The Impact of Stress
Stress is acutely uncomfortable. Its purpose is to be uncomfortable so as to motivate you to take action of some kind. We can compare stress to a house alarm system – loud and jarring, it is designed to grab your attention. If your house alarm goes off, you wouldn’t just sit there in the discomfort of the alarm blaring, you would go and look for the root of the trigger and once you have gotten to the source, you turn off the alarm with a code. The purpose of a house alarm is to keep you physically safe and stress shares the exact same purpose, along with one other – stress is designed to keep you emotionally safe also.
We have been taught to ignore, deny and avoid our emotions and therefore by default we have been taught to ignore stress. (Read more here on Emotional Development) Stress then builds up, layer upon layer until it becomes overwhelming and hard to ignore. It is supposed to be hard to ignore because stress needs a resolution and that does not mean that the problem, issue or trigger causing the stress has to go away entirely, a resolution can be brought about much easier than we think.
The impact of stress can range on a spectrum from low impact to high impact and stress can impact us in many different ways as individuals. Everybody has their own unique window of tolerance, the official term is allostatic load, which governs how much of a stress load our bodies and minds can tolerate before they reach the tipping point. Your allostatic load is influenced by your childhood, the quality of care given in terms of meeting your needs, your emotional development trajectory, the level of unprocessed trauma you are carrying, your environment and resources at your disposal.
Stress builds up in layers and is held jointly by your body (in particular within your autonomic nervous system) and in your mind (in particular in your subconscious mind). I compare it to having a smart phone with open tabs on a browser. Anything that triggers stress, gets an open tab. If you do not consciously close each tab individually, it will stay open, running in the background of your subconscious mind and drawing off your mental energy. Imagine having 10 tabs open at one time, which is in no way uncommon and probably more the norm nowadays – how much energy that is siphoning that could be utilised in so many better ways.
So, we have taken a general look at stress, now it is time to dive deeper into the impacts. One thing I want you to bear in mind, is that our response to stress will always be primitive. Our stress response mechanism comes from the earliest evolved part of our brain (the Lizard or reptilian brain). This may sound a bit exaggerated but it’s a fact – a stress response is designed to help us survive in the face of any threat, so it stands to reason that the bottom line fear or threat with any stress response is a fear of death, though you will rarely be consciously aware of that factor.
Let’s imagine something stressful has happened, for example, you have a conflict with a friend that you value greatly – the conflict has not been resolved and has left lots of tension between the two of you. You have just walked away from the situation feeling very stressed.
Impact on our mind
What happens to our mind when stress has been triggered is that it will hyper focus on that trigger and the unconscious perceived threat that underlies it. For relational stress in particular, the biggest threat is disconnection and rejection – from your loved ones, your community, your tribe. Back in the day when the primitive human brain was evolving and humans lived in caves, if you were rejected from your tribe and ousted from your cave, it would have been impossible to survive alone in the wild. You likely would have been eaten by a sabre-tooth tiger. Logically nowadays we know this would not be the case but the primitive brain is not logical, it only has 2 settings – threat (no matter how big or small or safety).
You are now on autopilot with a hyper-focus on the threat (conflict with said friend) and all you can think about is that. You run scenarios through your head in terms of what you would have said differently or what you might say if you bumped into them. Your ego has now kicked into gear and is coming up with all manner of assumptions and scenarios. We lose sight of the bigger picture and we find it very hard to think of anything else. Without knowing the code to turn off the alarm, how are you meant to turn it off? A huge amount of mental energy goes to this scenario and will continue to do so until it is brought to a resolution of some kind.
Impact on our body
When our mind is stuck in a stress response, this greatly impacts our body. The mind is unconsciously sending danger signals to the body and autonomic nervous system. Aside from the uncomfortable feelings and sensations felt while the body is in a stress response, there is much more going on under the surface that we may not be aware of. Stress hormones are released to flood the body with energy in order to fight or flight (whichever is more appropriate to the stressor). The fight or flight response when activated acutely or in the short term poses no risk to our body but when your body and mind get stuck in a spiral of stress responses, this can have a detrimental impact on your health over time.
When we are in a calm and peaceful state, blood is flowing freely to all reaches of our body but most importantly to our vital organs. When in a fight or flight response, blood flow is directed away from your stomach, intestines towards the lungs, the heart and the outer limbs – in order to fight better and run faster. If you are in a fight or flight response more than you are out of it so to speak, blood flow to your digestive system, reproductive system and other organs will be severely disrupted.
The purpose of blood flow is to transport essential resources such as oxygen, nutrients, hormones, to transport waste out of the body, along with regulating temperature, pH, hydration and protection against infection. Naturally, when blood flow is reduced to any organ or system over time this will have a knock-on effect on the adequate functioning of that organ or system and this can lead to disease or illness. Our digestive system in particular takes a huge hit as blood flow is greatly reduced to the stomach and intestines so food does not get adequately digested and absorbed. Over time, blood pressure may increase as there is pressure on the heart to pump blood faster when in fight or flight. So the impact on the body in the longer term is that stress throws all our bodily systems off balance which affects our health and wellbeing.
Impact on relating and connection
Stress impacts our relationships in a few different ways. When we are on autopilot and hyper-focusing on whatever is stressing us out, we have tunnel vision for whatever is stressing us out – we lack presence and become quite disconnected from our true nature. Our attention to everything going on around us gets quickly limited and the more stress we are under, the more we feel pulled in many different directions. This is very taxing to the mind and body and can make our nervous system very sensitive and reactive.
So when we are under stress we can be quite snappy or prickly. We are not as present with the people around us or our environment. Mistakes are made more easily. When people around us need something from us it can feel very taxing. When there is a lot of sensory information or our attention is needed in a particular way it can be difficult to meet those requirements. When we are not present with those we value, they feel it. When we don’t have the mental or physical energy to listen or hold space with another person they know it – some people take that personally and may feel not good enough. They may unconsciously protect themselves from the sting of that.
Bit by bit, connections are impacted and if we continue to let stress overwhelm us, that can be the cause of tension and conflict in relationships. If tension and conflict are avoided and not addressed directly, connection breaks down and this can be detrimental to relationships in the longer term.
The take away
As you can see, stress in and of itself is not the issue. Being a human on this earth has always been stressful and always will be stressful, that is a given. But it doesn’t have to take from your quality of life in the form of your peace, health and connections. This is where Stress Recovery comes in – click to find out more.