How stress works
Stress is like an assassin that can really attack anyone. We live in a time when stress is so common that we really don't realize how much and how often we experience stress.
Dr. Luc Swinnen, a Flemish authority o.v. stress says our alarm system kicks in an average of 8 to 12 times per hour. That's every five minutes!
Why is it that we notice it so little?
Why?
To understand this, it is first necessary to know how stress works. Rather, the cause of stress is loss of control, often hidden in our childhood. When you experience a situation that is physically or mentally threatening, your nervous system goes into survival mode.
That means your thinking is turned off and the primary parts of your brain take over by moving you to safety.
Because yes, if you almost get under a car on your bike, you have absolutely no use for logical reasoning, digesting your club sandwich de luxe (no matter how delicious it was) or fighting a virus.
Everything you don't need to acutely 'save' yourself is turned off: your ability to consider things calmly, your fine sense of touch and empathic response to people, as well as your digestion. Your self-healing immune system is put "on hold" until the imminent danger has passed.
Because yes, if you almost get under a car on your bike, you have absolutely no use for logical reasoning, digesting your club sandwich de luxe (no matter how delicious it was) or fighting a virus.
What you need in that moment are the right hormones that immediately spur you into action. You get a huge boost of energy to flick your handlebars or possibly jump off your bike at lightning speed.
What is happening in your brain?
What happens in your brain at that moment is extremely interesting.
This is because this experience is not stored as a memory - as one coherent picture or story - but all the separate, sensory elements of this situation are stored separately from each other and linked to the great guardians of your alarm system: the amygdalae.
Why? They are meant for later, to notice and prevent imminent danger in the future.
If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, the alarm centers will immediately sound the alarm again. This happens the moment at least three of the same sensory signals are present in a situation: the same smell, a visual signal such as a color, shape or logo, for example, a sound of squealing tires or music. It can be anything.
Sensory signals
Everything we see, hear, smell, taste and feel is stored in our subconscious. Everything. Of truly ALL our experiences.
When those sensory signals have become linked to the amygdalae by impending danger through a situation of loss of control (this is trauma to the brain), these have become triggers that can set off your alarm system.
Thus, you might imagine how it is possible that we can be "triggered" on average every 5 minutes, because our database of sensory signals is vast.
The number of smaller and larger traumas we experience is also much greater than we often think.
Because trauma = loss of control and we experience loss of control very, very often in our lives. Especially in the first 7 years of our lives. After all, as children we are dependent on our environment and so the chance of a situation of loss of control is very high.
Why we don't notice
Okay, back to the question of why we don't notice stress. The answer is twofold. On the one hand, we have no memory of the connection between the sensory signals attached to our alarm center and what is happening right now in the present situation.
For example, if as a child you regularly received a slap from someone sitting to your left at the table, you now get nervous (stressed) from someone standing or sitting to your left. Because you can't make the connection, you don't notice it.
On the other hand, we are so used to stress that we don't recognize our physical stress responses and behavioral stress reactions as stress. If we notice it at all, we just find it annoying.
That's just the way I am...
So much of our behavior consists of stress behavior, but we don't "label" it that way. The many forms of "fight, flight and freeze" are seen by most people as part of their personality: "That's just the way I am.
For example, someone who experiences himself or herself as "a quiet one" may have great difficulty expressing himself or herself because he or she used to be judged mercilessly for expressing his or her feelings. Because this happened at a young age, this person has come to know himself or herself as a quiet person. But is this really the case? Isn't it just stress?
Or someone who is always trying to do everything perfectly. Perhaps a good "trait," but it too may be stress-based. Because in the past it was never clear when something was good enough, comments were only made when something went wrong and you rarely if ever received a compliment, then you may develop perfectionism to avoid comments and finally get a compliment.
Or someone who chooses never to lose out and already collects ammunition to shoot with in case he or she is attacked - attack is the best defense. If you are constantly under attack as a child, this may be a way to survive these attacks. Some people think they are fiery in nature. However, it may be that you are very regularly under stress and show fighting behavior in the process.
We are so programmed
We experience most moments of loss of control in the first 7 years of our lives. During these years we are programmed and the foundation of our stress behavior is laid.
But we don't realize this. We don't know that the behavior we think of as our normal behavior is actually stress behavior.
On top of that, stress "sticks. So the more stress you experience, the more stress you create. Because stress behavior causes problems and problems cause stress.
And we don't stop doing it because it's automatically directed behavior: you're programmed that way. It goes automatically. You don't consciously direct this behavior, you don't want it at all: your subconscious does it automatically, you have little or no ability to stop it.
Without becoming aware that the behavior you do not want is stress behavior, you cannot stop it. You will first have to notice that these are stress behaviors. That's the first step toward what we call "a connected brain.
Like a frog in a cooking pot takes no action because it does not realize that the water is getting hotter and hotter, we often continue to accumulate stress for years and years.
We don't realize that we are slowly being "cooked" in our stress, often resulting in burnout or other physical and mental symptoms.
Three main reasons
So there are 3 main reasons why stress behavior is so difficult to recognize and change:
- You cannot see the logical connection between your stress behavior and the trigger.
- It is automatically controlled behavior, so you can't "just change it" by making a conscious effort to do so. Sitting around watching it without being able to change it will only make you more nervous and desperate.
- You are so used to it that you think it is part of your personality.
'Automatically controlled' means it is controlled by the same force that causes you to breathe and your organs to function normally. Have you ever tried to stop breathing? That's impossible!
But how do you solve this?
You must learn to re-program your stress-programmed subconscious with confidence and peace in order to truly blossom, step by step.
Then you finally discover who you really are, without stress behaviors and with a connected brain. Then you are in connection with yourself and your environment.
In one of the next blogs, I will go a little deeper into stress behavior.
If you have any questions, be sure to get in touch by sending an email to marina@trajectdoorbreken.com.
PS. Did you see the little video of Gabor Maté in the blog 'Juvenile trauma and the ACE study'
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