6 minute read
Sport psychology
Stress is a Drain on Your Brain
Laura King CHt, NLP, Life & Performance Coach
The job of a riding instructor comes with a wheelbarrow full of stress. Dealing with clients, monitoring horse health, the long, physically demanding workday, and making ends meet can take a heavy toll on your physical and mental health. It’s well-documented that stress can affect blood pressure, heart rate and the immune system, but did you know it can have both short- and longterm effects on your brain?
Fight, Flight, or Freeze
When you perceive a situation to be challenging, threatening, or uncontrollable, your brain initiates a series of processes that ultimately results in an increase in the production of steroid hormones called glucocorticoids, including cortisol, often referred to as the “stress hormone.”
Cortisol, which is normally produced throughout the day, helps provide a cycle of energy and during periods of stress, cortisol can help you deal with extreme challenges. This is the flight, fight or freeze response designed to keep you safe if, say, a mountain lion is threatening you. During a stressful event, an increase in cortisol can provide the energy required to deal with prolonged or extreme challenges.
Brain Drain
Cortisol helps your mind and body handle stress in the short term, but the chronic release of the hormone can physically change your brain including affecting brain size and its genetic makeup.
According to a 2008 “Indian Journal of Psychiatry” article, long-term exposure to cortisol can shrink the prefrontal cortex, the area of your brain involved with planning and making decisions. Another study outlined in a 2016 issue of the “European Society of Endocrinology” also found that elevated levels of cortisol were linked to a decreased volume of the prefrontal cortex.
One theory to explain this distressing reduction of brain size likens it to when you exercise one part of your body and increase that area’s muscle size while neglecting another part of your body, causing that area to atrophy. When your brain keeps activating stress responses, it may strengthen the amygdala, the roughly almond-shaped mass of gray matter inside each hemisphere of your brain that’s involved with the experiencing of emotions.
This strengthening of the amygdalae may, in turn, make the size of the prefrontal cortex smaller. I’m pretty sure that as a riding instructor, a decrease in the part of your brain that deals with planning and decision-making is not an ideal situation!
But wait, there’s more. Long-term stress is also linked to a smaller hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for emotional processing and memory. In addition, stress can affect your brain’s DNA.
Stress Wreaks Havoc on Emotions
Stress also reduces the brain’s ability to change and adapt or its plasticity. When the brain has less flexibility to change you may have a harder time managing your
emotions and you are more likely to engage in self-criticism and worry. Reasoning and problem-solving skills as well as learning ability and memory are also affected by high stress levels and chronic stress levels.
Does this stress you even more? No worries. I got you.
It’s obvious you need to get a lid on your stress to prevent those negative effects from happening but don’t worry, I have some ideas to help you manage. You need a collection of tools to help you deal with the stressors in your life.
Stress Tamers
Don’t Be Judgmental
The first step is to identify the limiting beliefs you have, such as fear of failure or fear of success. You should also evaluate your judgments about yourself and others. When you stop being so judgmental, you will start to feel fewer negative emotions like jealousy or anger that will add to your stress levels.
Stop Negative Thoughts
Stress is a major component in most of our lives and can become a persistent, negative factor that leads to disease. The more stress you experience, the more you tend to focus on it; you give it life, energy and language. You say, “I am so stressed out,” “Life is very stressful for me right now,” and/or “I’m under a lot of stress.” And once you do that, you tell your subconscious what to produce in your life: more stress.
Remember that your thoughts create your reality. This following seemingly simple exercise consists of four steps to help you banish negative self-talk:
1. Become aware of the negative self-talk 2. Stop it as soon as it occurs 3. Replace the negative talk with positive talk 4. Repeat it every time those negative thoughts pop into your head Use the power of positive speech to erase negative stressors in your vocabulary. At first, it won’t be easy but the only way to achieve it is with persistence. Make negative thought stopping part of your routine.
Just breathe
Do you wish you had a dollar for every time you told a student to just breathe when riding? Take a cue from your own playbook and breathe. Slow breathing has been shown to reduce negative emotions, so take a moment to close your eyes and assess how you are feeling. This perception of inner bodily sensations such as heartbeat, respiration, or satiety as well as perception of the autonomic nervous system activity involved in emotions is called interoception. Then, focus on your breath to stimulate your vagus nerve to transmit visceral signals to the brain which will get you back into a calmer state, while increasing your compassion and kindness.
1. Plant your feet on the ground or floor and intentionally settle yourself 2. Inhale deeply to the count of four while inflating your belly 3. Linger at the end of the inhale for two seconds 4. Exhale completely to the count of eight 5. Pause for the count of two 6. Repeat
Play Time
Make time to nourish your spirit with fun. Connect with a friend, laugh, draw, play games, dance, throw a ball with your dog.
Shut-Eye is Key
Fatigue is a powerful stressor and it’s essential to commit to getting enough sleep.
Good nutrition
We all know that dealing with stress can lead to downing a pint of ice cream or a super-sized order of French fries, but if you fill your body with junk, it will expend a lot of energy trying to cleanse itself of that junk to return to its optimum balance. Instead, be sure and get lots of protein and hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.
Control your environment
You can’t control everything, but you can control who you spend your time with and how to react to them. Is there someone in your life who “pushes all your buttons”? Either don’t spend time with that person or change the way you relate to them.
Don’t focus on the past
When you focus on one moment or a series of events in the past, you are allowing that to control your life. My favorite quote about this is from Louise Hay: “Would you really dig in to yesterday’s garbage to make tonight’s meal? Do you dig into old mental garbage to create tomorrow’s experiences?”
Banish the old mental garbage. The past is done.
Free Self-Hypnosis MP3
Life moves fast and finding time to relax often falls to the bottom of our to-do list. My free MP3 allows a chance for you to regroup and relax at home or even in the tack room. I created the self-hypnosis session “Basic Relaxation for Life” to help you learn to relax no matter where you are or what is happening, so you can maintain your tranquility and safeguard your health.
Go to http://www.laurakinghypnosis.
com/product/free-basic-relaxation-for-
life to access my free MP3 titled “Basic Relaxation for Life.”
Need help addressing your challenges or achieving your goals? Sessions available in-person, virtually, or phone.
