Who Invited Your Stress Response to Dinner?

We find ourselves well into the second month of shelter-in-place, adjusting to life as it has become. We are still teetering between occasional acute stress and that low grade, sustained worry that has become familiar. It's normal in a time of constant stress to have a natural protective response to this - the "fight/flight/freeze" response that can show up with more frequency during times like this pandemic.

What happens when your natural stress response is "fight" - take action - and your partner's stress response is to freeze? What about when your colleague feels "flight: and you feel "fight"? Clients have brought many similar scenarios into their sessions recently, highlighting how challenging it is to navigate these strong, instinctual responses that can easily lead to conflict.

How do we connect when it's so easy to fight?

1. Simply having compassionate awareness that it is normal and understandable to be experiencing individual, unique responses to stress is a really powerful tool in working with these interpersonal conflicts.
2. Teach yourself to understand your own automatic response to stress. Common cues are bodily sensations, the feeling that you are speaking without thinking, or what may feel like a bit of a disconnect from your internal conversation. For example, if you notice that you focus on to-do lists, create action plans for all possible scenarios, or feel very compelled to engage your partner in a strategic discussion, your natural stress response might be in the "fight" area. If this is the case, you may also notice muscle tension, a change in your body temperature, adrenaline, increased energy. These are all ways you can begin to learn about the way your body and your mind try to take care of you during these intense moments.
3. Activate your natural soothing system. Our body's natural calming system, the parasympathetic nervous system, may not be as active as we want it to be. To engage with this system, one of the most impactful things we can do, especially when trying to calm ourselves in a short period of time, is to work with our breath.
4. Working with your breath, as demonstrated by the work of Richard P. Brown, M.D. and Patricia Gerbarg, M.D. in their 2012 book The Healing Power of the Breath, has been shown to be significantly effective in reducing negative emotional and physical symptoms of stress during times of community distress¹. We learn that by slowing down our breath to a pace of five breaths per minute (use helpful coherent breath audio track to help pace your breath - inhale on the higher tone, exhale on the lower) or utilizing a 4/4/6/2 pattern (inhale for a count of 4, hold for a count of 4, exhale for a count of 6, hold for a count of 2), we can easily and quickly calm down, improve our mood, and find some mental clarity.
5. Ask yourself what you need to help take care of your needs in the moment. If you are in a space of "freeze", what would help you feel safe to come out of that? What can you do for yourself? What can your partner do that would be helpful?
6. Approach your conversation with curiosity around your partner's stress response, challenge yourself to express your feelings clearly and directly, and offer your partner the same. Feel empowered to express what's happening in your body and your thoughts during these moments of stress, and to explain what you've noticed about your unique response system.

Opening up to the compassionate mindset of caring for ourselves and others in moments of stress while acknowledging our natural protective instincts can create an environment that facilitates connection instead of conflict.