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It's clear why we suffer from stress. Neuroscience has made it simple: The amygdala releases stress hormones whenever it senses something it is not used to. This happens many times a day. Anything and everything that isn’t entirely expected releases stress hormones.
Up-Regulation
When stress hormones are released, the sympathetic nervous system increases heart rate, breathing rate, perspiration, and tension. A feeling of alarm grabs our attention. Alarm is needed in case we are too deep in concentration when danger arises to notice it.
Down-Regulation
But once an alarm has grabbed our attention, it has done its job. We don't need the alarm any longer. And if the alarm continues, it gets in the way. Our high-level thinking and decision-making faculty — executive function — does not operate well in a state of alarm. If there really is a threat, we can't delay decision-making until the stress hormones have burned off.
In an emergency, we need the parasympathetic nervous system to step in and down-regulate the state of alarm to a state of focused interest. To accurately determine what is going on and what needs to be done, the executive function needs to be cool, calm, and collected.
Consider your cellphone. When someone wants to get your attention, they call you. Your phone rings and grabs your attention, When you answer, the ringing stops. Imagine trying to have a conversation if the phone kept ringing. Similarly, once the amygdala has grabbed your attention, if your parasympathetic nervous system doesn't stop the alarm, your executive function can't operate. In a noisy environment, we sometimes say, "I can't hear myself think."
The problem with stress is not how many stressors you have to deal with, as we might think. If you are stressed, the problem is you lack the mental software to activate your parasympathetic nervous system. When we are unable to shift from alarm to calm, we can't depend on the accuracy of our assessment of what is going on. Continued alarm leads us to believe there is a threat, whether a threat exists or not.
For example, when elevated heart rate makes us think there may be something wrong with our heart, continued alarm colors our thinking. If the heart attack idea is taken seriously, more stress hormones are released. If more stress hormones cause us to sweat and our heart to pound, we may truly believe we are having a heart attack when we are not.
When down-regulation fails, we are pushed into a state of fight, flight, or freeze. Continued alarm may cause aggressive behavior toward the cause of the alarm. Continued alarm may cause an urge to escape. If escape is impossible or socially humiliating, we feel trapped.
If the parasympathetic nervous system is not activated and neither aggression nor escape can end the sense of alarm, we may involuntarily shift into a “freeze” state, and panic.
Stress Reduction
We all have triggers, lots of them, every day. It is a mistake to believe anyone can resolve anxiety issues by stress reduction alone. Stress reduction, if taken to its logical conclusion, is agoraphobia.
With agoraphobia, a person avoids every possible stressor by retreat. We as therapists should question our wisdom when we encourage clients to avoid stressors; complete retreat is not growth. We should, instead, be showing them how to train their parasympathetic nervous system to automatically lower their level of arousal when stress hormones are released.
The problem is not just stressors. No matter how few stressors we have, if we cannot automatically activate our calming parasympathetic nervous system, stress will remain a problem. However, we can train our mind to automatically respond.
Using my new book, Panic Free: The 10-Day Program to End Panic, Anxiety, and Claustrophobia, we can train the parasympathetic nervous system to step in and produce down-regulating in response to stress hormone release. Cool, calm, and collected, we can better separate imaginary threats from real threats, and deal more realistically with challenges.
