Emotions are crazy, right? Emotions influence our thoughts and our behaviour, skew our way of thinking and can lead to cognitive bias. But most of all when we experience a large build-up of negative emotions such as stress and anxiety, we can start to become overwhelmed. Things that were no big deal start to become overwhelming, things that are trivial start to become bigger issues that shouldn't be and what does this lead to… Overthinking.
These three things are pervasive in today’s fast-paced world, which significantly affects our mental and physical health, even more so if you have never been able to learn or understand how to cope with these emotions and patterns of thinking. However, in today's blog, we are going to look at how you can go from handling stress and anxiety with bad and destructive coping mechanisms such as withdrawal and bad habit seeking to use positive habits to overcome these moments of high emotional stasis.
Let's cook this thing!
Overthinking.
Overthinking is a tragic thing it often leads to us thinking the worst about something that more than likely won't happen. As touched on earlier when we overthink we become stressed and anxious, we think ourselves into scenarios that most definitely won't happen and we avoid living in the present, instead of enjoying ourselves we focus our minds on the future and create a dystopian reality about something that won't happen. This leads to a grim and depressing outlook not just on life but your confidence in being happy as you worry about the future and things you cannot control, there is a balance that needs to be struck as compulsive worry leaves us in a frozen state, but being worried from time to time and adjusting and planning our future and solving problems are obviously things we want to be doing too... However, if you take a second to be mindful and bring yourself to the present it gives you the power to be happier with what is happening in the moment.
I know I know it's been 2 minutes in and it’s already heavy stuff but bear with me on this blog!
You see we aren't fortune tellers despite wanting to be, but some of us have a chronic need for absolute control and certainty over our lives that we often sabotage ourselves in the present to try and avoid pain in the future. Whether that is through trauma, past experiences or just chronic overthinking, we develop a cognitive bias that views things in the negative rather than the positive.
Now that’s not to say we shouldn't have a bit of realism but in today's world due to many experiences we have and our brains wiring, we seek negative biases and patterns that aren’t really there. You see the difference between people who end up getting the positive outcome they want, vs the people who end up not getting the outcome they want or get the outcome they are fearing is that, with a more positive line of thinking, not only do they allow themselves to not get so mixed up with what they can't control and are at peace with potentially failing, or getting hurt. They embrace it and actually allow themselves to be present in the moment and enjoy the journey, which often steers them in the direction they want to be in.
So when it comes to overthinking, be mindful, be present, replace negative self-talk and scenarios with a bit of positive self-talk and allow yourself to enjoy the ride.
The science behind stress
Stress lies at the heart of which our internal experience matches well or not, to our external experience and they converge or combine to create emotions.
Here we are going to discuss the importance of being able to ground yourself better when you're feeling as if life is weighing you down or pulled off the path you want to be in.
Whenever we feel emotions such as happiness or contentment or negative emotions such as stress and anxiety it's not just in our head, it's a physiological response from our body as well as a result of our nervous system,
Think about it have you ever started to shiver, feel your heart palpating or have the shakes before confronting something difficult? That is because anxiety and stress aren't just from the brain. Our body and brain are one and so our body often influences how our brain feels and operates too.
Interesting heyyyyy.
Now the objective here is not to feel robotic or not to feel human but rather just to be able to better control our emotions when it is needed so that we don't end up spiralling and can have a better grasp of ourselves the environment and the situation.
This is so you can lean into life better control some of your inner real estate and put yourself in a greater position of power!
So what is stress?
Stress is more than this ancient carryover from being hunted by predators back in the caveman days or having stress over resources etc and that it's some leftover evolutionary bi-product. No, stress is indeed important, stress indicates issues and problems in our environment.
Think about this for a second. Why do we have stress?
Why do our bodies go through this?
Well, it's not just a result of stress through threats from our environment, but also psychosocial stress, from possible infidelity, going out to hunt or visiting relatives across the country. These scenarios can cause stress because, before phones and better safety, we didn't know if our friends or family would make it back after these events, these types of examples of losing loved ones, changes in climate and possible droughts/ famine show how stress can be induced by the unknown, which is one of the key issues we face a lot in today's age,... the unknown!
