Stress as a Physiological Response

Each podcast conversation I have, while about stress and the stress response system, has a slightly different twist (which is why you should listen to them all lol - check them out here!). 

I love that these conversations organically unfold. When I chatted with my friend Amber Brueseke (who is a health and fitness coach, formally educated as a RN), we discussed the physiology of stress responses. So many people think of stress as an emotional state, but aren’t aware of how their physiology shifts during times of stress (I was one of these people).

It is helpful for us to understand how biology is impacting our behavior, and how our behavior impacts our biology. Listen to the full episode here. 

When we have increased levels of stress, whether it's daily stress, long-term or chronic stressors, adversity, or traumas, we have a physiological response. This response varies in intensity based on the intensity of the stressor. 

Our Stress Response System is looking for threats in our environment. The brain's #1 job is to keep us alive, so our nervous system is rapidly processing information that comes in to determine if there is a threat. Appropriate (mostly*) to the level of threat, there will be a stress response to help us move toward safety. Survival looks a little bit different these days. We're not running from dinosaurs anymore; threats can be poverty of basic resources such as food and shelter scarcity. And for some, their threats are concerns about getting into the college they want, moving into a bigger house, getting the job they want. Those stressors can elicit the same response (if this is the greatest challenge you’ve ever experienced).  

*I say mostly here because some people have a sensitized stress response system due to it being chronically activated. So they may have stronger responses to less intense stressors because of this sensitivity. 

The thing to remember is these responses are adaptive, and each of us have been doing the best we can with the resources we have to navigate our environment. 

We talked on the episode how many people were struggling during the pandemic because the intensity of stress was greater than what we had ever experienced. Our usual coping was no longer working, creating the opportunity to shore up “the holes” in our coping.   

Both Amber and I would love for you to listen, and feel free to share your comments on our social media (Instagram preferred).