Evolve Beyond the Stress Response

It’s time to evolve beyond the stress response

A few years ago, I remember, one night I asked my then 6-yr old if he was feeling stressed about an exam the next day and received a perspective changing response. My boy, now 13, is a complete contradiction to the angry-rebellious-touch-me-not pre pubescent stereotype and continues to be the bubbly, ever smiling bundle of energy he always was. He is one of those rare individuals for whom situations such as being late to school, forgetting homework submissions, losing his jacket, hangout messages waiting in the inbox have no power. He lives in the present, for the present and by the present.

When I had asked him if he was feeling stressed for the exam tomorrow he had said no. The school had announced a seemingly prestigious Olympiad exam and in my new mommy enthusiasm for academia I had signed him up for it. This was the first time he was going to be giving a formal exam and after an hour of preparation I had asked him if he was feeling stressed. When he said no I had assumed that he probably does not understand the meaning of stress yet and started probing him along lines of – do you understand the meaning of stress? “Yes.” Have you ever felt stressed before? “Yes”. That took me by surprise; so far he hadn’t had a separate life from me and I couldn’t recall any such incident. With some amount of dread, I continued probing – when did you feel stressed? And he said “when I think of earthquakes and volcanoes happening in the Earth, I feel stressed”. Yes 2 Life offers stress relief meditation therapy in Pune.

No wonder they say the child is the father of the man! Biologically, the stress response, also known as the fight or flight response has given to the animal kingdom so that they can defend themselves against threats to their lives. It is a primitive, survival thing. Millions of physiological changes happen when the body goes into a stress response mode. Stress hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline get released, heart starts beating faster, pupils get dilated, digestive and reproductive systems are put on hold and all energy, attention and resources of the organism are galvanized to counter the threat on hand – be it a predator or a natural disaster. The design of the stress response is beyond marvelous, it’s truly life saving. The stories we hear of people summoning superhuman strength to lift a car to save a trapped child or getting lost in the forest and surviving for months are a testament to its success. Such a pity then, that we would evolve to trigger this intense life saving response for petty instances such as taking exams, traffic jams, interviews and the like.

Most of us are not even aware that when we start to make that super important phone call and the heart starts beating like crazy, a wrong number has been dialed within our auto nervous system.  The mind, in its ignorance has declared that if I screw up this phone call, I’m dead and the body, in its innocence sets off the stress response for survival. A few of us so-called evolved, introspective individuals do realize that this is a mismatched response but we are unable to prevent it. It is an unfortunate outcome of a society that over emphasizes achievement in the material world. It starts from childhood; the life vs death type of attitude with which we treat every innocuous milestone – grades, college admissions, jobs, promotions, cars, houses, marriage and goes on and on until one day when we actually die from the same stress induced lifestyle. It’s ironic that the responses that we had activated to save us from the million deaths of our imagination actually take us to our death.  

It’s time to evolve further. Almost all of us are safe from wildlife and predators today. We have taken measures to protect us from natural disasters. In the modern life, the stress response is a misfit in 99.99% of the situations that trigger it. When we are stuck in a traffic jam and getting late for an important meeting we need to have a heart to heart with our heart; we need to tell the heart; “hey, I know you have my best interest at your heart, but it is unlikely that I am going to get out of the car and run all the way. I have no use for all the blood pumping in my muscles right now. Please slow down so that I can think calmly and make some arrangements to get things back on track.”

At certain points when we are deeply mired in our anxiety and imagination it may seem like it’s easier to just get out and run rather than get the heart to calm down. It is not easy to overthrow ages of conditioning but one has to start somewhere. The first step is to understand that somewhere when we were getting ready to run this rat race our wiring went wrong. We need to examine all the routes and signals of our wiring thoroughly and isolate those malfunctioning circuits that cause the flashing lights and alarms to go off when activated. The next step is to fix them.