In today's age, we feel that we should have our life planned out to the letter, everything should be how we envisioned, and if it's not then something must be wrong. Either something is wrong with us or our environment so we look to change that in order to reduce stress and feel that we are back in control, however, life is so much more than that.
As I said we live our lives now, so articulated and planned that we make no space for things to go wrong or head off course. We no longer adapt and go with the flow and you got to think is that healthy? Doesn't that just cause me more stress?
Now from my own experiences, I can assure you it does, it caused me alot of unneeded stress and caused repercussions I could have easily avoided.
Now I'm a big believer in writing out your goals, manifesting what you want and working towards it but I've also come to the realisation that life isn't straightforward. You're meant to take twists and turns and plans are meant to change, if we live within our comfort zone then how are we going to adapt and grow how are we going to deal with setbacks and stress?
If we stay stagnant in one place whether that be where we live or our association or simply resistant to change then we will never be able to deal with the stress and anxiety that come as a result of the change in our environment.
The Biological systems and mechanics of stress
Stress is designed to be generic so that it mobilises the body to do something about what is going on currently, as stress wasn't designed for one thing in particular and so it gives us the advantage of having the ability to control it as it is based on the hard-wired biological mechanisms.
These mechanisms that are within you, your cells, your body, your tissues right now, require no neuroplasticity for you to learn but simply instead, allow you to halt the brakes on stress
We have two subsystems one for stress and one for destress that are already within our genetic code. So if you are reading this blog it means you have the capacity to control your stress.
These tools dont just involve the basic breath work and meditation but real-time tools that allow you to resist stress and take back control when stress hits in real-time.
The one thing I will say is that in order to understand the tools of dealing with stress we first have to understand the mechanism. You might be tempted to just want to go straight to, how do I deal with stress and want a quick summary, but understanding the core mechanisms allows us to better implement these techniques, change our thoughts and teach others how to better deal with stress.
Stressors vs stress
Stress is your response to things.
Stressors are triggers that can either be psychosocial or physical. For example, if you get cold and are without a jacket, you can feel stressed as well as physically uncomfortable.
Relationships whether with friends colleagues or loved ones, unresolved issues can cause stress as resentment anxiousness and a gap of uneasiness forms where you haven't reconciled to overcome issues, or even the stressors of rejection from jobs, social environments etc and not knowing how to balance everything at once may induce a stress response.
Something interesting that you might not have known is that we have a network of neurons called the sympathetic chain ganglia. Which starts from your neck all the way to your navel why is this important? Because these chains of neurons that run from the middle of the body when something stresses us out either in the mind or our environment, that chain of neurons activates and falls over like dominoes as Huberman describes it.
Those neurons release acetylcholine at sites around the body. Now, acetylcholine is actually used around the body for our spine to activate muscles in our body and for our brains to focus, but when stressed the acetylcholine triggers other neurons like epinephrine which is the equivalent of adrenaline to release, which releases into our organs and makes us feel a certain way, you could call this gut feelings.
The power of epinephrine is that the stress response means that it activates areas such as the legs and heart in which the blood vessels dilate to allow increased blood flow whilst constricting blood vessels in areas such as the reproductive system and digestion system, meaning it has a generic stress response but also activates certain systems too.
In summary, it is a yes for certain things and a no for other things. That is why when your heart speeds up you feel more blood in certain places which leaves you feeling heavy, throat goes dry as salivation decreases but essentially this stress response activates you in ways that support movement.
This feeling of agitation is what you’re going to need to work on for you to better mitigate stress, so what is a tool to help us with stress and feeling worked up, as soon as we notice it coming on?
The best tools or as Huberman calls them “real-time tools” have a direct line to the autonomic nervous system that has to do with alertness or calmness in the body.
What doesn't work is telling yourself or someone else to calm down as this more than often elevates stress instead. I mean you might of not only experienced this yourself but also when telling someone else. It only seems to make matters worse which is something we obviously want to avoid.
