Bid Adieu To Stress

Table of Contents

Chapter 01 – W hat is Stress and How Does it Damage You? So What Exactly is Stress? How Stress Damages the Brain?

Chapter 02 - The Complexity o f Your Stress Systems How Physiological Changes Trigger Stress?

Chapter 03 – Ways t o Manage Normal Stress

Chapter 04 – How Does Me d itation Reduce Stress? How to Get Started With Meditation? Tips Correct Breathing for Stress Reduction

Cha pter 05 - Mindfulness and CBT Cognitive Restructuring

Concl u sion

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So What Exactly is Stress? Stress is what we feel when we’re overworked, when we’re dreading something that’s about to happen or when we’re generally unable to relax and stay calm due to outside or inside factors influencing our thoughts.

But it actually goes beyond this. Stress is a basic physiological reaction that is designed to help us focus and survive. In itself it is not a bad thing and is actually rather adaptive. The problem is that it has been taken out of context, which means the positive effects become outweighed by the negative.

Essentially, stress is what causes the ‘fight or flight response’. This is a physiological response to perceived danger, designed to improve our chances of survival. If you were to see a lion for example, this would trigger a cascade of effects collectively resulting in the stress response.

This begins when we observe danger or experience fear. Increased activity in our brain, causes the release of adrenaline, as well as dopamine, norepinephrine and cortisol – our stress hormones. These then trigger a number of physiological changes: increasing our heartrate, making us breathe more quickly and making us more acutely focussed on the potential threat.

A list of the symptoms should include:

• Increased heartrate

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• Rapid, shallow breathing • Muscle contraction • Tunnel vision • Heightened sensitivity • Increased blood viscosity • Suppression of the pain response • Suppression of the immune system • Suppression of the digestive system • Dilation of the pupils • Dilation of the blood vessels • Reduction in prefrontal cortex activity (temporo-hypofrontality)

In the short term, this is good for us. In the short term, these things help us to evade danger and win combative situations. Increased muscle tension makes us stronger. Increased blood viscosity makes our blood more likely to clot in case of an injury. Dilated pupils let more light in to improve our vision. Suppression of secondary functions means that more blood can be sent to the muscles and the brain. Reduced pain means we can carry on fighting or running despite injury.

In short, anything that can help you to survive is prioritized, while secondary functions are suppressed. The idea is that once we get to safety, we can then turn off this fight or flight response and instead enter the ‘rest and digest’ state in order to recover. Once the predator is gone, we can recover.

But the problem is that in our modern environments, predators aren’t the main problem. It’s rare these days for us to be chased, to get into a fight or to need to escape a forest fire.

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What’s not so rare, is for our boss to shout at us and to tell us that we’re late for our deadline. It’s not rare for us to be in debt. It’s not rare for us to have marital problems.

And unfortunately, the brain interprets all these signals in just the same way: as threats. And this causes the same fight or flight response. But because these types of threats aren’t so easily resolved, this means we’ll often end up on heightened alert for a longer period of time.

This is also why stress causes impotence in men. If you are highly stressed, blood is sent everywhere except the genitals!