What brain science tells us about the true nature of stress.
Are you seeing a massive amount of stressed-out people around you? So many factors in our world right now are putting extra demands on many of us, and we are experiencing unparalleled levels of stress, anxiety and burn-out. I want to delve into the core nature of stress and give you a hack to help you be more resilient. Sound cool? Sound unbelievable? Many of my clients and I have been using this hack successfully for years, and I want to give it you. Right now. Read on, friend!
Antonio Damasio is a Portuguese-American neuroscientist who is widely respected and an author of many popular books helping us understand our brains and how brain science impacts our lives. He was once asked to talk about the most common and harmful misconception people have about our brains. He responded that “We are not thinking machines. We are feeling machines that think.” We tend to think of ourselves and each other as logical beings that make rational choices, despite obvious evidence to the contrary.
We are emotion-driven beings. Dr. Damasio’s research, among others, shows very conclusively that our emotions are at the core of our cognition and decision-making, shaping, shading, and distorting everything we are taking in.
So, what does this have to do with the nature of stress? Everything! Damasio’s work provides scientific validation of the linkage between feelings and the body by highlighting the connection between mind and nerve cells. When we perceive a threat, our brain goes in to fight or flight mode, focused on survival. Stress is a form of threat. It can be an actual threat (a bear is chasing me) or a perceived threat ‘I think he’s trying to take my job’ – the brain and body react the same to both.
Stress is any demand placed on your brain. So, any event or scenario that makes you feel frustrated, upset or nervous triggers the stress. So here’s the important part of understanding the nature of stress– What puts stress on you might not put stress on me, and what might have caused me stress 5 years ago now causes me no stress at all. Stress is caused by the perception we have about the demand being placed on us. NOT the thing itself. And the source of our emotional response to the demand is our perception that our needs are being threatened.
‘OK, got it. But what do I DO about it? I can’t control my emotional reactions!’ Science disagrees. And that’s exactly where we need to go! You ready for the hack? You absolutely CAN change the ingrained responses you currently have to stressors in your life. There are two parts to this.
First, we know we humans can rewire our brains, and that should give you all the hope in the world! When you experience a stress trigger, like realizing you messed something up, or someone on your team dropping a ball, or someone acting like a jerk to you, you have these deeply ingrained paths in your brain that tell you what to think, based on the emotion that is triggered. Imagine a bunch of grooves running through your brain, and the trigger sets you on one of those familiar paths where you think all the thoughts you usually think in that situation. Now, imagine that those paths are highly flexible, like you can come along with a broom, and sweep it away, clearing up an infinite number of possible paths, or thought-trains and responses. You just have to pause, in the moment of the trigger, and do anything other than what you would normally do; anything other than your natural inclination, and poof! – you’ve hopped right off that path. You can think anything you like, and I encourage you to get CURIOUS. Instead of thinking a bunch of ingrained crap, start asking questions, like:
‘what is motivating this person right now?’
‘what is a better path forward from this?’
‘who do I want to be in this situation?’
So, the first part of the hack is to pause and do something unnatural, sweeping away the normal chain of thought and action you would normally take, and then get curious. This turns off the ‘survival brain’ mode of thinking that emotion triggers, and turns on the logical part of your brain. Powerful stuff!
And the second part of the hack– You can also shift and change some of the core, often sub-conscious beliefs that are driving your stress responses. Thus, allowing yourself to become less triggered by things in the first place, and slowing or eliminating the flow of negative emotions that that particular stimulus induces in you. We all have a paradigm, or a filter through which we view and interpret situations and stimuli in our lives. This paradigm is constructed by all the core beliefs you have about yourself and the world you live in. Like ‘the world is unsafe’ or ‘people are selfish and shouldn’t be trusted’ or ‘I need work hard for people to value me.’ These beliefs aren’t you. And they aren’t necessarily true, though we tend to believe that every silly thought that comes into our head is true (which is ridiculous!). And, at the very least, these beliefs can often be completely unhelpful at the very least. So, the second, simple part of the stress hack is to ask yourself the following questions, after you are no longer emotional:
What is threatening me about this situation?
How much of that threat is real or likely?
What is that little annoying voice in my head telling me? (That voice that chimes in every time I’m triggered in this way.)
Is that voice helpful, or can I choose a different, more logical and helpful approach here?
This may seem pedantic, but it is incredibly powerful. I use this EVERY time I feel even a tiny stress trigger, and I can honestly say I have very, very little stress in my life. It was work, but it just took a little discipline, and a lot of honesty with myself.
Personally, I’ve now redefined stress as “the negative interpretation of adversity.” If I embraced this adversity that is triggering me, would I be stressed? Usually, the answer is a resounding no.
Of course, we should become heightened and engaged when we are actually experiencing a clear and undeniable threat (which is rarer than you might think). But most of the time, the dynamics in our lives that are causing us stress are not as dangerous as we think they are, and if we allow ourselves to go into survival mode, we will just think the same thoughts and make the same choices we’ve always made. Which is fine, if you want the exact same results you’ve always gotten.
I invite you to try the hack. And reach out to me if it works, or if it doesn’t work! I’m here for you.