Stressed You Are?

Stress. A common theme in our lives. We are no stranger to it. Stress can even dominate our exsistance. It seems to have with me, so I have been reading up on what I can do to change my life. This is what I have learned recently:

Stressors induce either fight or flight reactions, but why?
The sympathetic nervous system in your body induces your fight or flight reactions. We focus our attention to react to the stressor or danger toward the outside world to protect ourselves. It is a survival mechanism. So what happens when we as individuals constantly engage our sympathetic nervous system into a fight or flight reaction so that we can survive this chaotic, busy, face paced world? We lose the balance of engaging our parasympathetic nervous system which releases natural endorphins and relaxing chemicals into the body. We become stressed, burntout. The consistant loss of this balance causes chronic headaches, anxiety, depression, addiction, sadness, fear, tension....equivically what we call stress.

Millions face this embalance, so we search to find it through medicating ourselves with antidepressants, painkillers, drugs, sex, food, ect...because these things engage the parasympathetic systems in our bodies and make us feel "better".
But what if we were to learn how to engage this side of our nervous system at a whim, and restore that balance naturally ?

When the sympathetic nervous system is engaged you are at the ready to fight off danger...the stressors in your life...hence, the mind or body cannot relax. Physically the mind chemically will not allow positive thoughts to penetrate because it is preparing you to flee the danger or fight it. For example, your mind says you will die, you will not survive, if you are not ready. So phrases of negativity are prevalent like 'I cannot' or 'I'll never be able..'. We become depressed. When we restore the balance of engaging our parasympathetic nervous system along with the sympathetic, our brains will naturally allow positive thoughts in, along with feelings of calm, hope, happiness, and harmony. We can then become reflective about life instead of constantly and solely being reactive.

So how do we engage the parasympathetic part of ourselves without that prescription for Xanax? Many techniques can be used like becoming aware of your breathing. Concious awareness of your breathing and posture will bring forth a concious awareness of self. This can lead toward engaging those parts of the nervous sytem that will bring balance to stress naturally. Meditating, prayer, excersice, relaxation away from stressors, and diet have been found to enhance engagement of the parasympathetic. What many of you are doing by using the twelve steps in AA are teaching your bodies how to engage your parasympathetic nervous systems naturally through things like prayer and reflection.

We cannot eliminate stress, but we can find a balance that will allow us to cope with that stress more effectively by learning about engaging that parasympathetic part of our nervous systems. And it may be as simple as learning how to breath properly. Look it up. I find this fascinating.