So what is the best tool to reduce real-time stress?
Well, the answer is that if one system in the body is activated, then we want to activate the other system that reduces stress and is designed to induce calmness and relaxation which is called the parasympathetic nervous system, this system ranges from the neck to the brain stem and pelvic area so it is above the sympathetic system. but why is it located in the neck and lower brain stem? Well, it's connected to your face and so helps in controlling the eyes, facial expressions and then the pelvic area that is responsible for controlling the genitals bladder and yes even the rectum.
So because the parasympathetic nervous system has certain leavers it allows you to push back on the stress response in real-time and diminishes that stress feeling allowing you to be more relaxed.
So what's the tool ? A physiological sigh, that's it it is a sigh. We tend to do this already involuntarily to calm us down when stressed but we forget that we can also activate these systems voluntarily too.
Now our heart rates aren't specifically automatic it is largely, however, there is a way in which you can breathe that helps directly control your heart rate.
So simply put when we breathe our diaphragms lower and our heart gets bigger which changes the blood flow through our heart. This sends a signal up to the brain that the blood is moving more slowly through the heart and thus speeds up our heart rate.
So if our heart rate can speed up then we can also slow it down by doing the opposite which is when our diaphragm goes up, the heart gets smaller and more blood is travelling through a smaller space, causing blood to flow more quickly and sending a signal to the brain which sets off the parasympathetic nervous system to fire neurons off, back to the heart to slow the heart down. (I know that was a lot to take in, so maybe read over that again!)
This means our exhales should be longer and or more vigorous than our inhales, this method works in real-time and doesn't involve a practice that you have to go off and do, you can do it anywhere at any time and requires no learning can help you drastically.
Inhaling more frequently than exhaling speeds up your heart rate and exhaling more than inhaling slows down your heart rate.
Now let's get onto the sigh, have you ever noticed after crying or getting visibly upset that you end up sighing after some time? this might be to get some air in because as we inhale we are not getting any of that carbon dioxide out but when we do a double inhale and a long exhale that practice actually helps us relieve stress and gets rid of that accumulation in our lungs that also can make you feel agitated.
In summary, doing the physiological sigh 1-3 times which is the double inhale and 1 exhale will bring down your level of stress very very fast and according to Huberman is the fasted way to accomplish a reduction in stress, and slowly reduces your heart rate, but not too quickly and the reason why is that if you decrease or increase your heart rate it can leave you feeling dizzy or light-headed take for example when you get up and you have that feeling of nausea.
Stress - the 3 different time scales
Stress has everything to do with emotions whether or not you are coping or not coping, and functioning well emotionally or not functioning well emotionally. As discussed before stress is both good and bad but let's discuss that a bit more .
Short term
In the short term, stress can be really good for us. Acute stress as we call it is good for your immune system, stress typically comes from a bacterial or viral infection in which the body becomes stressed and tries to combat pathogens, furthermore increasing our breathing to activate stress means we are dilating our pupils becoming more alert, and increases the functioning of the cognition allowing us to narrow our focus to what's important.
So short-term stress is good it has a myriad of benefits however we need to be able to know when to turn off, the stress responses because if we dont. It will seep into other parts of our life and end up making things worse. In fact when we work, work, work, work then have a break or go on holiday this contrast can actually lead us to getting sick because it's such a big contrast and our immune system just crashes, therefore understanding ourselves and learning to control our stress response on the daily means that we can try to avoid this big build-up of stress and anxiety that left unchecked, will seep and pour into other avenues of our life such as relationships, health energy and overall functioning.
A good rule to measure short-term stress is whether or not you are able to get good quality sleep. If you are not able to do this then this is where stress moves from acute stress to chronic stress
Medium-term
Stress that lasts from several days to several weeks. Now sometimes there are periods of our life when we are dealing with a lot. Work, relationships, weather, illness etc accumulate and become a total mind cluster and you just want to find an out by any means necessary. However in order to deal with medium-term stress we need to be more in tune with our body and build up our stress threshold and increase our capacity.
