When your body becomes accustomed to a chronic state of anxiety.
The stress response gives us the strength and speed to ward off or flee from an impending threat. But when it persists, stress can put us at risk for obesity, heart disease, cancer, and a variety of other illnesses.
Have you ever anticipated a bad event before it has happened? Has it ever been hard for you to accept a good event in your life because you are busy preparing yourself for harder times? According to Behar (2009) and Newman (2011) worry can be a maladaptive strategy to avoid negative internal experiences.
Did you know that when a mammalian female is anxious, on top of stress hormones, she produces love hormones? To be exact, she produces oxytocin. Oxytocin is often called the ‘love’ hormone because it promotes feelings of bonding/attachment in both men and women.
Moreover, at times of stress, oxytocin dampens the fight-or-flight response and triggers the ‘tend and befriend’ response in females. According to Taylor et al. (2000), women are more likely to protect their offspring (tend) and form alliances with other women (befriend), rather than fight an adversary or flee. Furthermore, the fight or flight response may be counterintuitive for women, as running (flight) might be seen as a sign of weakness and put their offspring at risk of danger.
I wonder how this mechanism affects women in the 21st century. While the fight or flight response may have been a useful survival mechanism for our ancestors, who faced genuinely life-threatening situations (e.g. from predators), the stressors of modern day life are very different. Unfortunately, the body can also overreact to stressors that are not life-threatening, such as traffic jams, work pressure, and family difficulties. This can repeatedly activate the fight or flight response, which can have a negative consequence on our health.
For example, humans who face a lot of stress and continually activate the sympathetic nervous system, continually increase their blood pressure which can cause damage to their blood vessels and cause heart disease. It can also change the structure of the brain according to new study. Chronic stress has a shrinking effect on the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for memory and learning. While stress can shrink the prefrontal cortex, it can increase the size of the amygdala, which can make the brain more receptive to stress.This suggests that the fight or flight response is a maladaptive response in modern-day life.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 in 13 globally suffers from anxiety. The WHO reports that anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorders worldwide with specific phobia, major depressive disorder and social phobia being the most common anxiety disorders.
Over the years, researchers have learned not only how and why these reactions occur, but have also gained insight into the long-term effects chronic stress has on physical and psychological health.
So what is anxiety and what happens to our body?
Anxiety is a psychological, physiological, and behavioral state induced in animals and humans by a threat to well-being or survival, either actual or potential.
When someone experiences a stressful event, the amygdala responds to sensory input (what we see, hear, smell, etc.) and connects sensory input with emotions associated with the fight or flight response (e.g. fear and anger). Accordingly the amygdala, an area of the brain that contributes to emotional processing, sends a distress signal to the hypothalamus.
The hypothalamus is a bit like a command center. This area of the brain communicates with the rest of the body through the autonomic nervous system, which controls such involuntary body functions as breathing, blood pressure, heartbeat, and the dilation or constriction of key blood vessels and small airways in the lungs called bronchioles.
The autonomic nervous system has two components, the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system functions like a gas pedal in a car. It triggers the fight-or-flight response, providing the body with a burst of energy so that it can respond to perceived dangers. The parasympathetic nervous system acts like a brake. It promotes the “rest and digest” response that calms the body down after the danger has passed.
In addition, when faced with a dangerous situation our reaction is not limited to the fight or flight response; some psychologists suggest that humans engage in an initial ‘freeze’ response. Gray (2000) suggests that the first response to danger is to avoid confrontation altogether, which is demonstrated by a freeze response. During the freeze response animals and humans are hyper-vigilant, while they appraise the situation to decide the best course of action for that particular threat.
Study show, sympathetic nervous system activity is expressed by increased arousal and physical symptoms that support the freezing response include increased heart rate and cardiac output, increased arterial pressure, inhibition of digestive function and increased respiration, in its turn increasing perfusion of active tissue.
All things considered, can you imagine the long term effects of stress on the body?
Research now shows that such long-term activation of the stress system can have a hazardous, even lethal effect on the body, increasing risk of obesity, heart disease, depression, and a variety of other illnesses.
Once activated, the stress response switches off the hormonal systems regulating growth, reproduction, metabolism, and immunity. Short term, the response is helpful, allowing us to divert biochemical resources to dealing with the threat.
When your body becomes accustomed to chronic stress, it is time to make lifestyle changes. The first step is to make behavioural changes that will help your cognition and brain patterns.
How to help yourself?
What if you are stressed everyday? If you feel you are suffering with the fight or flight state on a regular basis, it would be advisable to make sure you get good nutrition, hydration, exercise and relaxation to help to combat the effect.
Drinking chamomile and valerian teas can help with anxiety. Research shows, quitting or having less than usual amounts of alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine will help you do better with stress and anxiety.
Having said that, only relaxation training and CBT have been noted as empirically supported treatments for general anxiety disorder.
- Relaxation techniques. These are activities that trigger the relaxation response, a physiological change that can help lower your blood pressure, heart rate, breathing rate, oxygen consumption, and stress hormones. You can achieve this with activities such as meditation, guided imagery, yoga, and deep breathing exercises.
- Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). For people with anxiety disorders, negative ways of thinking fuel the negative emotions of anxiety and fear. The goal of cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety is to identify and correct these negative thoughts and beliefs. The idea is that if you change the way you think, you can change the way you feel.
And to change the way you think, changing your behaviour could do wonders.
Transtheoretical Model of Behaviour Change. What is it and how can it help your anxiety?
The transtheoretical model for change proposes that people transition through defined stages in the process of altering problematic behavior patterns. The stages are defined as:
- Precontemplation - where no problem is acknowledged and there is no consideration given toward change.
- Contemplation - where a problem is acknowledged and serious thought is given to change in the future.
- Preparation - where some behavioral change is initiated.
- Action- where substantive behavioral efforts lead to alteration of the previous pattern.
- Maintenance - where change is sustained through continued effort.
After acknowledging that there is a problem, try the method and print outs below to help yourself.
Pick a situation that made you anxious. Answer the following questions about that situation.
TRIGGER (the problem):
- Identify your triggers.
- Learn how to minimise the external triggers by managing your environment.
- Track the trigger’s origin.
- Learn ways of coping with internal and external triggers.
For example,
- Deep breathing
- Expressive writing
- Grounding
- Mindfulness
- Relaxation
- Self-soothing
- Social support
THOUGHTS:
- Unwanted intrusive thoughts are stuck thoughts that cause great distress.
- Try to replace negative thoughts with accurate, encouraging ones.
- Practice healthy thinking every day. After a while, healthy thinking will come naturally to you.
- Notice and stop your negative thoughts or “self-talk.” Turn negative self talk into proactive positive self talk.
FEELINGS:
- Learn how to sit with your feelings.
- Accept your feelings.
- Try to take deep breaths in order to relax your body so your mind can work better.
- Do not focus on the things you cannot change — focus your time and energy into helping yourself feel better.
BEHAVIOR:
- Identify the behaviour that causes you stress.
- Think of ways to change your problem causing behaviour.
- Adopt healthy lifestyle habits. Movement and exercise will help to elevate the feel good hormones. Don’t use alcohol and drugs to cope with your symptoms. You will have the same problem the next day. Eat well-balanced meals (This is very essential, next article will be on this subject) and sleep on time.
- Write down your coping tools and mechanisms then try to eliminate the unhealthy ways of coping one by one.
Self-Talk help
- I expect ______ to happen.
- I am afraid ____ will happen.
How else can you think about?
What can you do to make this less scary?
What can you do now to make it better?
Develop a plan: negative self talk into proactive positive self talk.
Print outs to help.
