The Myth about Stress – The State of Me
When we hear the word stress, many of us think of things like work deadlines, finance trouble, family drama or emotional upsets. Here’s a fun fact for you – that’s actually not what stress is. They are just the triggers for stress. Stress is the response your body has to any physical, chemical or emotional challenge. Imagine you are walking along and you step on a marble. You scramble to regain balance and continue on your way. That marble is a stress trigger, but the fight to regain balance is like the stress response. The stress responses main aim is to restore balance so we can stay safe. When it’s triggered we direct nerve and blood flow to our protective organs and away from our organs that aren’t perceived
as needed at that time. It goes back to if your body thinks you’re under threat it doesn’t want to fall pregnant, digest anything or heal anything… it just wants to get away from the ‘threat’. Hence the following knock on effects: stress hormones, suppression of nonvital systems like digestion,
Reproduction, rest and repair, and the prioritization of survival mechanisms. These include raising your heart rate, tightening the muscles needed to run or fight, and opening up the receptors in your brain that allow you to take in all the light and noise you need to see the lion or the bear on the horizon. You’re only supposed to have to deal with one marble at a time and then have plenty of time to recover and rebalance. But imagine a relentless stream of marbles coming at you constantly. You might be able to handle it for a while, but as time goes on this gets tiring. Something’s got to give.