Since it’s April and it is stress awareness month, I am dedicating an article to promote awareness and understanding around stress and how we can navigate its impacts.

In this article, I’ll share some of the most useful things I’ve learnt on the topic of stress. Knowing all of the below had personally helped to equip me to have a healthier relationship with stress.

Stress is a normal response to life!

Many people may not realise that stress is a normal response to life. 

When faced with a stressful situation, whether caused by external factors like a looming deadline or internal factors like worrying about job security, the body responds by releasing stress hormones that trigger a series of physiological changes- our heart races, breathing quicken, muscles tense up and beads of swear appear. 

This response is commonly known as the “fight-or-flight” response, an evolutionary adaptation that helped our ancestors survive in dangerous situations by rapidly preparing the body to either fight off the threat or run away from it. You can see it as our body’s “natural defense mechanism”.

While this automatic response can be helpful in life-threatening situations, it can also be triggered by non-life-threatening stressors such as work deadlines, relationship problems or even our own thoughts! 

All of these are not problematic until..

The problem comes when we continuously allow ourselves to activate our body’s stress response to non-life-threatening stressors.

When our body’s stress response are activated repeatedly or for prolonged periods, it can have negative effects on physical, emotional and mental health like we all know. 

• Mentally, it induce changes in our brain structures which are responsible for decision-making, memory, impulse control, and concentration. 
• Affects the part of the brain responsible for processing emotions, which can lead to increased anxiety, addiction, irritability, and depression.
• Physically, is also linked to high blood pressure and blockage of arteries. Additional preliminary research has shown that chronic stress may contribute to obesity, either directly by causing people to eat more or indirectly by reducing the amount of sleep and exercise a person gets [1].

Self-regulation as a mediating factor

Of course, the way we self-regulate ourselves in times of these non-threatening stress triggers plays a role as well.

In a way you can see “self-regulation” as a mediating factor between our stress response and the damage to our brain and body.

Sometimes when we are stressed, we can also explode in big behaviours like yelling, hitting, or throwing, and some of us implode by crying, withdrawing, or panicking. 

While such “coping mechanisms” help us feel better in the moment, they often bring about other issues in the long-term which can then add on to our existing stress/ pain. 

Peeking into our brain: So what’s the science behind the mechanisms underlying these stress reactions?

The more you understand and see how your brain works, the more control you have over your thoughts and emotions.

When we know what is happening in our brain, we also realise that it’s not our fault that we sometimes react the way we do, or lose control of ourselves.

In this section, I am going to share a very simple hand model of the brain by Dr. Dan Sigel. 

The hand model explains what exactly happens when you suddenly lose control, or as Dan Siegel puts it, “flip your lid!”

First, let’s see what the hand model of the brain looks like. As its name suggests, you need to use your hand for this.

If you put your thumb in the middle of the palm, and curl your fingers over the top, you’ve got the hand model of the brain! This model helps to simplify the complex workings of the brain.

The model uses the fingers and palm of a hand to represent different parts of the brain and their functions.

• The wrist represents the spinal cord
• The thumb represents the amygdala, the part the brain responsible for detecting danger and sends signal to our nervous system to react accordingly.
• If you place your thumb in the palm, you’ll form the limbic system, which is the “downstairs brain”. The limbic system is responsible for our emotions, memories, and activating instinctive survival reactions. 
• If you fold your fingers down over your thumb, this represent the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the area of the brain responsible for rational thinking, maintaining emotional balance, decision-making and problem-solving. Dan Siegel calls this the “upstairs brain”, or “the lid”

Interesting to note is that the PFC does not finish developing and wiring until we are 25-30 years old!

So what actually happens when we “flip our lid”?

When our amygdala detects a threat, our downstair brain (limbic system) gets fired. When it gets fired constantly by stressors, our lid gets flipped. 

When we FLIP OUR LIDS, our “upstair brain” goes offline and our “downstair brain” takes over. 

Using the hand model of the brain to represent this, lift your fingers to release your fist – you see that the connection between your upstairs and downstairs brain is lost. At this instance, we can no longer effectively communicate with others, or control our emotions.

We will lose emotional balance, reasoning skills, empathy, and moral awareness. We also act in ways that terrifies and endangers other.

