If your anything like me you will experience anxiety and stress on a daily basis. Although it is super important to try to reduce your stress, a massive part of my mental health journey has been in understanding where it comes from and why we react the way we do when put in a stressful situation, or in my case, any situation. Why is my heart racing? why does my face look flushed? why is my breathing going so fast??? This is down to our bodies ‘Fight or Flight’ response!
‘Fight or flight’ is your body’s automatic primal response to danger. It is a release of hormones which prepare your body to stay and fight or flee to safety in the face of threat. In other words it is your brain telling your body to ‘GO GO GO’. During this reaction adrenalin is released which gives your body a sudden boost of energy. It allows you to make decisions quickly and do what you need to do for your safety. It is a response that often happens before you even realise you are in danger. For example have you ever jumped back from a car before you even realised it was there? That is fight or flight! It is pretty amazing if you think about it!
When your body goes into ‘fight or flight’ mode there are a lot of common symptoms. Imagine you found yourself out for a walk in the woods and you stumble across an angry bear – fight or flight would trigger and the following would happen….
- Your heart would race: pumping your blood around the body quicker to reach your organs.
- Your brain goes into overdrive: to help you think fast, be alert and make snap decisions.
- You become hypersensitive: you can hear and see clearer, fully aware of your surroundings.
- Your breathing increases: to allow your body to take in enough oxygen to produce energy.
- Your muscles become tense: to prepare for an oncoming attack, allowing your body to be stronger and more rigid!
All of the above are caused by this ‘fight or flight’ reaction. It is all about protecting the body from physical danger. However, times have changed. It is the 21st century and we live in a less primal world, yet our bodies have not quite caught up with us. It is very unlikely that we will be faced with a bear or a mountain lion walking to the tube in the morning, but we are more likely to get stressed over a big deadline at work. The problem is your brain simply cannot tell the difference between the physical stresses and the mental ones.
Even though modern-day stresses can be majorly unsettling they are not factors which the fight or flight response is required for. Despite this, our brain sees these anxious thoughts and worries as possible physical threats, sending our bodies into the fight or flight response automatically, whether we need it to or not. When this happens and there is no physical 'fight or flight' it can drain a person of energy both physically and mentally.Â
Another risk of the body switching into fight or flight mode too frequently is that it has the ability to turn of the ‘rest and digest' system. This is the system that ensures food is digested, helps fight illness and helps the body to recover and repair. Yet when in Fight or Flight mode this system is not seen as vital and temporarily closes down while your brain alerts the body to focus its energy elsewhere. When this system gets put on hold it can also have negative impacts on the body for example:
- If you have just eaten you may feel sick or have indigestion as food sits in your stomach and isn’t being digested. This is where people express ‘butterflies in the tummy’ or a ‘nervous tummy’. It is also why stress can be a massive cause of IBS.
- Your body produces less saliva as it is not focusing on digestion
- If you drink water it can make you need a ‘nervous wee’. The feeling of needing to go but your body physically not letting you.
If your like me then you can experience this multiple times throughout the day and it aint no walk in the park. You start worrying over that meeting at work, activating fight and flight, and before you know it you are in a nervous spiral with a sore stomach and a nervous wee, which is doing nothing but adding to the stress and in turn setting of even more anxiety. A person without mental health issues may only experience this now and again, someone like me with a lot of built up anxiety can be stuck in the fight or flight nervous cycle for hours of the day. It becomes like second nature.
The fight or flight response is something which we cannot control and something we shouldn’t try to control. However what we can try to do is to reduce our daily stress levels and be aware of what is happening in our weird and wonderful bodies. If you notice yourself going into fight or flight take a few deep breathes. Chances are by slowing your breathing your body will slow down too and naturally your rest and digest system will restore itself. Even being aware of what is happening in your body can help you rationalise and calm yourself. Then again, speaking from experience, calming yourself down from a nervous spiral is always easier said than done!
Even though this isn’t necessarily a ‘self help’ post I hope it will offer some insight into why our bodies react the way they do to modern day stresses. Everyone is different and we all have different tolerances, so be mindful of other peoples feelings, but most importantly just be kind! We are all human after all!
Until next week...
Kirsty x