What Is Stress?

HOW DOES STRESS AFFECT THE BRAIN? 

Your brain’s response to stress is to activate the amygdala, which is towards the back of your brain, in sounding the alarm for the rest of your body to go into the Fight/Flight/Freeze response. But before I go into talking about how stress affects the body, I want to say a few more points that are important about how stress affects the brain.

First, let’s talk about brain chemistry. When we are under a lot of stress, whether this is sudden and acute stress, or whether this is that we are experiencing a period of long-term, sustained, chronic stress, our brain gets the signal to secrete a stress hormone called CORTISOL. The fact that a stress hormone exists is clear evidence that stress is not simply an emotional problem, it is a physiological problem. It exists in our body, in the form of stress hormones. 

Another clear example that stress is a physiological problem for us as humans, when we are trying to make important life choices and decisions and we need to be able to think in a clear, wise and intelligent manner, is that stress blocks our ability to access the part of our brain that is responsible for mindful, conscious, and intelligent decision making. 

The front part of our brain, the frontal lobe, where we have what’s called our Prefrontal Cortex, is what you want to be able to access, if you want to be able to do things like:

• get better grades.
• achieve your academic potential in exam conditions.
• write an excellent essay/research assignment/dissertation.
• make wiser choices about how you spend your time. 
• make healthier choices about what to eat or drink.
• overcome indecision.
• improve your time management skills, or organize yourself and your environment better.
• notice ‘red flags’ when you’re getting to know people in friendships, romantic relationships, or work that signal that it’s in your best interest to put a boundary or reconsider whether this is a safe person to further pursue a relationship with.

However, you cannot access the front part of your brain if you are stuck in a state of chronic or acute stress. The reason for this is that when the brain sets off the signal for the Fight/Flight/Freeze response to take over your body, via the amygdala, your whole body moves into what’s called the Survival Mode. 

You may not be aware of it, but on a subconscious level, your body is focusing all of it’s energy and resources into being on hyper-alert for potential or real current or future threats. In a nutshell, the consequence of this is that you get stuck in your ‘Emotional Brain’, if you will, and your access to your ‘Thinking Brain’ has basically been cut off.

HOW DOES STRESS AFFECT THE BODY?

So now that we’ve talked a bit about how stress affects the brain, let’s consider some of the ways that stress affects the body. Did you know that just because stress is negatively affecting your body, that doesn’t mean you are aware of it’s damaging effect? 

What do I mean by this: if you have spent weeks, months, or years of your life in a state of stress and overwhelm, your nervous system can become accustomed to this new level of stress. So what you consider to be “normal”, because you “feel fine” in this new-normal kind of state, is not necessarily good for your mental or physical health long-term. That’s something to be aware of. I’ll come back to why this is important towards the end of this section.

On a chemical level, the main stress hormone that is running through your body when you’re under acute or chronic stress is a hormone called ADRENALINE. Have you ever seen people pacing back and forth in a hospital while they wait for news from the doctor on how a loved one is doing? Or maybe you’ve felt that surge of energy pushing you forward at the start of a race to run faster than you’re used to during practice training for the event? Or you may have felt a bit jittery as you waited for a test or exam to be handed out, and you noticed that your leg started to automatically move briskly up and down. These are all signs that your body is filled with adrenaline.

Now let’s move on to how stress affects your nervous system. Something that’s very important to understand is that when I’m talking about the impact of stress on the nervous system, I’m talking about what’s called the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). ‘Autonomic’ means ‘automatic’, ‘involuntary’ or ‘unconscious’, right? So remember that these effects are not happening on a conscious level, they are happening on an unconscious level. This is why a lot of times, people who are experiencing a lot of stress may always not even be aware of the impact stress is having on our body. Therefore, increasing self-awareness through increasing body awareness is often an important part of the work I do with clients who come to me ready to work on releasing stress from their body. It is empowering for us to become more skilled in noticing what our body is telling you about precisely what kinds of situations trigger an unhelpful quantity of stress in our body, so that we can learn the lesson we need to learn to break old habits and patterns that are no longer serving us or our relationships.

The impact of stress on the nervous system can become a cause in two ways. The two possible ways in which stress affects the nervous system are accompanied by two distinct sets of behaviors that you can look out for as signals that ‘Something is wrong’ and ‘I need help’ or ‘My child needs help’ or ‘This student needs help’.

POSSIBILITY NO. 1) HYPERAROUSAL OF THE AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM

When the Autonomic Nervous System goes into a state of hyperarousal, this basically means a person gets stuck in a state of hyperactivity. In school-age children and university students, what this could look like is:

• difficulty sitting still for extended periods of time.
• difficulty concentrating on  work due to easily distracted focus.
• difficulty in remembering what you learned due to an increased focus on random environmental stimuli.

POSSIBILITY NO. 2) HYPOAROUSAL OF THE AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM

When the Autonomic Nervous System goes into a state of hypoaraousal, this basically means a person gets stuck in a state of lethargy and low energy. In school-age children and university students, what this can look like is: 

• apathy, inattention or boredom in class.
• wanting to spend more time socializing and making new friends/with friends, but feeling like you don’t have the energy to reach out to someone to chat, or go out, or invite them to spend some time together. 
• difficulty motivating yourself to get things done.

What’s important to remember – and I’d like to stress this  point – is that when the autonomic nervous system goes into a state of hypo or hyperarousal, a student is behaving in ways that they are not consciously aware of. 

They don’t know why they feel so demotivated and they have no energy. They don’t know why they feel hyperactive and are struggling to stay still and concentrate on doing their work and behave. These behaviors are all happening on the unconscious level. They certainly don’t know about how stress affects their nervous system!!

So their conscious brain tries to make sense of what is going on, and it does it’s best to make sense of all of this. And this is where the cognitive component of stress comes in.