If you’re dealing with anxiety, this post has the answers you need.
If you knew what happens inside your body when you experience anxiety, it may shock you. I was when I first researched this and I want you to know, as it will motivate you to work on decreasing your anxiety.
When you are feeling anxious, for whatever reason, it’s really fear about something. Your fear triggers your sympathetic nervous system to go into a state of high alert, where you devote all your energy to looking for danger. Regrettably, this causes a decrease in the essential functions of your entire body. Your digestion, immune system, sexual performance, brain function, heart health, and detoxification are all negatively affected.
When you feel anxious about anything, your Sympathetic branch of your Autonomic Nervous System (often metaphorically called the “Gas Pedal”) activates to give you energy during times of stress from any source. It does this by secreting the hormones adrenalin, epinephrine, noradrenalin, and cortisol.
These hormones bring about the physiologic changes (also known as the flight or fight response) such as increased heart rate, blood pressure, metabolism, and increased in blood flow to your muscles. All these changes are a necessary to give you the energy to deal with whatever stress you are facing. You need more blood flow to your muscles, and increased heart rate to do this. However, as you’re about to learn, most of us are spending way too much time in this Sympathetic state and this makes it challenging to heal from any disease, including burnout, as your body doesn’t prioritise digesting your food, or your immune function when it’s in what it perceives as a survival or stressed state.
Unfortunately, if you are in the grips of burnout, that means your total burden of stressors from all sources is too much for you. Keep in mind that stress refers to any factor that moves your body out of its natural balance or homeostasis. If you’re suffering burnout, then you’re more likely to be spending too much time in the Sympathetic state, which means your stress response system potentially remains over – activated.
Unfortunately, the stress response system for many people remains constantly activated because they are reacting to non-life-threatening stressors throughout the day, such as being stuck in traffic or running late. Why? Our brains can’t differentiate between a life-threatening situation and one that just causes anxiety. So their stress response system stays switched on all the time.
The other problem is that once your stress response system activates, i.e. you produce more cortisol to deal with the threat, the increased cortisol levels raise your blood sugars (great if you’re going to run in a marathon). Most of us do not use these excess blood sugars that our ancestors would have burned off by running away from predators because we are not running away from our stressors. So their stress response system remains activated, worsening the situation as their body must also manage the increase in their blood sugar. Your increased blood sugars can cause weight gain, insulin resistance, artery damage, and other serious health issues.
Think of it this way if you’re in the Sympathetic or often called the fight-or-flight state your body thinks it’s fighting a predator that could kill you, so you switch off your digestion, there’s no time to digest food if you want to escape a predator. Your immune system shuts down along with your ability to think clearly and creatively.
Your primitive brain comes on line to deal with what it interprets as a life-threatening event and your instincts kick in to run or escape. Trouble is, today we are not running when we face ours 21st century stressors, like financial problems, ongoing wars, climate change, relationship problems, we internalise them and this keeps our stress system consistently switched on and doesn’t use up the additional blood sugar generated from the activated stress response.
If your stress response system is always activated and you constantly remain in a state of sympathetic arousal, then;
- your muscles to become tense
- your brain focuses on searching for danger instead of being fully aware and interested in other people, so you miss a lot of what’s happening around you.
- you don’t digest your food as well as you could do — leading to nutrient deficiencies — which leads to many diseases
- your immune function decreases — so many diseases, including cancer, can proliferate
- your detoxification system doesn’t function properly — so toxins build up in your body
- your thought process and decision-making abilities are affected — so you’re not on top of your game
- you age prematurely — think of how presidents age over their terms
- it’s more likely you are gaining weight — as higher levels of cortisol lead to increased blood sugars, which potentially lead to weight gain
- you’re more likely to have higher blood pressure, which can damage your arteries and lead to heart disease and stroke
- healing conditions like leaky gut become harder — because of stress killing the beneficial gut bacteria and allowing the bad bacteria to proliferate
- stress slows your gut motility down and you’re more likely to experience constipation
- stress affects the quality of your sleep, and lack of sleep then further reduces gut motility and decreases good bacteria – this then leads to leaky gut
- the sympathetic nervous system can release glutamate when it is active, in excess, overstimulating brain cells, and presenting as anxiety or a panic attacks
- studies show that stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system can promote a healthy balance of glutamate and its counterpart, GABA. GABA inhibits brain activity, enabling you to relax.
