Understanding Stress

It may surprise you, but stress isn't always a bad thing. It was a tool that helped our ancestors survive (and thrive) in the wild. Think about it. If our ancestors didn’t feel stressed about predators or worried if they could gather enough food, they wouldn’t have survived.

These days, it can feel like stress does more harm than good. Uncontrolled, it can affect our mental and physical health. Stress can increase the risk of anxiety, depression, and heart disease.

The first step to getting stress under control, and even making it work for you, is understanding how stress works in your body.

Your brain is always on alert. It's constantly checking the world around you, working to keep you safe. If it sees a threat, it triggers what's known as the "stress response." This is also known as the "fight or flight" response.

The stress response fills your body with hormones that make your body and brain work harder and push beyond their normal limits.

Once your brain decides the threat is over, it turns off the stress response. Your body and brain both relax and recover from the extra work they did to get you through that stressful time. Your brain then goes back to watching for the next possible threat.

The stress response can happen when you have to speak in public or when a wild boar is chasing you in the woods. In the first situation, the stress response happens because you experience fear and worry about judgment or rejection. The second situation is closer to what our ancestors may have experienced to survive. Both of these situations can trigger the same fight or flight response even though only one situation is life or death.

Stress can be good and give us a boost when it is turned on and then turned off when we get through the stressful event. Stress boosts our energy and focus to help us do a better job when speaking in public or to save our lives when running from a wild boar.

The problem in our modern world is that the same stress response can sometimes get turned on too high or too often. This is when stress gets in the way and can even harm our health.