Have you ever been placed in a situation where you feel stressed out and all over the place? well to allow yourself to better adapt to these situations you need to be able to let your body adapt to these stressors, so when we feel flooded with adrenaline, not to the extreme but a little bit as to where we would panic or a response would happen, we instead cognitively, mentally and emotionally calming ourselves to be comfortable with the response in the body.
This allows us instead of either trying to run away, shut down or panic and blow up, we instead can recognise the familiarity and think more clearly and understand what is going on, thus disassociating our mind and body.
Learning how to relax the mind while the body is agitated or worked up helps us, over time, to process what once felt overwhelming, turning it into something more manageable. However, you first have to be conscious of this process. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself in a pattern where stress, once recognised, always flares up. If you are mindful of this and work on it, you'll thank yourself later when difficult scenarios arise, such as challenging conversations, tasks that need to be done, or situations where you need to step out of your comfort zone.
So, in summary, disassociating the mind and body allows us to be calmer under stress, doing things such as widening your gaze in your environment trains the brain to be able to relax mentally whilst the body is under stress.
Long term
Long-term stress is bad for all reasons, ideally, you want stress to elevate a couple of times a day and not stay elevated so you can have a good night's sleep , but realistically that doesnt happen in life. However, if we notice a pattern and a fault where you are having bad sleep many nights in a row then it is time to assess what is really going on.
So let's break down why long-term stress is bad. when you have elevated stress for long periods of time this can make your heart rate become elevated which can lead to heart diseases, which is often one of the leading factors of mortality in many countries.
Now I know this may sound extreme but it's not. Realistically we neither want our heart rate to be chronically low heart rate or chronically high heart rate, we want to have variability in our heart rate.
So what is going to solve long-term stress ? well, the data shows that connection is the leading factor as certain types of social connection contribute to lower long-term stress.
Knowing this is great, now we know what can reduce and mitigate long-term stress however there is a key issue here and that is that, we use proxies for socialising instead of the real thing. The internet and social media do not replace real-life social interaction and thus will not help in reducing long-term stress and anxiety.
Humans are social beings both verbally and physically, whenever we are stressed, being around partners, friends and family is what often reduces stress as we get the physical contact and verbal communication we need to feel safe wanted and cared about. Allowing us to feel the warmth of others and their support. But it is not only this, as mentioned earlier the stress of the unknown when someone is not present can lead to this long-term stress too and so reconciliation between two parties, too will reduce the anxiety and stress, even if we feel stressed and anxious in making contact to resolve things in the first place.
But more importantly, to mitigate long-term stress you have to have delight, not necessarily just fun, but have delight and enjoyment in the things you do and the people you are with.
On the flip side social isolation for too long creates very negative side effects and is associated with Taqi Kynan, which is a molecule that makes us more fearful. Believe it or not, this affects flies to rats to humans and much more. So this shows that not only does it affect humans in becoming more paranoid and impair our immune system but its a punishment for isolating ourselves from the world.
This is why it's important to spend long quality periods of time with friends and family and also go out exploring places and going out in social situations such as a meal or doing activities even if it is with just one other person such as a trusted friend or partner. Sitting at home in isolation even if you have a partner can still lead to long-term stress and makes you feel stuck.
So overall in order to help yourself deal with stress you need to be able to calm yourself in real time in moments of stress and reduce that stress response. In the medium term deal with these periods of stress and become comfortable with heightened levels of activation, cause life is going to continue coming at you whether you like it or not as we are not in control of our stressors. And in the long term make sure that you avoid social isolationism but also surround yourself with more things that are delightful to your life, whether that's people pets, or hobbies, this will help mitigate your stress.
Remember the key goal here is to be effective in reducing stress and not be reactive to it when we feel it coming on.
Although stress happens its normal and it will always occur in life, we never want to make life-altering decisions based on whether we are stressed or super ecstatic
An analogy that I like to use is:
We do not want to make decisions when we are at the peak of the valley or at the bottom - never make a decision on a bad day as it may be a decision you will come to regret when you feel extremely stressed and anxious.