You can see from the list of horrible effects of experiencing stress and being in the Sympathetic State, that you wouldn’t want to be in that for too long. Your stress response system is designed to handle short periods of stress, such as fighting off a predator, and then your amazing Parasympathetic branch of your ANS acts as the savior that turns off your stress response and restores balance or homeostasis to your body.
However, keep in mind that without your Sympathetic branch, you could not deal with life-threatening stressors, like escaping from a dangerous situation. The problem is this primitive but life saving system is now being activated all day long by stressors that are not life threatening, like being late for work.
Even just thinking about something, like “I am going to be late,” can still activate your stress response. However, you also need to have the perception that being late is stressful. Because you can have the thought momentarily that you are going to be late, however, if you don’t perceive that to be stressful, then you won’t activate your stress response. So, in this case, perception is important. The good news is you can change your perception of those types of stressors. However, with many stressors, such as feeling too hot, too cold, or being hungry, perception does not play a role and your body’s stress response will still activate.
Most people are reacting to their negative self-talk, worry and self-criticism, which activates their stress hormones, preparing them to fight or flee; increasing their blood sugars, diverting blood away from digestion, increasing blood pressure, heart rate and breathing. All this potentially leads to higher levels of anxiety, obesity, and making poor decisions as the increase in stress hormones creates what’s called cortical inhibition. This means you can’t think and solve problems as well as you would if you were in the Parasympathetic state.
Now your body is a magnificent machine and has an inbuilt survival function that counters or stops the effects of the Sympathetic activation, and it’s called the Parasympathetic branch. I want you to think of your Parasympathetic branch as your rest, digest and detox state.
Your Parasympathetic branch of your ANS is where all the magic happens. Imagine having the ability to switch off your stress response and bring yourself back into balance. You have it. Why? Your Parasympathetic branch switches off your stress response, and it brings your body back onto balance or homeostasis after a threat or stress has passed. Without the Parasympathetic branch, your stress response system would remain switched on all the time, resulting in an inability to digest food, think properly, feel calm, sleep well, lose weight, or heal from any disease. That’s what would happen if you couldn’t activate your parasympathetic branch.
I want you to think of the Parasympathetic branch as your best friend, the one that will help you recover from burnout, feel more energetic, calm, sleep better, and heal from whatever disease you may have. If you’re spending too much time in the Sympathetic state or flight or fight, you’re dousing yourself in stress hormones and switching off your innate healing, otherwise known as rest, digest and detox.
I want you to aim to be in the Parasympathetic state 70% of your time. Yes 70% sounds a lot, and it’s challenging as when you experience stress, this inhibits your Parasympathetic response. Many people find it challenging to be in the parasympathetic state at all, so we are going to dedicate some time to understanding how to get yourself into the Parasympathetic state, or rest, digest and detox state.
Functions Of The Parasympathetic State
• decreases your heart rate after stress or exercise- helping you to feel more calm 1
• helps bowel muscles contract and push food through the Gi track so you’re not constipated
• constricts pupils in restful situations (pupils dilate in stressful situations)
• stimulates saliva flow to start your digestion process
• triggers the digestive enzymes, including the stomach releasing Hydrochloric Acid, so you can digest your food
• stimulates the pancreas to release digestive enzymes and gallbladder to release bile-so you can digest your food
• allows your immune system to function to fight disease
• decreases metabolism, oxygen consumption, blood pressure, and respiration – allowing you to feel calm and sleep well
The big question is how you will get yourself in the Parasympathetic state 70% of your day?
