Defeated > miserable > lonely > fat
That’s the loop my brain does whenever I start to feel overwhelmed or exhausted. When I’m tired or have too much on my plate I very quickly start to feel like a failure, usually because I can’t live up to my own impossible standards. I then start to feel as if everything is rubbish, and like I can’t enjoy anything, or that there’s nothing to look forward to. My mind then swiftly turns to thoughts that no-one likes me (who would when I’m so rubbish and boring?), and inevitably that I’m too fat. And of course that makes me feel even more defeated, and so it goes on.
It’s pretty impressive that our minds can do this. They can extrapolate something simple like a broken night’s sleep into a primal fear of alienation and rejection. This ability to imagine the minds of others, to project into the future, and reflect on the past, is what makes us human. It enables us to invent, create and achieve incredible feats of courage and compassion. But it is also what creates ongoing stress and misery.
Our ancient tricky brains
Psychologists (particularly those working in a compassion-focussed way) often call this our “tricky brain”. We still hold onto our reptilian roots and are primed to respond to threat through flight, fright or freeze responses. But our tricky brains have the amazing power to conjure up all sorts of threats. For many of us, most of the time, these are not life threatening. At their core they are usually related to fears of social rejection – in our past being kicked out of the tribe would have meant we would be unlikely to survive. Today common threats are failure, letting others down, not living up to expectations, upsetting others etc.
The stress response
Unfortunately, our tricky brains can’t distinguish between a life-threatening situation and one that is socially threatening, and so our bodies respond the same way. When our brain detects threat it triggers the body’s natural survival responses – our bodies are primed to fight our way out, to escape or to freeze until the threat has passed.
And this isn’t always helpful. It doesn’t really help us in job interviews to feel tense and sick and have our heart racing. But if we had to flee a pack of wolves this physiological response would be super helpful as our muscles would be primed for action, our bowels might empty themselves so we’d be lighter on our feet, and the adrenalin surge would energise us to do what we needed to survive. This leads us to a key message: this response is not your fault.
Key message 1: The way your body responds to stress is not your fault
This stress response is not our fault. It’s a natural by-product of a very important and clever evolutionary mechanism. We don’t choose to respond in this way, we just do. Thanks to our tricky brains.
Another downside of our tricky brains is about what happens once the stressor is no longer present. When a zebra needs to escape a lion, the stress response kicks in and it flees. If it survives, it very quickly goes back to its normal state, happily munching grass. It’s as if it’s forgotten all about the trauma it just went through.
If only we were as lucky. How many times have you survived a stressful event, like a job interview, and then spent ages going back over everything you said, everything they said, the what ifs, the regrets, and the recriminations? Our tricky brains have a way of keeping stress going even when the threat has passed. They can also create stress long before a threat even occurs – how often have you worried about something only to find it wasn’t that bad in the end?
This unfortunately means that stress continues to be experienced by our bodies, even when the stressor is no longer present. This is the second key message: we need to deal with the stressor AND the stress
Key message 2: Deal with the stressor AND the stress
When we are faced with a stressor it is logical to try to get rid of it and to remove the source of the stress. If we can fight it and win, or escape by fleeing or freezing, that’s great. As individuals we often put enormous energies into trying to eliminate the causes of stress. We problem solve, protest, avoid, study, appease, diet, plan, delegate, experiment, argue, plead, etc etc etc. When this works, and the cost of our actions doesn’t outweigh the benefits, we’re winning.
But often we can’t get rid of stressors this way. We can’t problem solve our way out of grief. We can’t control the occurrence or impact of natural disasters, wars, pandemics, or punitive HR policies. This can leave us feeling stuck in a stress response. Which in turn impacts our ability to cope with other stressors, resulting in ongoing, chronic levels of stress.
Even when we can get rid of a stressor, if we don’t attend to the stress it has caused, we don’t allow ourselves to resolve the natural stress response – again keeping us stuck, and at risk of burnout.
This explains why we may continue to experience symptoms of stress and trauma – such as agitation, poor sleep, hypervigilance, anxiety – even when the stressor is no longer present. If we don’t understand that this is our body’s stress response, our tricky brains can get to work filling in the gaps. This often takes the form of telling us we’re weak and failing, and need to work harder (AND that no-one likes us, AND we’re fat…queue the unhelpful loops).
What we really need to do, however, is help our bodies resolve the stress response. It’s usually no good trying to talk our bodies out of it – we need to do things. In their book Burnout, the Nagoski sisters emphasise the importance of communicating to our bodies that we are safe. We need to bypass our tricky brains and speak directly to our nervous systems. Good ways of doing this are:
- Movement
- Physical affection
- Crying or laughing
- Creative expression
Next steps
So, next time you notice your tricky brain settling into an unhelpful loop, and your body’s stress response being activated, remember to:
- Adopt a compassionate stance towards your response and remember it is not your fault that your mind and body are reacting this way
- Do what you can to tackle the stressor in ways that don’t add to your stress
- AND attend to your body’s stress response through active self-care
- Know that when the stressor is out of your control (or is no longer present) focusing on resolving your stress response can make a huge difference, so make this a priority.
