Do you wonder why you tend to run away when there is conflict? or why you tend to become combative when there is conflict? or why you tend to just freeze and not be able to move or not be able to defend yourself when you feel like you are in danger? Well, this post is for you!.
My name is Dr Idara Inyang. I am a general practitioner and a mentor health coach and today is the first day of a seven days free online course on practical steps you can take to combat or to overcome anxiety and stress.
We will begin today by asking the question- What is anxiety? why do you get anxious? How to recognize when you are getting anxious
Anxiety is the body’s way of defending itself when it feels stressed. It could present physically, emotionally or cognitively.
Physically- it could be an increased heart rate; Emotionally- it could be a feeling of fear or cognitively- it could be you overthinking
Now, what’s the mechanism behind this? our body has been equipped to be able to help us fight stressful situation or help us defend ourselves when we feel like we are in danger and that is actually a good thing.
Flight, Freeze, Fight and Fawn Stress Response
This is where we start talking about things like the fight, flight, freeze and fawn stress response that is the stress response that makes you run away when you are in danger. For example, you see a lion or or a tiger in front of you chasing you or you see someone coming to attack you, to physically harm you. The fight stress response would make you run or sprint away.
If you are the type of person that instead of running away in the face of danger, you just freeze and stand still. You find that you can’t even move when the person is coming at you with that dangerous weapon, you just freeze and stand there. That is a freeze stress response.
The next one is called the fight stress response is when somebody’s coming to attack you with a weapon, you go ahead and pick up a weapon to attack the person.
Fawn stress response is found in abusive relationships where for example you have an abusive parent and a child. The child might start doing things that is not in his or her best interest. They do things to overly please their parents even when it is detrimental to their wellbeing. They would do everything to please their parent because they are afraid of the repercussions of disobeying them.
Fight, freeze and flight stress responses are actually good because they help to protect you from danger. Now, usually in an healthy mind, after the trigger has been removed, for example, after the person that was pursuing them with a weapon has stopped pursuing them, the stress response also ends, but in an unhealthy mind, even if there is no more danger, the person will still be having those stress responses in their system.
Nervous System- Sympathetic and Parasympathetic Nervous System
The nervous system is responsible for the stress responses. It is divided into -the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system.
The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for making you activated, for making you anxious. It makes you ready for work if you have to go to war. The parasympathetic nervous system is responsible for calming you down when you’re not in danger and usually our body is mostly being controlled by the parasympathetic because you’re not always in a stressful situation
So, in an healthy mind, the parasympathetic nervous system is mostly in control most of the time but in an unhealthy mind the sympathetic nervous system is mostly in control
When the sympathetic nervous system is mostly in control, you start having the fight flight, freeze and fawn stress responses even when there is no immediate danger in front of you.
So, we’re going to be talking about how to make sure that you are mostly influenced by the parasympathetic nervous system everyday and how you can do this is by
1. Identifying your triggers
Your trigger could be work related or maybe you’re having family issues like stress with your partner, your husband, your wife or stress with your children. You have to identify your triggers first because if you cannot identify your triggers, you will not know what to do when you’re triggers show up.
In another post, we will talk about what to do to activate that parasympathetic nervous system to enable your mind to calm down. After you identify your triggers, the next thing to do is identify how your body reacts to those triggers
We’re going to end this post by giving you some stress self-awareness exercise for you to do
2. Identify how your body reacts to those triggers or how your body reacts to stress
At the beginning of this post, I said that when you’re are feeling anxious the symptoms could be physical, emotional or cognitive. Physical symptoms includes increased heart rate, increased blood pressure secondary to increased adrenaline and then emotional symptoms could be feelings of fear, feelings of restlessness and then cognitive symptoms could be you overthinking.
So, I want you to sit down, get a piece of paper and write down your triggers and how your body reacts when those triggers show up and you start feeling stressed. It is important to know that we don’t all react in the same way. Some people overthink, some people become extremely restless while some people sleep all day . So, we need to figure out how YOU react when your triggers show up.
In my next post, I am going to show you some breathing exercises and some grounding exercises that you can use to combat stress when you feel your body reacting in the presence of your triggers. These breating and grounding exercises can be used to calm your mind and body down when your body starts reacting like when you start overthinking, breathing too fast or having elevated blood pressure