A surprising and useful look at stress

In this article, we'll show you what stress is, how to recognize it and the mechanism that sets it in motion. We also explore why you can solve stress permanently with Live The Connection.

We are familiar with it by now: as soon as we stress, our body produces survival hormones such as adrenaline and we go into fight, flight or freeze response.

But how does that look like? Where does it come from? And what is the underlying mechanism? Is it fixable?

Stress behavior

First, let's look at what our stress behavior looks like. Perhaps then we will uncover more than what we mean by "stress" at first glance.

Generally, we fight if we can "make it," flee as long as we can "still get away in time," and freeze to "make ourselves invisible. From my research on "why we don't behave correctly as professionals," it emerges that we exhibit far more stress behavior than we might expect, however.

Let us take a closer look at how this takes concrete form in our everyday lives so that we can better recognize it.

Fighting

When we fight, we tend to "whack". Then we usually get as feedback that our conduct inappropriate is.

The main difficulty is that during fighting behavior, part of our "feeling" (right brain) is less accessible. We feel not what we say or do.

Typical fight-stress behaviors include.

create tensions

spew judgments

degrading remarks

being difficult or angry

take up a lot of space

Being irritable or overexcited

do complicated or perfect

accuse

suspect, ask (inappropriate) questions

retaliate

In short, we do everything that makes another person smaller and afterwards we are told that we misbehaved.

be tough

have to defend themselves

(with doors) hitting

shout

Flights

When we flee, we mainly create burden by "not being there. Our biggest problem then is not doing what we want to realize.

We are then champions in:

distract

postpone

daydreaming

putting off decisions for us

flights into meditation, sports,

flights into sex or shopping

candy

Becoming addicted to smoking, drugs or alcohol

surfing the internet, facebooking, texting

we fall asleep

avoid confrontations

arrive late

do not complete training courses

we always find a way out of not doing what we promised

In short, we are not approachable. Especially the parts of the brain that support our actions (at the back of the brain) are less accessible.

Freeze

As soon as we freeze, we are struggling mostly with ourselves. We suffer:

stomach ache

abdominal pain

all kinds of stress-related illnesses and pain

unable to defend ourselves

feeling shortchanged or victimized by the situation

burnout or chronic fatigue

find it difficult to concentrate

have no voice

reproach ourselves

Our body says what we cannot grasp in words. Here the emotional right hemisphere is mostly active and the rational left is less accessible.

All of these stress reactions are automatic behavior: they are impulse-controlled.

It takes a lot of commitment and perseverance on our part to reduce or stop these stress behaviors.

Often with aging we try to stop fighting. Alternatively, we drop out (flee) or exhibit freezing behavior.

We replace one stress behavior with another.
Yet this does not solve the stress, quite the contrary.

More and more people are falling into a "stress loop," endlessly switching from one stress behavior to another.

Another definition of stress: not being in connected-brain

When we are relaxed and feel normal or okay, our whole brain is accessible and connected: the left and right hemispheres work well together.

We call that "connected brain.

We can then make rationally responsible decisions that we emotionally feel are right. We can express with words how we feel. We flawlessly sense that a theory "fits" with reality.

In "connected brain," we are at our best: we can use all our skills and everything just goes right.

As soon as a part of our brain becomes less accessible, our system goes into stress. This is logical, because we need all our abilities to respond adequately to the changing circumstances we find ourselves in.

'Stress' means that our behavior indicates that something in our brain is no longer functioning normally: alarm, in other words.

Stress is a signal that tells us that one part of our brain is less accessible and therefore not working as well with the other parts of our brain.

The origins of stress behavior

Following my doctoral research, I looked further into the origins of all these stress behaviors.

The origin appeared to be in the blackout mechanism.

I will briefly explain this using bicycles.

When we cycle we can remember all kinds of things afterwards, especially that which catches our attention (that we are aware of), namely that which appeals to us emotionally.

Under normal circumstances - as long as we have everything under control - our senses perceive the entire environment. We see, hear, feel, taste and smell.

All these sensory signals together are clustered into memories. These are filed away in our "database," the subconscious.

Now recall a fall with the bicycle. We remember being on the bicycle and then being on the ground. Of the time in between - for example, how we flew over the bicycle - no memories exist.