We FIGHT (get aggressive), FLIGHT (run away), or FREEZE (shutdown/withdraw)… some studies even include a 4th one FAWN (people-please).

And most of us don’t have much of a choice over which of these our brain chooses to activate when our lids are flipped. 

What determines how easy it is for us to “flip our lids”?

All sorts of factors will trigger the PFC (“upstairs brain”) to go offline- The lack of sleep, hunger, a stressful work deadline, or when our emotions are too intense or too big. Past traumatic experiences can sensitise limbic reactivity, such that the even minor stresses can cause us to flip our lid, and make the upstairs brain go offline.

The limbic system cannot distinguish between various kinds of threats, such as a tiger about to attack or the disappointment of having broccoli for dinner instead of mac and cheese.

On the other hand, when your PFC (“upstairs brain”) is connected to your limbic systems (“downstairs brain”), you can make good decisions about what to do when you have big feelings. Even if something is frustrating, you can still solve the problem and think calmly.

As the prefrontal cortex is not fully mature until around the age of 25, this can make it particularly challenging for children and teens to cope with stressful situations and control their emotions. This also kinda explain why teens are likely to engage in more risky or impulsive behaviours.

By understanding how the brain works, we can learn to regulate our emotions and respond more effectively to stressful situations.

 When our lids are flipped, what can we do to put it back down?

One of the ways to do this is by redirecting and retraining our attention. This can be done through mindfulness practices.

How mindfulness practice impacts the brain? 

Mindfulness is a practice that involves paying attention to the present moment without judgment or distraction.

Over the years, research has found numerous positive linkages between mindfulness meditation and in the brain regions linked to emotional regulation (a.k.a “the amygdala”).

It has been shown to have a number of positive effects on the brain:

1. Response to threats

Firstly, mindfulness has been linked to a reduction in activity in the amygdala, the brain region responsible for processing emotions.

Using brain scans, research has concluded that there is a decrease in activity detected in the brain’s amygdala, in meditators as compared to non-meditators.

Mindfulness practices are able to lessen the sensitivity of our amygdala region, and thus increase our ability to feel calmer, and less aroused and see more possibilities in times of stress and challenging situations. [2]

Practicing mindfulness can accelerate the return of the amygdala to its normal state after perceiving a threat. The amount of time it takes to recover from a threat is linked to the amount of mindfulness practice an individual engages in.

This can result in a faster onset of overload, as depicted in the diagram below.

Mindfulness helps us recover in between triggers, so our level of stress does not build.

This can be particularly beneficial in situations where multiple threats are encountered, as not fully recovering from one threat can cause an individual to be in an already heightened state when another threat arises.

2. Increase thickness of PFC

Practicing mindfulness has been shown to increase the thickness of the prefrontal cortex, which are important for attention, emotional regulation, and decision-making.

Mindfulness has been linked to an increase in gray matter volume in areas of the brain associated with learning, memory, and emotional regulation. 

3. Increases activity in the brain area associated with learning

Participants who completed a course in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) showed an uptick in the concentration of gray matter in the hippocampus, which affects our learning and memory capabilities. [2]

Overall, the practice of mindfulness can lead to changes in our brain that decreases our limbic reactivity and increase our ability to self-regulate when our lids are flipped!

From panic to power

The hand model of the brain is a powerful tool that provides valuable insights into our stress response. By mapping specific areas of the hand to different regions of the brain involved in the stress response, we can gain a greater understanding of the biological processes that underlie our stress response.

Practicing mindfulness through exercises such as deep breathing, meditation and body scan can train our brain to become more calm and balanced in response to stressors. This can ultimately help us feel more in control of our emotions and better able to cope with the challenges of daily life.

*All content here is for informational purposes and does not replace individual professional consultations for mental health questions and issues.

References

[1] Scott, K. A., Melhorn, S. J., & Sakai, R. R. (2012). Effects of Chronic Social Stress on Obesity. Current obesity reports, 1(1), 16–25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13679-011-0006-3

[2] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/harvard-researchers-study-how-mindfulness-may-change-the-brain-in-depressed-patients/

Written By:
Jeannette Qhek
M.S. Counselling | Wellbeing Lead | Content Creator/Writer
Voice of Chill By Nette