish tasks.

?We can make stress our friend by changing how we think about it. We can change our body’s response to stress. Whenever you get into a situation that make your palms sweat, knees weak, arms heavy – realise that your body is energised, preparing you to meet the challenge.

?Another way to manage your stress response is by a technique called ‘emotional brushing’. Daily, before you sleep, speak out about things that distressed you, angered you, to your significant other or loved one. Talk therapy helps. Keeping a journal helps you clarify thoughts and feelings fogging your mind. Exercise regularly to keep the blues away. Yoga and tai chi can be practiced at all levels of expertise.

?And remember, having no stress is a lot more damaging than having a lot of it.