STRESS
WITH DR. HEIDI HANNA
YOUR BRAIN ON STRESS
The Human Epidemic
JUST AS your mind finally exhausts its relentless efforts to mentally prepare you for the day ahead, you are jolted awake by an alarm clock with a groggy awareness: there is not enough time in the day to get it all done. This seemingly simple thought shifts your brain-body chemistry into a state of survival, energizing only the most critical elements of your operating system.
Yet, when moments become available for us to rest and recharge, we find ourselves restlessly stirring, reaching out for something to“ kill time” even though we complain there is never enough of it to begin with. Our deep-seated longing for information, connection and validation makes technology an open source for our drug of choice: constant stimulation that provides a temporary fix to override the exhaustion we fear will take us down for good.
“ If I do stop, what if I can’ t start back up again?”
WELCOME TO THE HUMAN ENERGY CRISIS— THE EPIDEMIC OF OUR TIME
We’ re running on empty, and the problem is not that we don ' t know what to do. It ' s that we don ' t have the energy to put any simple practices into place. We know we should eat better. We know we should move our bodies more regularly. We know we should get more sleep, take more breaks and spend more time investing in meaningful relationships. But what I ' ve learned in over a decade of consulting with organizations about health and performance initiatives is that common sense is certainly not common practice.
The fact is there is not enough time in the day to complete every task that you could possibly hope to accomplish. There never will be. And this perception of not having enough— whether it be time, money, food, energy or love— sends a message to the brain that there is a threat lingering somewhere in the near future. This immediately triggers our innate stress response, designed to motivate us to get more of what we might need. If we never sense that we have enough, we will always be in a state of chronic stress whether we recognize it or not. If our environment is intentionally designed to trigger desires for more in order to make us consume as much as possible, how will we ever break the cycle?
THE NEW SCIENCE OF STRESS
When it comes to human beings, it turns out that stress is not a noun or a verb, but rather a dynamic relationship between our perceptions of capacity versus demand. When we have what we need to effectively adapt, challenges can ultimately make us stronger. There are countless stories and studies of people who experience growth post trauma rather than disorder. When resources are inadequate, tension or strain results and what initially holds us together eventually breaks us apart.
As Robert Sapolsky describes in his seminal book, Why Zebras Don’ t Get Ulcers, most animals experience stress when they realize something truly threatening is in their environment. Because of our advanced neurological networks, only humans( and perhaps a few of our closest relatives [ still to be determined ]) are able to plan or predict that something dangerous might occur in the near future. In a very protective design feature, our brains create neural networks( or maps) that recognize patterns over time. They make assumptions based on those patterns as to what might happen. One tricky element is that sometimes the patterns that we believe exist are merely worrisome thoughts, messages passed down over generations or plots picked up in movies along the way.
This leads us to the good, the bad and the ugly of our relationship with stress. The good news is our experience is determined by our perception and therefore can be highly modified by our own mind. The bad news is that our experience is determined by our perception and therefore can be highly modified by our own mind. So depending on our state of mind at the time, our response can either help us or hurt us. The ugly part of our relationship with stress is that sometimes, dare I say most of the time, our minds are not our own.
Without targeted focus on our own internal dialogue, our minds are easily swayed towards the goals of others. It is the brain’ s beautiful sensitivity that
10 WINTER 2017