As a Stress Expert, I am often backed into a corner at a party by an earnest person who asks, urgently, “So, how do you handle stress?”
I try not to burble incoherently, but it’s hard. They want a one-second answer to a complex problem.
I thought I’d start by describing what we are up against, as a preface to providing simple stress solutions to specific challenges in the upcoming posts.
So today, you are going to hear about:
The Real Story of Stress
(Anthropologists: don’t read any further)
Millions of years ago, our ancestors lived in a dangerous world, filled with fierce creatures , such as saber-toothed tigers, from which they had to defend themselves.
They also had to go out with clubs and put themselves in danger to bring down their dinner, such as, say, a mastodon.
To get the physical strength to run and fight, they developed a physical system to make all this possible. They needed to bring oxygen to the powerful muscles engaged in running and fighting in order to burn the sources of energy stored in their bodies and to turn on the power they needed. (Remember the high school science demonstration where you dropped a match in a jar and clapped the lid on? The match extinguished when the oxygen ran out. Same principle. Remember to breathe, so you don’t extinguish.)
Where did they get all that oxygen? By opening up their air passages widely to bring in more oxygen, which entered their blood stream through the lungs. Their rapidly beating hearts then accelerated to pump this oxygen-rich blood out to the muscles, especially those engaged in fighting and fleeing. Their arteries constricted to push that blood quickly to the big muscles of the back and legs. (This is an example of high blood pressure with a purpose) Digestion kind of shuts down, because you don’t need to worry about digestion when you are afraid of being digested.
All of these changes happened automatically, and in an instant.
They were examples of what we now call the Type A personality.
After the danger was over, flushed with success and excitement, they retreated to their caves and….well, they created descendants. Us.
Meanwhile, the Type B cave people strolled along calmly, sniffing the daisies and admiring the view. Many of them never made it back to the cave. Hence, few descendants.
So here we are, most of us descendants of powerful fighters and flee-ers, all of us equipped to do the same, but lacking a significant amount of saber-toothed tigers and other physical dangers in our environment.
What we have instead are a lot of social dangers: fear of criticism, of being laughed at, of being rejected, of failing. Our brain fails to distinguish the difference between a real, life-threatening danger and a sharp remark directed at us that sounds like something in a television sit-com – a line at which everyone laughs but the target.
You’re all ready for a fight or a flight, but where can you run? Who can you beat up? (besides yourself, of course, which we tend to do very well).
In future newsletters, I’ll be giving tips that you can incorporate into your life to deal with this dilemma Nature has handed us.
In the meantime, try this very useful exercise:
Stick out your tongue..W a a a y out.
Now laugh like a dog – saying “ha, ha, ha” out loud in human language.
(If you don’t like dogs, think of dolphins.)
As you pant, make your mouth curve up in a smile. Keep up this humorous panting for at least 30 seconds.
You’ll feel a little ridiculous, but part of good stress management is learning not to take yourself too seriously
If you do it right, you’ll feel a real release in the muscles of your chest, diaphragm and abdomen, and elsewhere, too. Unbeknownst to you, your heart will slow down, too, and your blood pressure will drop.
This is a serious suggestion.
Remember, stress makes you stupid but silliness can keep you sane.
What kinds of silliness do you indulge in to keep a grip on your sanity and manage stress?
