‘Stress is not the problem’: Psychologist on why we need to rethink our approach to stress

Feeling overwhelmed or agitated with the pressures of life? These expert tips will have you unchained from stress and firing in no time.

Young Depressed Woman With Tangled Thoughts Sitting On Floor And Hugging Her Knees. Sadness, Depression, Emotional Burnout, Confusion And Mental Health Problems

If you are a human living in this world, you will experience stress. It’s part of our evolutionary history and a normal human response.

We are designed to cope with stress very effectively in the short term. However, we have not evolved to cope with stress in the long term without a significant cost to our bodies, our minds and our wellbeing.

Stress and stressors

Stress is a word we use all the time. Perhaps we use it so often that its meaning becomes diluted. I am feeling so stressed. This job is really stressing me out. Public speaking is really stressful.

You might describe stress as feeling overwhelmed, pressured, rushed, strained, tense, agitated, worn out, depleted or exhausted. No matter how we describe it, we all know what it feels like. But what actually is it?

The research tells us that stress is a physiological response.

Understanding this is really important. It’s an experience happening inside the body. Within scientific literature this is often called the “stress response” but it’s more commonly known as the “fight-or-flight response”. It’s a highly adaptive process designed to get us to safety and to keep us alive. This response is activated to meet the demands of an actual or a perceived threat. The threat, real or imagined, is termed a “stressor”.

Dr Emily Musgrove.

Stress and the body

So, let’s start with talking about the nervous system. We can think of the nervous system like the body’s command centre.

It comprises the brain, the spinal cord and nerves. Its function is to keep us alive. It works by sending messages to and from the brain and body via electrical impulses and is made up of two main systems:

1 Central nervous system (CNS): Involves the spinal cord and the brain.

2 Peripheral nervous system (PNS): Involves all the nerves that branch out from the spinal cord.

The PNS is made up of two main systems: the somatic nervous system (SNS) and the autonomic nervous system (ANS).

The somatic nervous system has several functions, but primarily it is responsible for sensory input (delivering messages from your senses to your brain) and movement control (voluntarily moving your body). Your somatic nervous system gets you moving.

By contrast, the autonomic nervous system is responsible for the body’s involuntary functions. Understanding the ANS is of particular importance because it is the system responsible for moving us in and out of the stress response.

An easy way to think about the autonomic nervous system is that it is automatic. For example, right now you are breathing without having to tell your body to breathe. Your heart beats without you having to tell it to beat.

Detecting danger

But what happens when we detect danger? When the body detects it is no longer safe, we move away from our home base. Exposed to a stressor, the body rapidly mobilises through the activation of the sympathetic nervous system as it takes charge.

If we were to take a look at brain activity during the fight-or-flight response, we would see a very different picture to brain activity during safety and relaxation. Activity in the brain’s limbic system, the main structures of which are the amygdala, hippocampus, hypothalamus and striatum, lights up. Acting as a sort of “threat centre”, this system is now dominating brain function. The hypothalamus, a tiny region in the limbic system, is particularly important here.

When the alarm is triggered, a complex chain of neurological, immunological, endocrinological and physiological reactions is set in motion. Messages to the adrenal glands (found at the top of the kidneys) prompt the production of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. These stress hormones create a surge in energy.

Now, once the body detects that the danger is over, we will pretty rapidly return to regulation. Our “brake” comes back on through the activation of the parasympathetic nervous system. We come back to our home base of safety, calm and balance. We literally catch our breath; our heart rate returns to a regular rhythm and the systems that had been in shutdown now come back online.

This is what the body is meant to do. A brief activation of the stress response (fight or flight) and rapid return to regulation and safety. This is a healthy, flexible and adaptive response.

Unfortunately, in the modern age, we have encountered some problems with this system. The threat centre of our brains cannot tell the difference between what is an actual threat to our physical lives and what is a perceived threat. To the limbic system there is no noticeable difference between, for example, encountering a sabre-tooth tiger and meeting a work deadline – our bodies respond to the situation in the same way. In simple words, we are getting more stressed, more often.

The reality is that we have not evolved to experience repeated and prolonged activation of the stress response.

Our bodies aren’t designed for it! In a state of chronic stress, our foot remains pressed on the accelerator and we are unable to, or unaware of our need to, use the brake. We end up living in constant overdrive. And our bodies, just like car engines, inevitably begin to wear out.

At a physiological level, when stress goes unmanaged, the body continues to pump out stress hormones. This has significant consequences. The long-term exposure to stress hormones has cumulative negative effects on our health. It disrupts normal functioning and even causes damage at the cellular level.

There are two very common physical symptoms of stress that are easy to spot. The first is sleep. The link between stress and impaired/disturbed sleep has been shown again and again. In a state of chronic stress the body feels exhausted but the mind is active, often overactive. It feels like a terrible combination of exhaustion and over stimulation. When the mind is busy with worry or overthinking, the body perceives this as a threat and, evolutionarily speaking, to be asleep would be far too dangerous, so instead we stay awake. The result is sleep deprivation.

In short, sleep and stress have a bi-directional relationship, meaning that stress affects our capacity to sleep well and sleeping well affects our capacity to manage stress. When we don’t receive adequate sleep, the body is not able to repair, restore and recover.

The second physical symptom of stress that you will likely notice are changes to our appetite and the ways in which we eat.

Stress profoundly affects our desire to eat, what we choose to eat and how our food is digested. In terms of our appetite in the face of a lot of stress, usually it goes one of two ways: we lose our appetite or we overeat.

One of the other big indicators of ongoing stress is changes to our bowel movements and the frequency of trips to the toilet. Stress throws our digestion completely out of balance.

A stress response

The psychological effects of stress

It is not just our physical health that is affected by stress. Stress affects the functioning of our brain. To give you a very brief overview, inside of the brain, the cortex (particularly the prefrontal cortex) manages all of our higher order functions, like rational and reflective thought, empathy, language and self-control.

When we are in a calm or regulated state, we get full access to this part of the brain. It’s like all parts of the brain are integrated and talking coherently with each other. But when we are stressed, particularly chronically stressed, this changes entirely. When we’re stressed, it’s as though parts of our brain go offline.

The implications of this change in brain activity and functioning are felt in the way we think, the way we feel and the way we act.

A way forward

If you weren’t worried about stress before, I am willing to bet you might be now! But stress is not the enemy. In fact, there is a whole body of research which emphasises how good stress can be for us.

Stress in and of itself is not the problem. Unchecked, prolonged stress is.

The great news is there is so much we can do about this. Suffering does not have to be the outcome. Feeling overwhelmed, burnt out, unable to cope, depressed, anxious and exhausted does not have to be the outcome. This is what I love about working with stress. ■

This is an edited extract of Unstuck by Dr Emily Musgrove, Penguin, $37, out May 20