How Do You Change a Stress Response?
Sep 17, 2024
The National Institute of Health lists that up to 90% of all illnesses are related to stress.
Chronic or prolonged states of “stress” within our nervous system creates a program that doesn’t give our Body’s innate healing wisdom the permission it needs to fully heal ourselves, to break down and transmute our food into fuel, or to tend the parts of our system that need daily support. Not to mention it robs our cognitive brain of blood and the support it needs to help us retain, create, and process information.
When our system believes we are under threat it will force our Body and Mind to stay in an internal stance of flight or fight, which leads to a shutdown of our normal operating procedures, leaving us at risk for things like:
- Sleep issues
- Heart rate issues
- Blood pressure
- Gut health and digestive issues
- Headaches and migraines
- Chronic fatigue or low energy
- Depression
- Irritation and moodiness
The list goes on and on.
This is why in today's world it is common for any type of health and wellness professional - allopathic and alternative/holistic - to tell their clients they need better “stress management and reduction.” skills.
Yet, how do we do that? Especially in the hustle and bustle culture we live in, how do we eliminate stress from our lives?
The typical list of interventions includes:
- Mindfulness or meditation
- Receiving weekly/monthly massages,
- Reiki and other Energy Work sessions,
- Starting a yoga or other body movement exercises routine
- and Developing a sleep routine.
All these are wonderful suggestions, heck I am a provider and teacher of all of these!
AND in most circumstances, simply engaging in one or any of these activities doesn’t directly change your real stress responses and actually can often subtly drive your system into a stronger “stress” response and reactivity. Ugh the opposite of what you are trying to do!
This is because on their own each one of these interventions is missing a HUGE key component to healthy stress management and reduction - which is:
“It's not stress that kills us, it’s our reaction to it.”
This quote and teaching comes directly from THE founder of Stress Theory, an Endocrinologist and Scientist, Hans Selye.
Selye spent his life researching and understanding the relationship that stress has on our system, and exploring what is stress. His most prominent finding was - stress is not the problem- stress is not the problem, it's our response and reaction to it that is the issue.
SO if we want to change the effects that stress is having on us, sure we can try to eliminate unnecessary stressors. We can even reclaim our time and make better choices that establish healthier habits and work/life balance. However, the first and most important focus needs to be on helping our system change our response or as we are doing those things is helping our system change our response and the relationship it has with stress.
Because Selye also says, “The only time our body is not in stress is when it is dead.”
That's because stress is not something we don’t want to do or that is a threat to us. Our Body sees stress as any type of request. A request is anything that requires us to excerpt energy and move into action. Therefore a stress response is simply any reaction, or series of actions that we have which meets the demands of that request.
Our bodies are always engaging in stress - period.
Therefore the wiser question is:
“How do I change my reaction and my relationship with stress?”
This conversation is SUCH a passion of mine because it is the key to a wellness and healing routine that actually helps you heal your system instead of creating more harm to you.
I explore this question in a recent episode of Soulful Practices Podcast:
In the podcast, I share a simple practice that helps us pause the habitual programming that we subconsciously have on how we react to ANY stressor or request and begin to build out new healthy empowered reactions and choices.
When we find ourselves in a stress response to a request we can pause and ask three basic questions:
- What is really up for me right now? Giving yourself permission to pull back the curtain on your reaction and lovingly challenge it with curiosity of what is driving your choices and response.
- How am I getting ready to move and engage myself or another? Once you make a choice or see your automatic choice pause and get curious about what is really driving that movement - fear, anger, seeking acceptance, or undervaluing myself or another.
- What would be the “best” way for me to engage in this request? Run through the three levels of reflection:
- First, is it a request that matches my current values?
- Second, is it a request that parts of me feel I must do and why?
- Third, how does my Heart and Soul want me to work with this request?
This simple practice of pausing and exploring these questions will truly reveal to you the subconscious programming that is ruling your Body and your Mind.
Try engaging in this simple reflective Self-Work practice and see how it can help you retrain and change your system’s response and relationship with stress - which is the often missing first step in EVERY self-care and wellness routine.