In fact, our system automatically goes into blackout, into "auto-anesthesia.

The sensory signals of that moment are not clustered but stored separately in the brain with the code "red alert, great danger.

And that is fantastic: of the most painful moment, the loss of control, we did not create memories.

Various situations of loss of control can trigger a blackout: pain, violence, abuse, humiliation, being scolded, anything over which we have no control.

Often a blackout lasts only a few seconds, sometimes longer.

Stress mechanism: reactivation and reliving

After the loss of control, our fear centers (the amygdalae) scan the environment, looking for the separately stored alarm signals. After all, our system wants to avoid falling into the same loss of control.

As soon as it at least three of the same sensory signals registers, our body goes into alarm again.

Instantly - and usually without our conscious awareness - our perception of the environment changes from safe to dangerous. Our body immediately goes into fight, flight or freeze mode: in other words, stress.

As soon as this happens, we think that the danger is outside us: with our colleague, our partner, a child, salesperson, our home, the noise, ...

That which gives the same sensory signals as during the earlier blackout is considered as 'topical perpetrator" observed.

And so our consciousness creates a story, a myth to show that it is because of the other person or the situation outside us. And all this while everything takes place in our own brain.

Anything can be a trigger

Because the alarm signals are stored without memory, we know neither their origin nor what reactivates them at this moment.

Anything can be a trigger: a smell, a gesture, a sound.

And three triggers are enough to alarm our entire system.

Stress - which is therefore by definition a reactivation of a past blackout - can overwhelm us at any time.

Sometimes we live with people who constantly trigger us or there are objects in our home that contain alarm signals. Hence, some people live in a constant state of stress: one signal after another puts the body on alarm, resulting in stress exhaustion.

And now...?

When I discovered this through my research, I never thought I would be able to share these findings. For I did not yet know how to transform stress so that the sensory alarm signals could be permanently resolved.

It felt like we would be permanently at the mercy of alarming stimuli.

And that's how I felt myself.

Those who try to reduce their stress usually try to avoid stimuli.

However, this reduction of stimuli amounts to a "managed flight response": you try to avoid the triggers - if you even know which ones they are.

Many of these triggers, by the way, we cannot avoid.

And avoiding stress does not negate triggers.

A lasting solution to stress: Live The Connection

Naturally, I started looking for a method to transform the sensory alarm signals that result from a loss of control for good.

Dr. Bruce Lipton put me on the right track through "The Biology of Belief. I have spent my years immersed in various methods such as PSYCH-K, contextual therapy, PRI, PMA and many others.

The most important aspect of some of these methods proved to be that you engage the subconscious to detect and negate the sensory alarm signals themselves.

That works super fast.

Because the work is done automatically (subconsciously), it goes at least a million times faster than if we wanted to get it done with our consciousness.

Finally, one night in December 2016, a puzzle fell together for me as if by itself, how all the most workable aspects of the various methods could be combined into one powerful method.

Since then, that has been my life's work.

I called the method "Live The Connection" because that's what it's about: living in connection, between your left and right brain, with yourself, your environment, your feeling, your thinking, your acting.

Healing without pain

Working through the subconscious has the added advantage that we don't have to remember what happened to us before. This is a whole lot less painful: you don't have to relive everything all over again.

We don't have to remember all the traumas that caused the blackouts in order to heal them.

Sometimes while working with Live The Connection, memories do naturally surface. But when it happens spontaneously as part of a process, we can trust that it contributes to healing.

Our system knows very well what is best for us.

Adjusting your inner programming

Live The Connection is also used to transform limiting beliefs - which we picked up in blackout situations, among other things - into supportive beliefs. So we can use it to adjust our inner programming.

Because Live The Connection works in these different areas, it is an ideal way to achieve calm and peace, within ourselves and with others.

In my book "De-stressing Yourself in Less Than Five Minutes," you can read more about the stress mechanism, the solution to it and the results it achieves. Information about workshops can be found at www.livetheconnection.com

We can rectify it!

I am so happy that we can correct what has gone wrong in our lives!

Once we know how to do it, we can fully restore our own obvious capabilities for self-healing.

Then we work perfectly together with our self-healing ability...!

Marina Riemslagh, PhD