When we are stressed, we react in specific ways. The stress response is the result of learned
and conditioned habits adopted early in life as a way of coping with problems,
conflict and disruptive events. But many
of our responses to stress are innate, basic human survival mechanisms left
over from our primordial roots. In
prehistoric times, the best response to perceived danger, such as a seeing a
saber-tooth-tiger coming your way, might be to either fight the animal or to
run away.
Stress in modern times remains the same that we are responding to 21st
century threats and dangers rather than to saber-tooth tigers. Again it is not the events that determine how
stressed we will feel but our response to these determine how stressed we will
feel but our response to these stressors.
Fight or flight
Response
Our response to stress involves many physiological changes
that are collectively called the fight or flight response. In situations in which you must react
immediately to danger, it is advisable either to fight off the danger or
flee. For example, you are walking back
from class at night, thinking about all the studying you need to do and you
begin to cross the street. Suddenly, out
of nowhere, you see a car with its headlights coming right at you. Since your best response is probably not to
fight the car, you run as fast as you can to the other side of the road. In that split second, when you see the car
careering quickly towards you, your muscles tense, your heart beats faster,
your adrenaline is pumping faster and being released at higher levels into your
blood stream, your breathing becomes more shallow and rapid, and your pupils
dilate to see the car better.
This is the fight or flight response. Again, all of these changes are very adaptive
and helpful to your survival in getting out of harm’s way. In the above example, when you get to the
other side of the road and realize that you are okay, your body begins to relax
and return to its normal state. You take
a large, deep breath, expressing a big sigh of relief. Your muscles may feel even weaker than usual,
your breathing may become deeper and heavier than is typical, and you may feel
shaky as your body goes from extreme arousal to relaxing very quickly.
Chronic Stress
Now let’s consider a different situation. You have a test in a week that you are very concerned
about. It seems to be preoccupying your
every walking thought and you have trouble sleeping as well. You are worried that you won’t perform well
on the test and you really need to do better in school in general. Because our bodies respond similarly to
perceived or anticipated threat, you can have same response to something that
hasn’t yet occurred. In other words,
your heart races, breathing becomes labored, muscles are tense, body sweats,
and blood flow is constricted to the extremities and digestive organs and
increases to the major muscles and brain.
Your body is becoming ready to fight or flee the danger. However, you cannot take any action and make
a fight or flight response, because nothing has really happened. You haven’t taken the rest yet and even once
you do, you don’t know your grade. So
your body remains at this high level of arousal.
Remaining in a continued state of physiological
arousal for an extended period of time is called chronic stress. This high level of arousal is similar to
putting your foot on the accelerator of your car while it is in park and not
letting up on the gas pedal. Since the
fight or flight response is meant to be a very quick, short acting response,
your body begins to wear down if kept at this physiological state of arousal
for too long; eventually, you will to experience the physical and psychological
symptoms of chronic stress. This is also
the reason that people cope better with anxiety by taking some action, doing
something about whatever they are worried about rather than stewing about their
problems. Thus the fight or flight
response can be triggered inappropriately in response to phobias, irrational
belief, an overactive imagination, or hallucinations or delusions.
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