episode 23 Review the Past - Plan the Future - What About Stress? cover art

episode 23 Review the Past - Plan the Future - What About Stress?

episode 23 Review the Past - Plan the Future - What About Stress?

Listen for free

View show details

About this listen

 Summary: I discuss causes of stress and its impact on our lives, mental health, and even our brains. Living in the past or future is a coping mechanism to avoid the uncomfortable elements of the present, but it has a high cost. We know about fight or flight and the physical consequences yet many of us still just cope with it rather than implement changes that can be effective. It starts with our thinking. Listen to hear more. Hello. Welcome to episode 23, review the past, plan the future, and what about stress? I'm your host vickidawn. Today, I'd like to invite each of you to sign up for my newsletter. https://vickidawn.aweb.page/vickidawn-Newsletter21 I have discussions on my podcast topics from different perspectives and different angles, both in the blog and in the newsletter. I send them biweekly, alternating weeks with my podcast. Today's topic, review the past and plan the future, and what about stress, is a good tool nearing year-end, but it's most useful every day and let me explain. Have you ever been so preoccupied with yesterday's fight with your partner or boss that you aren't doing what needs to be done today? How about so excited for an upcoming vacation that you aren't present to your family today? That's called living in the past or future. It is distinct from review and plan.  When we're reviewing and planning, that's intentional and deliberate. When we're living in the past or future, we can feel so immersed, it's almost as if we're still there, or, we're projecting ourselves to a future place that we think we want to get to. We may ruminate and replay the fight over and over in our mind or daydream and picture laying on that perfect beach.  Living in the past or future is a coping mechanism. When we want to escape the present. We feel stressed or we might feel bored, or we might feel uncomfortable. We all juggle, family, home, and our commitments and we have issues or setbacks in life, in our relationships, maybe in our finances or our health. We experience these as stressful. We all know there's good stress, but I'm focusing on the stress that comes from perceiving a threat. We want to resist a perceived threat. We want to be safe of course. That resistance is what causes the stress. It is triggered, and parts of our brain where stress lives are activated. The survivor brain is made up of the brain stem, the limbic system, and parts of the left brain. Stress is only experienced when this region of the brain is activated. According to Kendra Cherry, (article “5 Surprising Ways that Stress Affects Your Brain”, https://www.verywellmind.com/surprising-ways-that-stress-affects-your-brain-2795040) experiencing chronic stress goes beyond damage to our mind and body that is generated in the fight or flight response. We've all heard a lot about that. Stress can also have a serious impact on the brain itself. Chronic stress increases mental illness like depression and anxiety because chronic stress results in long-term changes to our brains. Other negative effects include shrinking the brain size, changing its structure, killing brain cells, and hurting your memory. It would seem that with the understanding we have today on the negative effects of stress, that we would know how to - and want to - trigger the relaxation response and would use practices like meditation, breathing exercises, progressive muscle relaxation, or yoga but do we? That's the question. I'd suggest that there is another layer. What triggers stress? We already talked about the brain activation of stress and how stress is triggered at the focus level, not being present by living in the past or the future or by our physical response in fight or flight. Stress is also triggered at the thought level. This is important because every day we have millions of, I think I say something like 90,000 thoughts a day but I could be wrong. (update: studies have previously cited around 70,000, a more recent study in 2020 cited 6,000)  But it is our thought level that triggers most of our common everyday stress. The way we talk to ourselves, our judgments about ourselves, about people, places, and things that goes on under our conscious awareness - only all the time. You may think you're different but let your thinking surface and you may be surprised at what you hear. I was. Stress, fear, and anxiety are generated by the resistance that we experience to people, places, and things that our judge has an opinion on. We ramp up our reaction based on what level of drama we enjoy. Some of us - admit it - love big drama, and some of us are self-satisfied because we think our reactions are small compared to those drama Queens and that somehow, we're exempt from those consequences. That's not true. Our bodies react with the same hormones and physiological responses, increased blood pressure, heart rate and changes to digestive functioning, and potential damage to the brain itself. Whether our reaction is the drama queen size or the more ...
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.