Understanding Your Body & The Science of Stress
Why Stress, Emotions and Everyday Life Can Affect How You Feel
The purpose of the page is to try and answer the question, why do I feel the way I do? In particular things on this page and its corresponding groups relate to the link between emotional wellbeing and our physical body. It is easy to disassociate the two but the truth is that our bodies are a bustling hive of chemical reactions that play a direct role into how we feel.
Your Body Is Always Trying to Protect You
The truth is, there is not really a blue print to being a person, the same way we consciously react in ways that we think are best for us, your body subconsciously does the same. Your nervous system, hormones and stress response are designed to help get you out of harms way. It may be true that nature has not quite managed to adapt some of our reaction perfectly for the modern era, but generally it does a pretty great job.
Let me give you an example, say you where an ancient human and you stumble upon a snoozing sabre-toothed cat. Your stress response would kick in, give you a jolt of alertness and power your muscles to get you out of there. Hormones quickly convert stored fats and sugar into usable energy allowing you to run further and faster to keep you safe, assuming you managed to avoid the overwhelming urge to pet the kitty.
So, that is an example of your hormones and stress response protecting you, now imagine that instead of a sabre-toothed cat its that pile of bills you have been avoiding opening, or your boss with a stern look on their face. (As someone who works on this website with their partner, who naturally sees herself as my boss, I would prefer to go and pet the big tooth kitty).
Why Emotions Can Feel Physical
We have talked a few times about how all of what we are is interconnected, your physical wellbeing effects your mental wellbeing and your mental wellbeing effects your physical wellbeing. This is the same with emotions. Our brain can send out chemicals and hormones in our body based on our emotions, much like how cortisol and adrenaline are released when we meet a sabre-toothed cat. The impacts these hormones have on your body are very real and so naturally we can feel this.
Contraction of muscles in the shoulders, clenching of the jaw, increased heartrate, butterflies in your stomach from blood moving away from the digestive muscles into muscles for action.
These are but a few of the things we can experience from various different emotions. Historically as we have mentioned, they are for you to be able to fight, or flee or some other life protecting action. In todays world when your life is less often on the line they are typically a little less easy to channel.
Meet Your Body's Support Team
While many of these characters are often painted as villains, they are really trying to help you. Think of them as superhero's, but maybe really awkward, clumsy ones. Their heart is in the right place, but in trying to do good, they maybe drop the occasional car, knock over the odd building or get in the way. A bit like Hancock. So lets meet our line up of brain avengers.
Stress:
Stress is our intrepid leader. When your in a really tight position and it could very much be life or death, this is who will swoop in and give you the power up you need. Stress gives you the ability react fast, pumps blood and sugar to your muscles to allow you to run or fight and keeps your brain focused on urgent problems and alert to danger.
In some period of history, stress probably kept our ancestors alive so we could be here today. But in a modern world without sabre-toothed cats, Stress still gives you those powers, but they are not what we need right now. The increase in heartbeat leads to higher blood pressure, with long term stress this can increase your chances of heart attacks or strokes. As the blood leave your digestive muscles to go and back up your leg muscles you can get an upset stomach, have difficult digesting food or experience acid reflux. That boost in sugar helps in the short term, but in the long run leads to constant tiredness.
Anxiety:
To our ancestors, anxiety would have been the ability to make us hyper vigilant, super focused and aware of our surroundings. Because you believe danger is around, you are able to tune in to the sounds, sights and smells of what you believe to be a threat.
Today, that same anxiety makes us focus on what we believe is a threat, however its rarely the bear it may have one bean for our ancestors. The distinct disadvantage to this is that, once you move away from a bear, you can go back to less threatening things, however in todays world, that threat is more likely to be something long term, like worry about school, work, health of a loved one or other less easily dismissed problem.
Cortisol:
If stress is the fire alarm, cortisol is the member of staff running around making sure everyone knows there's an emergency. Maybe not the biggest name on the team, but it certainly helps achieve the goal. Cortisol is the hormone responsible for getting your body to do the things mentioned above.
The issue is not cortisol itself, but rather finding a balance. The correct amount will get you up in the morning, get you working productively and achieving your goals. Too much and you can't take a break, you can't rest or recover as you need to.
Nervous system:
Very much the command centre, the chemical and electrical network that controls everything. The Central Nervous System is made up of the brain and the spinal cord. The brain processes information, information, regulates emotions, and governs thoughts and memory. The Spinal cord is the super highway of data, all of the signals from the brain use this as the main way to get around your body, feel something tickling your feet, the feeling goes up the spinal cord to your brain, the brain says, "hey, that's annoying, move the foot", the signal goes all the way back down and you move your foot.
The Peripheral Nervous System is an extension of your nervous system, it includes the Autonomic Nervous System, which manages involuntary bodily functions you don't have to think about, things like breathing, heart rate, and digestion. It also includes Somatic Nervous System which controls your voluntary movements and feeling information.
Sleep:
Ok, now this one, everyone knows is a winner. As well as being just delightful to do, sleep improves your mood, enhances cognitive function, boosts your immune system, and lowers your risk for long-term health issues like heart disease. It is also essential to life. Most of the other topics have highlighted an upside and a downside to each, but no downsides here.
Sleep is when your body carries out much of its maintenance work. It's the closest thing we have to pressing the reset button.
Period Pain:
Period pain is a little different to the rest of the team. Unlike stress or anxiety, it isn't your body's response to danger, it's part of the menstrual cycle. Every month, the uterus prepares for a possible pregnancy and, if one doesn't happen, the lining of the uterus is shed. To help this happen, the muscles of the uterus contract, and those contractions are what can cause cramps and discomfort.
The interesting part, and the reason period pain belongs in this section, is that it's still connected to many of the systems we've already talked about. Stress can influence hormones, poor sleep can make pain feel more intense and elevated cortisol may affect how the body responds during your cycle. While stress doesn't cause periods, it can sometimes make an already uncomfortable experience feel even harder to manage.
If you'd like to understand more about why period pain happens, what can make it worse and what may help, explore our Understanding Period Pain guide
Unfortunately, biology doesn't always come with the most user-friendly instruction manual.
Understanding Leads to Better Choices
Your body isn't trying to make life difficult, it spends every second of every day trying to keep you alive. Sometimes it just uses an instruction manual that was written thousands of years ago, and perhaps like many of us do at times, it feels a little out of place.
So, we invite you to learn with us, about your body, your feelings, the connection between your physical and emotional wellbeing and everything in between.
