Stress can be induced by an infinite and diverse array of events and life situations.
Standing in the waterfall pool with fishes nibbling at my heels and toes and ankles felt stomach-curdlingly weird.
Three brown and white speckle-colour fishes had reconnoitred around my feet. Having decided it was safe, they moved in and started to nibble. Then others joined. It felt like being tickled. I wanted to get out of the water fast but I had decided to stand my ground.
My reptilian brain, which is responsible for survival, went into panic mode. I could feel symptoms of stress in my mind-body. My breathing was fast and shallow. My heart was beating rapidly. My muscles had tensed especially around the solar plexus. My stomach felt like lead (the digestive system shuts down in stressful situations).
Fight or flee my brain was signalling. I had decided to freeze instead. Fight, flight or freeze are the typical responses to life threatening stress. My thoughts were racing – “come on move your feet, get out of there, kick them off, can't you see they are trying to bite you...The anxiety was palpable.
Gina and I were doing this together. We reacted to the stress by screaming and laughing loudly, clutching each other for moral support. We did not move.
The brain was confused. Danger! Danger! Danger! Yet we just stood there. The symptoms intensified. I could feel in the pit of my stomach, the inner panic deepening. There was a prickly wave-like sensation travelling up my body from my feet. It felt like I would explode. I still stood my ground.
Then the intensity of the panic and the weirdness of the whole situation became too much and I moved... After all, I didn't want to give myself a heart attack.
There was a spontaneous deep breath of relieve. My mind-body-emotional-energy system relaxed...phew, lucky escape!
Your system generates the stress response every time you feel threatened. Something as simple as being too cold or warm or hungry can trigger your survival instinct and initiate the stress response often unconsciously. Being late, stuck in traffic, a challenging relationship, being constantly busy at work, the sudden delay or cancellation of your train, technology failing...can all cause stress.
We all respond to situations in diverse ways. What causes stress for one person could be pleasurable for another. It's when the pressure you are experiencing exceeds your ability to cope that the symptoms of stress kick in.
When this happens you may:
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fight – get into drama with someone or something
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Flee – physically, mentally, emotionally remove yourself from the situation.
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Freeze – Go quiet, feel stuck in the situation and unable to cope.
In the fish nibbling situation, I knew I had choices. I could stand still (freeze), walk out of the water (flee) or kick at the fishes (fight).
But, I stayed there because it was actually adrenaline pumping fun. I could cope with it.
In any stressful situation, you also have choices. There is always a decision point. In the non-life threatening stressful situations that we often experience, there is normally time to pause and ask yourself:
Given what's happening right now, “what would I like to have happen?” This is one of the Clean Language questions of David Grove. The purpose of this question is to set an outcome.
You could also take 10 long, slow, deep breaths in and out through your nose and give yourself some breathing or thinking space.
Caitlin Walker's outcome setting process is also a helpful tool.
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For this situation to be just as I would like it to be, it will be like what? Write down your answer.
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For the answer at 1 above to happen, I would like to be like what? Write down your answer.
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Given my answers to 1 and 2 above, what support or resources do/will I need? Write down your answer.
I saw this on a plaque a few days ago while staying at Sadhguru's ashram in India:
“ If you get into drama,
You will get karma.”
Karma is the actions or activities that we take, which become our patterns or repetitive ways of being and doing.
We make up experiences every moment of our life based on the actions that we take. With repetition we become conditioned by these actions – mostly unconsciously. They rule the way we understand, perceive and experience life.
When we habitually react to situations in a stressful or compulsive way, this becomes our stress karma – deeply conditioned stress behaviour that is often automatically triggered by our system, often before we are consciously aware of the actual or perceived danger. The neo-cortex, our thinking and reasoning brain is completely by-passed. It doesn't get a look in.
This is why it can be very difficult to change unwanted limiting beliefs and other unhelpful behavioural patterns that are keeping you stuck,
If you would like to make shifts in your way of being from acting based on deeply conditioned unconscious behaviours to bringing your unconscious thinking, emotional and behavioural patterns into your conscious awareness so that you can do something about them if you wish, I invite you to join me for my next 6-week workshop. Click here to find out more.
