“I am stressed” is one of the sentences we hear or say most in daily life. The purpose of this article will be to think about how stress follows our body, when it is harmful, what it is trying to tell us, what automatic reactions might be caused by, and how they could be different, rather than an approach like "dealing" with stress.
Traditional thought predicts that stress occurs after isolated events such as extremely disturbing but sudden unemployment, divorce, and loss. Although such major events constitute effective sources of stress for many, there are also chronic daily stressors in people's lives that are much more insidious and more harmful in terms of their long-term biological effects. Internally created stresses cause damage without showing any extraordinary appearance.
It may seem paradoxical to suggest that stress, which is a vital physiological mechanism, is a cause of disease. To resolve this contradiction, we need to distinguish between acute stress and chronic stress. Acute stress is the body's sudden, short-term response to danger. Chronic stress, on the other hand, is the activation of stress mechanisms for longer periods of time when the person is exposed to stress sources that he either does not recognize or cannot control.
Stress is one of the problems that has a very important place in the psychological system and is a factor mentioned in all diseases that we can think of in life. Indeed, studies show that exposure to stress disrupts the hormonal system, negatively affects metabolism, weakens the immune system, and seriously damages the digestive system and enzyme production. We know that these systems are the root factors in all diseases; In other words, defining stress correctly and reducing the aspects that harm us are important not only for our mental health but also for our physical health.
Stress; It is a complex set of physical and biochemical responses to strong emotional stimuli. Both humans and animals can experience stress without even realizing it. Stress is the visible and emotional state that occurs when an organism perceives a threat to its existence or well-being. It consists of invisible internal changes. Now let's take a look at what happens in our body during stress.
When danger and real stress occur, the first organ to be stimulated in your brain is the "amygdala". Amygdala is one of the most important parts of the brain region, which we call the limbic system, where our emotions such as fear, anxiety and pleasure occur. When stimulated in potentially threatening situations, the "hypothalamus" is activated very quickly. The hypothalamus stimulates the pituitary gland, and the pituitary stimulates the adrenal glands, activating a system response that will have an effect throughout the body. Following this response, two very important messengers are secreted from the adrenal glands: Cortisol and noradrenaline.
With the activation of nerve cells, the hormonal system is also affected by the situation. Under the influence of cortisol and noradrenaline, the body; It provides energy to the muscles and heart by stopping all functions such as digestion, immunity, hormone production and reproduction. The heart will beat faster, breathing will accelerate, and more blood will be pumped to the hands and feet. The body will be ready to fight or escape. The name of this system designed to protect itself is the sympathetic system. If you are a stressed person or have experienced a situation such as a panic attack, these reactions of your body are not unfamiliar to you.
Continuing mental activities in our minds towards the perception of threat keep the sympathetic system, that is, the "threat perception" alive, even if the threat does not continue. However, when the mind is silent and the person believes that the danger has passed and is now safe, the "parasympathetic system" will come into play.
The functioning of the digestive system, the immune functions returning to normal, the heart rate decreasing to normal levels, the hormonal system transitioning from the state of destruction to the phase of construction, and the duty of the sympathetic system to "rest and feed", which we call the parasympathetic system. It is important to transfer it to mode. The parasympathetic system is a nervous system circuit that is extremely important for health as it is dominant throughout most of the day, where we feel more peaceful and safe, where nutrition and the production of female and male hormones take place. These two systems are called “autonomic nervous system”, which means spontaneous functioning. It is called "system".
Let's examine the functioning of the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems with an example. Let's say you are a student about to take an exam. There needs to be some stress before, during and after the exam to reach the desired point. This will motivate you and be a kind of driving force to take you to the desired point. What happens when this happens more?
Your anxiety level increases before the exam and the sympathetic system mentioned above, which is not very sympathetic regardless of its name, comes into play. Depending on the level, this situation may negatively affect your exam success. Despite everything, you passed your exam and passed. How you calm down and how the parasympathetic system activates varies from person to person. While some people can calm down as soon as they leave the exam, some remain in a state of stress until the exam result is announced. We will look at the reasons for this difference later in the article.
The experience of stress has three elements. The first is a physical or emotional event that the organism perceives as a threat. This is called a stress stimulus, that is, a stress source. The second element is the operating system that encounters the source of stress and interprets it in its own way. For humans, this operating system is the nervous system, especially the brain. The last element is the stress response, which consists of various physiological and behavioral adjustments that occur in response to the perception of a threat.
There is no uniform and universal relationship between a stressor and the stress response. Each stressful event is individual and although it occurs today, it also has a resonance from the past. For this reason, even though the source of stress (exam) is the same, as in the exam example mentioned above, the response to stress is specific to the individual and it is necessary to go to previous experiences to find the difference in this response.
We have a brain structure that we inherited genetically. This organ works like a great recording device; It develops some neural pathways in the light of the records it keeps. The thoughts, emotions, behaviors we have, the connections between our brain cells and are like roads. Especially in the first seven years of life, basic circuits are shaped. These paths built in the past determine the reactions we give during today's vital events. However, since we do not consciously create these records and paths, it is not a situation that we are aware of. Most of the actions we think we do actually occur automatically. The neural connections built in our childhood are the road maps in adulthood.
When you think about why some issues that someone else can easily get over or even do not focus on are so important to you and cause so much stress, you feel uncomfortable and see that there is a "difference" in you. You may be thinking. But you also know that if you could have acted differently, you would have acted that way too! Because even though a chronically stressed person affects other people in his life, he is the one who suffers from this situation the most.
At this point, practices such as ten ways to cope with stress in today's popular culture can only be beneficial when you are ready to look deeper. Your sensitivity to one issue, the fact that you attach more importance to one issue than another, and the fact that you experience stress, definitely has a source somewhere in your own life story. Unless you investigate this and study the sources of the neural connections mentioned above, superficial interventions such as coping methods will provide momentary relief. Prescriptions come from outside, transformation occurs from within; I hope you can experience the spiritual transformations you need…
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