What Happens During Chronic Stress
What Happens During Chronic Stress
Chronic stress means you are actively engaging in distressful situations which may be out of your control. Health-wise, it is best to remove the stressor from your environment, but if that is not possible, it is crucial to know how to buffer what causes stress.
When you live in an environment that causes chronic stress, it is imperative to know how your stress affects your brain (mind), emotions, and physical health.
More so, it is crucial to know the brain system responsible for the effects you feel when you are stressed. This brain organ is called the amygdala.
What Is The Amygdala?
Your amygdala is a small part of your brain that is the major emotional processing center. Also, it links your emotions to other brain abilities, such as memories, learning, and senses. It can cause or contribute to disruptive feelings and symptoms when it doesn’t work as it should.
In addition, the amygdala is known as the fear-processing center and processes threatening stimuli.
What Is The Function Of The Amygdala?
When a person feels stressed or encounters frightening situations, distressing situations, or negative words, the amygdala releases stress hormones that prepare the body to fight the threat or flee from the danger.
The amygdala is the center of emotions, emotional behavior, and motivation.
The amygdala is responsible for emotions such as happiness, pleasure, aggression, sadness, excitement, fear, anger, and anxiety.
How The Amygdala Protects Us
When you encounter a distressing situation, the amygdala signals your brain to release stress hormones (adrenaline & cortisol) to prepare your body to fight for survival or flee to safety.
The amygdala’s reaction is automatic, but you can process the threat reasonably with the help of your frontal lobes.
The amygdala is essential to alert us of danger. Still, when the amygdala is active because of continuous stress, it releases high levels of cortisol in the body, which can damage the body.
How Does A Calm Environment Impact The Amygdala?
According to Nature.com, they did a study on how amygdala activity decreased as a result of a one-hour walk in nature. According to their findings, amygdala activation decreases after walking in nature. This result suggests that walking in nature can have a calming effect on the amygdala.
In conclusion, in calming environments, the amygdala’s activity is significantly decreased, and cortisol levels in the blood are normal to aid in body functions such as regulating metabolism, suppressing inflammation, and regulating blood pressure.
What Is An Overactive Amygdala?
When your amygdala is overactive, strong emotions such as fear, anger, anxiety, or even extreme excitement impair the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain in the frontal lobe that regulates rational thinking. Often, with an overactive amygdala, people may react in ways they may regret later.
You may calm down an overactive amygdala by removing yourself from the perceived threat, taking deep breaths, and calming your thoughts.
How Does Stressful Environment Affect The Brain Development Of Children
Emotionally-detached parenting, as well as chaotic home environments, produce long-lasting emotional problems in children. These effects are seen in brain structure, function, and the risk for later depression and PTSD. Other manifestations include increased risk for obesity and cardiovascular disease.
The amygdala (fight or flight center) is very sensitive to early-life stress, and several deficits persist for years after early-life stress has ceased. You can see these deficits in feelings, attitudes, and emotions later in life.
How Does PTSD Affect The Amygdala?
When a person has PTSD, their amygdala becomes hyperactive. Those who have experienced emotional trauma will often exhibit more fear and stress of trauma than those who have not been affected by emotional trauma.
Often, external stimuli can trigger overactivity in the amygdala when the person comes in contact with a perceived threat.
What Causes Anxiety Attacks?
An anxiety attack, or “amygdala hijack,” occurs when your amygdala responds to stress and turns off your frontal lobes. That activates the fight-or-flight response and turns off rational, reasoned responses. In other words, the amygdala “hijacks” control of your brain and responses.
To avoid anxiety attacks, understand what things trigger the reaction so you can avoid them. Also, emotional, mental, and physical stimuli can trigger an anxiety attack. When you begin to experience an anxiety attack – pause and ask yourself if the threat is real (most often, you will realize the danger is not real).
In conclusion, we need the amygdala to help us navigate dangerous situations in our environment. On the other hand, over-activation of the amygdala can adversely affect the mind and body.
It is vital to create a space that allows the amygdala to function appropriately to help keep your body and mind healthy.
Practice activities to induce “happy chemicals” and normalize cortisol levels.
