This is part two in my blog post stress series based on the ’10 Steps to Mastering Stress’ by David Barlow et al.

In my first blog post in this series we looked at understanding stress and how we will approach decreasing it in your day-to-day life.

In this post I will describe the stress response. The stress response has physical, mental and behavioral components.

Physical response

There are two ‘stress response’ systems in the body – the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic system prepares your body for action and the parasympathetic response calms your body responses down.

When the body or mind are stressed the sympathetic nervous system releases chemicals called adrenaline and noradrenaline. These chemicals affect different parts of the body to prepare them for a threat. Your heart rate and blood pressure increase and blood is moved away from the non-essential organs – i.e., skin, fingers toes – towards the essential organs, i.e., heart and lungs. Additionally your breathing rate increases to provide more oxygen for the body.

The combination of your heart rate increasing and your breathing rate increasing – can cause a feeling of shortness of breath, choking and dizziness. Blood moving away from non-essential organs may result in numbness, dizziness, blurred vision and change in sensation in toes and fingers.

Chemicals are also released from the pituitary gland in the brain – which help prepare the body tissues and decrease inflammation.

Things to realize about the physical response to stress

• The sympathetic response system cannot carry on indefinitely. It will stop at some stage. ( i.e., a panic attack will stop)
• The control of these two systems is largely automatic. There are however techniques that you can learn to decrease the physical response.
• In highly stressed individuals, the stress system is easily provoked since the baseline stress level is higher.
• A chronic excessive response to stress – can lead to decreased immunity, fatigue and depression.

Mental response

When stressed – your mind scans the environment constantly to look for a threat. This action is useful when you are actually under threat – since your mind acts quickly and looks at all possibilities when under threat.

However – the other side of the stress response is excessive worrying. Worrying is a normal response to stress, and can be useful when it reminds you of your responsibilities – i.e., if I don’t study I will fail.

Chronic stress, however, results in chronic worrying and rumination – which in the long run results in higher stress hormones in the blood and fatigue, irritability and impairment of functioning. This leads to the development of an anxiety or mood disorder.

Put simply – if you are so busy thinking about the next threat at all times, ruminating on past threats or perceived threats – you are unable actually to focus on your day to day functioning. A student who is so worried about the outcome of an exam that they cannot think straight – will not be able to concentrate on studying.

Behavioural response

Stress influences behaviour. Some behaviours like escaping or avoiding danger are protective in nature. Smoking, drinking, avoiding, pacing, not sleeping can become a harmful response to stress. Avoiding activities that are stressful i.e. exams, social functions – invariably lead to missing important events – which will lead to more stress in the long term.

To summarise

1. The stress response has physical, mental and behavioral components.
2. The stress response is mediated by the sympathetic nervous system.
3. The stress response is needed to prime our bodies and mind to face a threat.
4. Physical response to stress leads to physical symptoms – i.e. heart rate increase, breathing rate increased, numbness and tingling of fingers and toes.
5. Mental response – includes focussed attention and increased vigilance. This is normal – it becomes abnormal when the mental stress response becomes chronic and ongoing resulting in excessive worrying, rumination or anxiety.
6. Behavioural responses such as avoidance – are useful in the face of actual stress – but can be very harmful when used as an everyday response to a perceived threat.

This is part two in my blog post stress series based on the ’10 Steps to Mastering Stress’ by David Barlow et al.

Part One – Mastering your stress.

Take Care

Dr M.