Author: thebodyinmind

How developing awareness of the mind-body connection will help you manage stress

Your body has one simple response to threat. It doesn’t differentiate between physical or psychological/ emotional danger. Your “threat response” might be triggered by an obvious threat, like a dangerous animal, a knock on the door, or the dark silhouette of a stranger, or it might be activated by an email notification, a to-do list, a bill or bank statement, a look from a loved one, an Instagram scroll, a memory, an emotion, a smell or a bodily feeling. The list is personal and endless.

Any of these situations, often before you’ve even registered them as a threat, set in motion a cascade of physiological processes.

First up: social engagement.

You scan your area for allies or support in numbers. In the modern world this often looks like reaching for your phone. We pay extra close attention to what’s happening in our social environment, and thanks to the feedback we receive, we either feel reassured or even more at risk. An absence of secure connection or safety here trips us into the next level.

Mobilisation.

Your body prepares you to fight or run from the threat. The brain goes into super-scan mode, your body gets pumped and strengthens, hormones and chemicals surge through your system. You’re ready as you’ll ever be. But what if the fear remains? If your body experiences the threat as persistent and unbeatable, it has another, more drastic option.

Shut down.

The nervous system perceives the danger as so great that the only viable option is to give up and protect what’s left – a little like “playing dead” in the animal world. In modern life this can look like exhaustion, depression, isolation, low motivation, dissociation. If your body gets used to retiring to this response, it can become stuck there.

This whole system is working, mostly unconsciously, for your safety, but for many of us – the pressures of everyday life can feel like activation is the constant state.

Your body copes well with short bursts of stress as long as that stress is generally resolved and the system can return to balance. In this place – you can be relaxed, productive, happy and primed to connect and take nutrients from loved ones and the world.

If stress is relentless (chronic) it can start to have a really negative impact on your whole mind-body system. The chemicals, intended to be useful in short bursts can damage the circuits they’re designed to work within. One of the most significant consequences of this is inflammation, a significant contributor to many mental and physical health complaints.  

How to catch and remedy stress in the body

Here are some simple ways you can learn to catch this process and sometimes remedy it.

👉🏼 First get yourself safe. You can’t “hack” your way out of danger, so if you’re living in an environment where the threats are real, focus all your efforts on finding physical safety first.

👉🏼 Look after yourself in those critical basic ways (sleep, movement, nutrition, connection) and you are much less likely to find yourself hypervigilant to stress or to interpret benign situations as dangerous.

👉🏼 Prioritise real and genuine time to rest. Those times when you are completely calm and consumed by something enjoyable (reading, yoga, arts, music, films) allows healing to occur in your body. Think of these practices as they are: vital times for physiological repair, rather than woo-woo privilege.

👉🏼 “Time-in”: Use awareness/ mindfulness skills to regularly stop and tune into what’s happening in your body at any given time. When and where do you hold tension?

👉🏼 Feel into your body. Learn, especially if difficult experiences have taught you to disconnect from your body, that you can connect safely with yourself. Eat something completely mindfully. Take a warm shower and feel it. Use warm and gentle touch.

👉🏼 Learn to communicate safety to your system: one of the quickest languages for this is via your breath. Imagine while slowing down the rhythm of your breath that you’re really saying “it’s ok body (buddy?!) I’m safe here, thanks for getting ready to protect me, but I got this”

See breathing blog for some simple exercises to bring you into present calm state when activated, and sign up to my newsletter to receive future blog topic roundups and other exciting developments in the Body in Mind community.