What Is Stress?
Chemically, stress
is a condition that your body enters as the
result of a message received from your brain
telling it to prepare to run or fight. The brain
tells the adrenal glands to send a rush of two
hormones (adrenaline and noradrenaline) to the
muscles in preparation for them to respond to
a fear or a threat.
It is the job of the brain to protect the
body. It accomplishes this by telling the
noradrenaline to redirect blood flow from
lower priority areas of your body to the muscles
to give you a "power boost."
At the same time, the brain is also telling
the adrenaline to speed up your breathing to
take in more oxygen to feed the work being done
on the muscles with the noradrenaline. Unfortunately,
when you can't make a decision about how to
react (fight or flight), these two hormones
are caught in limbo rushing around madly waiting
for you to decide what you want them to do.
Since you aren't doing that, the only choice
they have is to cause vomiting, make you tremble,
panic or maybe even pass out.
Since the battles today are demanding employers,
uncontrollable traffic, annoying neighbors,
partners, thildren and oh yes, taxes! The system
is still very efficient and works quite effectively.
This is why you have stress. It is merely a
response to a perceived threat and the brain
will set it in motion on a subconscious level
even at the slightest sensation of danger.
For an example, you're sitting in that freeway
gridlock, half an hour late for the most important
career busting appointment of your life, knowing
full well that your blankety blank boss will
turn the account over to that jerk in the office
and you'll never get the raise you were counting
on when your son starts college in the fall.
… whew! Here come the chemical twins, adrenaline
and noradrenaline ready to do battle with no
battle to go to. They're rushing through your
body and have got to attack something. Your
muscles aren't responding by running or fighting
so they'll just pick any old organ to attack
instead. A good one is the heart.
You need the chemical twins to protect you
from real danger but you don't need them to
cause illness, unhappiness and stress. The challenge
is knowing when to have them and when you don't
need them. Logically you know that you don't
need them under most normal situations like:
at work, at a party or when the kids are screaming
in your ear.
So what can you do? Some people turn to drugs
or alcohol and others take out their frustration
on the people they care about the most. You
can learn how to control the twins. Let's do
that now.
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