In the past, we thought that when the human body was under stress, there were only two states of stress response and relaxation. The stress response was to be very anxious, to solve the problem quickly, and to relax is to completely relax, but this is not completely correct. With the development of neuroscience in recent years, it has been found that the human nervous system actually has three levels of responses when faced with stress threats:
When stress is manageable, activate social connections for help
When the stress is not that big, such as a skirmish with a colleague one day, you will still feel uncomfortable, but the discomfort is within the range you can handle. At this time, your body is still dominated by the ventral vagus nerve, which will guide you. Use ways to activate social connections to help you relieve stress, such as sending messages to friends to complain, going home and telling your family about the bad things that happened today. After talking about it, you feel comforted and encouraged, and the feeling of stress will dissipate .
When the pressure is a bit high, activate the fight or flight response
When the pressure has threatened you, for example, the supervisor looks unhappy with you, deliberately makes things difficult for you at work, or makes a big report to the company’s top management in 3 days, the body will begin to be dominated by the sympathetic nerves, and the war will start. Or escape the reaction, you will do your best to deal with the threat, stay up all night for 3 days and make a perfect report, or try to avoid the threat – try not to meet the supervisor.
When stress has become acutely dangerous for you, paralyzing or shutting down the response
Sometimes, the momentary stress is too high, such as a car accident, rape, robbery, or the high-intensity stress continues for too long, such as long-term physical or mental abuse, bullying, your body will start to be dominated by the dorsal vagus nerve, you Your body will be like a little white rabbit that meets a lion. You feel that you can’t win or escape, you can only play dead. At this time, you will feel that your head is blank, your whole body is frozen, you can’t do anything, or you have a strong depression. and despair.
Which level of response your nervous system will activate depends on the level of threat your body considers, not entirely based on rational judgment, so sometimes your brain doesn’t feel so “stressed”, but Your body is actually in a fight and flight or freeze response all the time. In addition, each person’s body has a different subjective perception of the threat of stress, which is why we see some people become very nervous and anxious about the epidemic immediately and shut themselves at home, while some people feel that it’s okay and still go out to buy food shop.
Interestingly, these three nervous system responses are actually like ladders, and we can go up and down between them. In this long-term three-level alert, you will find that you are not anxious all the time. The real situation will be more like: when you wake up in the morning, you feel that your body is relatively relaxed and your life can be handled, but after listening to the press conference in the afternoon, the more you listen, the better Nervousness, fears about the epidemic start to take over again (fight or flight response), and you may even start feeling hopeless (paralysis/shutdown response) that “the epidemic will never end”. But at night, if you happen to be having a good time chatting with friends, your body can go back to a state of social connection, even stress-free.
So, to deal with the anxiety and depression that comes with the pandemic, it’s important to be aware of where we are right now: am I in a fight-or-flight stress response, or a paralyzed/closed stress response? Woolen cloth? When you know which state you are in, you can use the corresponding way to soothe your body and mind.
If you are in the fight or flight response, your body is actually full of energy and you want to drive away the enemy, but because the virus is an invisible enemy, you will feel that you can only be restless, but what can you do? nor. At this point, what you need is to find a way to release the energy of your body, such as doing a 30-minute freehand muscle exercise at home. When the energy of your body is released, your anxiety will also decrease.
If you’re in a paralyzed/shutdown response, what you need at this point is to make yourself feel safe to slowly restart. So what you need to do is to put yourself in a more comfortable environment, go to the kitchen and pour yourself a cup of warm water, do a few deep breaths and muscle stretches, or gently hug someone you can trust for 1 minute , make your body feel safe again.
Finally, don’t forget that when the human body faces stress, the most effective way to relieve it at the beginning is to communicate with others. Therefore, during this time, you are encouraged to spend more time with people you can trust and who are in a stable mood. The stability of the other party will also make your body relax unconsciously. Conversely, being around anxious people will make you more anxious!
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