Our brain evolved to help us stay safe from danger.
But our brain can't always tell the difference between danger and stress.
When your brain is really stressed and thinks you're in danger
it responds by trying to help you stay safe.
This is your 'fight, flight, freeze and fawn' response.
So if a bear wanted to eat you you might fight the bear,
run away from the bear (that's flight)
freeze and hope it doesn't see you (that's your hiding response),
or fawn - which is kind of like trying to convince the bear not to eat you
or sometimes being really cute like a cute little puppy with big eyes.
But I digress. So what does this have to do with anxiety?
Anxiety is complex so we're making it
simple by talking about three parts of your brain that are
involved in this stress response. The first part is your brain stem or
your survival brain. Your survival brain is responsible for your body.
Things like your breath, your heart rate
movement and exercise, your sleep, and the list goes on. Basically the stuff
that helps you stay alive. The second part is your limbic system or
your emotional brain. It's responsible for your emotions. (Duh.)
The third part of your brain is your frontal lobe.
It's responsible for higher functioning thinking. Stuff like
reading, writing, communicating, and solving problems.
When you're stressed and your brain thinks you're in danger,
it triggers the fight flight freeze fawn response by
sending extra energy to your survival brain and body
so you can be fast and strong or run away and fight danger,
and sending extra energy to your emotional brain
because emotions help us decide the best way to respond.
All that extra energy has to come from somewhere.
Your smart brain goes temporarily offline, because if a bear
was about to eat you, you wouldn't need to know how to do algebra
or speak French. So this means that energy
can be redirected to your survival and emotional brain
(temporarily of course). The good news is
once you're safe and calm down everything in your brain
returns to normal. We live in a world that's full of stress
so stuff like homework or fighting with
friends can still trigger our fight flight freeze or fawn
response. Like if you had some stressful homework to do,
you might get angry and irritable
(that's your fight response), you might feel panicked
(that's your flight response), you might procrastinate or avoid it
(that's your freeze response) or you might try to
talk your way out of having to do it - either to someone else or in your head.
And that is your fawn response. The good news is
there are some brain hacks that can help you to calm down.
Brain hack number one: if you can calm down your body
this can help you calm down your brain stem or survival brain.
You can do this by doing things with your body you might use your breath.
Go for a run or have a shower. Brain hack number two: if you can calm
down your thoughts you can calm down your limbic system or
emotional brain. You can do this by doing things with
your thoughts like visualisations, meditation and mindfulness.
Brain hack number three: turn your frontal lobe (or smart brain) back on
you can do this by doing things your smart brain is good at
like talking to a counsellor, reading a book
or writing your thoughts down. Calming yourself down takes practise.
To get really good at managing stress you have to practise a lot of times
in order to grow the brain cells, connect them together,
and create a whole new pathway in your brain.
But the more you practise the stronger the pathway gets
until it becomes easier or even automatic.
automatic