There isn’t one thing you can do that will automatically get you into the Parasympathetic state. You’re going to need a complete overhaul of your thoughts, feelings and behaviors, as your current ones have contributed to your burnout.
I know from my own personal experience and helping people suffering from burnout that getting them to recognise when they are stressed and then teaching them the skills to activate their Parasympathetic state is the key to recovery.
Recognising When You Are Experiencing Stress
Recognising when you are experiencing stress will mean you have to become more aware of your habitual way of operating in the world, i.e. what you do automatically as a response to what happens. In the next chapter How to Reprogram Yourself, you’ll learn that when you’re not present, which is 90% of the time, your subconscious programming controls your behavior. You are going to learn how to change that programming and create new habits that help you get into the Parasympathetic state and recover from burnout. So the next chapter is a must-read.
Some Signs You May Be experiencing Stress and Be In The Sympathetic State Are;
• you’re rushing
• you’re worrying or overthinking things
• you’re not present and thinking all the time
• you’re pushing yourself without a break
• your heart rate and breathing have increased
• your blood pressure is up
• you feel anxious, shaky, moody, and or light headed
• you’re experiencing brain fog
• you’re hungry or thirsty
• you’re hot or cold
• your environment is too messy/noisy
• you feel out of control
• you’re feeling tired and lethargic
• you’re having trouble thinking about things logically
• you’re making silly decisions
• you’re dropping things or running into things
• you’re just not present with the moment
• you’re not sleeping well
• you’re rushing while eating
• your self-talk is not supportive
• you’re being tough on yourself
You will need to be a stress detective and look for any of the above signs every day and as soon as you realize them, stop what you are doing and adopt one of the healthy habits you will learn in week 1.
You will need to learn an entire array of new habits to get you into the Parasympathetic state, such as staying present, pacing yourself, stopping being a perfectionist or workaholic, and learning what to eat and when.
One of the most important skills is learning to be present, where your mind is free of past worries and future concerns. Being present is a gift you give to yourself and the world, as you will experience more peace and be much more likely to be in the Parasympathetic state.
When you are present or mindful, you are not thinking about this or that. You have a profound connection to the present moment, accepting it without judgment. Living in your head for a future moment is madness and activates your stress response, taking you into the Sympathetic state, where stress hormones wreak havoc on your health.
Getting Your Mindset Right
Your mindset is equally important as improving your nutrition and sleep habits. Why? Improving your sleep and diet won’t matter if you’re always stressed, over-committed, working excessively, and rushing through life. The tendency to rush, people-please, and over-work may be attributed to a range of factors, but at its core, it relates to subconscious beliefs that impact on your level of self-love and self-worth. Having a low self-worth may lead to decisions that jeopardize your health and well-being.
Dr Bruce Lipton found that when muscle testing is used to assess subconscious programming, most people’s subconscious minds reject the statement “I love myself.” Remember to be kind to yourself and treat yourself like your own best friend.
The key to cultivating the right mindset is to decrease or eliminate behaviors that activate your stress response and hinder your ability to enter a Parasympathetic state.
• over-committing
• being a perfectionist
• over working
• over exercising
• not spending time with friends and family
• rushing all the time
• placing too much pressure on yourself to perform
• not placing enough importance on connection with people
• worrying all the time
• being self-sacrificing and not honouring your own needs
Merely writing or committing to stopping the above behaviors won’t be enough to stop or decrease them, as you’ve been doing these things a long time. These behaviors are likely ingrained habits, requiring serious reprogramming that you’ll discover in the following chapter.
1 Hurley, T. (2018), ACTIVATING THE PARASYMPATHETIC NERVOUS SYSTEM TO DECREASE STRESS AND ANXIETY, https://canyonvista.com/blog/activating-parasympathetic-nervous-system/
