Learn how the mind and body experience stress.

Our body operates in different modes. Two of them are Fight or Flight and Rest and Digest. Fight or flight is associated with stress. Rest and digest is associated with repairing and reenergizing. We can only be in one of these modes at a time, but we need both to survive.

Stress mode can help us in situations where we need to adapt quickly and react to sudden and rapid changes in our environment. A small amount of stress helps us grow by strengthening the body physically and mentally. This way, we can better deal with everyday problems that life throws at us.

Rest and digest is essential because it’s like a pitstop for the body. It helps us refuel with energy and restore all the organs and systems to their original state.

Think about those two modes as tools for growth and recovery. The goal is to have a healthy dose of both. If you are always in rest and digest mode, then you are not growing and evolving. And if you are under chronic stress, then you are just destroying your body.

In most people, stress mode turns on and off without any conscious control. It just gets triggered by external events and our habitual thought patterns. Sometimes it lingers around for hours, days, and even weeks, preventing our body from healing itself and causing all kinds of chronic diseases. To prevent this from happening, we can become familiar with our body’s stress response so that we can deliberately turn it off.

Identifying and shutting down our stress response is a skill that can be learned, just like driving a car or playing the piano. In my opinion, it’s one of the essential skills to know. If we all knew it, we wouldn’t have a health crisis right now.

All stress is a response to some trigger. Knowing the trigger is helpful but not necessary. What is more important is recognizing when you are in stress mode and shortening the unwanted stress response to a minimum.

To start getting familiar with your body’s stress response, you must know what to look for.

Step 1: Below is a list of the most common physical and mental indicators of stress.

Physical indicators: Shortness of breath, Muscle tension, Gut cramping up, Hot flashes, Panic, Headaches, Neck and back pain, Insomnia, Fatigue.

Mental indicators: Repetitive, negative thought patterns, Irritability, Trouble concentrating, Victimization and self-pity, Lack of satisfaction from life, Snappy attitude, Being overly judgmental.

We all experience stress differently. The list above doesn’t represent all the indicators. Just know that any physical or mental discomfort in your body is probably dues to stress.

Step 2: Look for signs of stress in your mind and body.

Start observing yourself every day. If you feel any of the things mentioned in step one or experience any physical or mental discomfort, take a mental note or write them down. What did you feel? When did you feel it? How long did it last? Did the feeling affect your thinking? Your mood? Look for patterns, repetitive feelings, and repetitive thoughts. Are there any triggers?

Try to connect your mental and physical indicators. For example, if you catch yourself thinking negative thoughts. See how those thoughts affect your emotional state? Do they trigger any physical pain or discomfort? And vice-versa.

Observing yourself will slowly start painting a picture of how your mind and body respond to stress. No one can give you the answers. It’s a process you have to go through. You have to observe your mind and body to know them. There are no shortcuts. Self-observation alone will rewire the neural connections in your brain.

Self-observation is so crucial because it is like a workout for your awareness. And awareness is one of the most undervalued and powerful tools that the human mind has.

The relationship between your awareness, body, and mindset directly affects how you deal with stress.

Let’s look at each one of these in more detail:

1. The body is a multi-billion-year-old biological platform assembled out of life’s best adaptation systems. Its language is a set of programs we call instincts driven by the more primitive part of the brain called the amygdala. That part does not think, does not rationalize. It just reacts. For every trigger, there is a predetermined reaction.
2. Awareness is the latest and the most powerful tool of the human mind. It is a higher state of mind that will naturally calm you down. When you are in a state of awareness, your prefrontal cortex is very active. It’s the part of our brain that is responsible for critical thinking. It lets you make less impulsive and more constructive decisions. Awareness created the human mindset.
3. The mindset is a collection of information in your brain. It makes up the social character that you play. This character is mostly based on a set of beliefs, opinions, and experiences. The mindset is not something we are born with. We are more of a host through which it evolves. Humanity’s mindset is essentially a program that has been changing for thousands of years through all the minds of all the people who ever lived. Our mindset is the new filter through which the body looks out into the universe. It allows us to stack up knowledge from the past and apply it to our lives. It is a powerful tool that we can use to evolve our awareness and expand our understanding of reality. The challenge is that our collective mindset is relatively young. It is only starting to learn how to live inside of our instinct-driven body. We all possess this powerful tool. Some use it better than others.

The body and the mindset need a leader, negotiator, and translator. And that is what awareness does. If your awareness is dormant, the body and the mindset follow the same habitual set of programs. The body habitually reacts to how the mindset sees the world. And the mindset habitually responds to how the body feels. This unconscious relationship may occasionally create feeling/thinking loops that keep the body in chronic stress.

Awareness is the most critical step on the way to dealing with stress. Observe yourself every day. Study yourself and reflect on what you’ve learned. Doing this for 1 to 2 months will train your awareness. The more time you spend being aware of the processes that run your mind and body, the more control you’ll gain.

Once you have a good sense of how your body and mind experience stress, you are no longer unconsciously reacting to your stress through the lens of your old mindset. You become the watcher of your stress. You are no longer the program; you are a programmer. Now you can change the code.

Key Takeaways:

• To shut down our stress response, we first need to know what is going on in our mind and body during stress.
• The process of observing and learning about your mind and body will provide you with a new perspective of yourself and will train your awareness.
• Awareness will make you less impulsive and will give you more control.

If you find this article helpful, please consider reading my next article, where I will talk about some of my favorite techniques of dealing with the stress response.