Here are some basic and important habits for reducing stress.
Physical Health
- Exercise Regularly: Physical activity reduces stress hormones and increases endorphins. The American Psychological Association reports that exercise can alleviate long-term depression and anxiety.
- Eat a Balanced Diet: Nutrition impacts mood and energy levels. Diets high in vegetables, fruits, lean proteins, and whole grains are associated with lower levels of anxiety and depression.
- Sleep Well: Poor sleep quality can exacerbate anxiety. The National Sleep Foundation recommends 7-9 hours of sleep per night for adults. Improved sleep hygiene can significantly reduce symptoms of anxiety .
Mental Health
- Meditation and Relaxation Techniques: Practices like meditation and deep breathing can significantly reduce anxiety. Research published in Psychiatry Research found that mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression.
Cognitive Restructuring
- Challenge Negative Thoughts: CBT techniques involve identifying and challenging negative thoughts. Studies show CBT is highly effective in treating anxiety disorders.
- Use Positive Affirmations: Replacing negative thoughts with positive affirmations can improve mental resilience. A study in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience showed that self-affirmations activate brain regions associated with self-processing and valuation .
Exposure Therapy
- Face Your Fears: Gradual exposure to anxiety-provoking situations can reduce fear. This technique is supported by extensive research showing its effectiveness in treating phobias and anxiety disorders .
- Desensitisation: Systematic desensitisation involves gradually increasing exposure to anxiety triggers. Studies confirm its efficacy in reducing anxiety symptoms .
Time Management
- Prioritise Tasks: Using tools like the Eisenhower Matrix helps prioritise tasks based on urgency and importance. Effective time management reduces stress and enhances productivity.
- Use a Planner: Scheduling your day and allocating specific times for tasks can reduce the feeling of being overwhelmed. Research supports that organized planning can improve mental health and reduce anxiety.
Connect with Others
- Talk to Friends and Family: Social support is crucial for managing stress. Studies show that strong social support networks can reduce the impact of stress and improve overall mental health.
- Join Support Groups: Support groups provide a sense of community and understanding. Peer support can significantly alleviate feelings of isolation and anxiety.
Seek Professional Help
- Therapy: Psychotherapy, especially CBT, is highly effective for anxiety and overthinking. A meta-analysis in The Lancet Psychiatry confirmed the efficacy of CBT in treating anxiety disorders.
Long-Term Strategies
Develop Resilience
- Build Coping Skills: Developing a toolkit of coping strategies, such as journaling, art, or spending time in nature, enhances resilience. Studies highlight the role of coping skills in managing stress and anxiety .
- Recognise that when you focus on the past or the future, this can induce stress and overthinking but being mindful can help you choose where to place your attention.
- Balancing positive and negative: We tend to feed our minds with the worst-case scenarios and build a confirmation bias for things going bad or things being worse than they are, but when that happens we need to be conscious of this and balance the worst-case scenarios with thoughts of some best case scenarios too. When we overthink we become anxious and that is when our brains catastrophise.
- Maintain a Growth Mindset: Embracing challenges as opportunities for growth fosters resilience. Research in Psychological Science shows that a growth mindset improves stress management and overall well-being.
Conclusion
With these deep insights into overthinking and understanding what stress is, we can start taking practical steps to overcome short-term stress. By pouring into ourselves and becoming more mindful, we can better manage stress at each stage—short-term, medium-term, and long-term. This comprehensive understanding equips us with the tools we need to handle stress more effectively in the future, making our lives just that bit easier and happier.
I hope this has helped you understand yourself more, especially if you deal with stress or overthink frequently. These types of destructive habits affect us all, not only that, but they can seep into parts of our lives we do not intend, clouding the positive reality we might be living in. For others, this gives you the tools and knowledge to deal with what life is currently throwing at you, so you can better adapt and improve your current circumstances.
I hope this has been impactful.
See you soon.
Bradley D.R
Reference material for this blog
Tools for managing stress and anxiety
