Stress – Mind, Body or Emotions?
By Jacob Eapen 

High levels of stress have become synonymous with our busy, active everyday lifestyles. We recognize its symptoms — the tension, headaches, and other aches and pains. When ignored, stress can lead to high blood pressure, ulcers, heart problems and many other serious health problems. Yet many people do not recognize other common symptoms of stress — lack of sleep, fatigue, persistent low level anxiety. They will often attribute it to an overactive mind that just won’t shut down at night to let them fall asleep.

Stress affects each individual in a different way. Some seem to perform best under moderate to high stress levels, while others cannot tolerate much stress at all. Even those who perform well under stress can reach a breaking point. In order to take appropriate measures to counter the effects of stress we need a good understanding of the root cause of stress. 

Stress is the body’s response to experiences that do not match our expectations. Basically we have run into something unfamiliar… something other than what we expected. So what are expectations? Expectations are based on how we think and feel. Our feelings and emotions are very much tied to memory and learning, which then influence the expectations we place on all our experiences. Stress then has very much to do with how we think and feel. 

There are many facets to our life — work, family, personal relationships, money, health, social, sexuality, spirituality and so on. Early in life we are taught the “rules”… what is expected of us, and what we can expect of life. Rightly or wrongly, for the most part many of us accept these rules without giving them a whole lot of thought. Many of these rules were “drilled” into us and became part of our memories. We also have our own memories from what we have learned from past experiences. All of these influence how we think — both consciously and unconsciously. 

To understand how we feel, we need to look at the body and how it is hard-wired to respond to our feelings and emotions. Feelings and emotions basically give us the ability to feel, which is another way to determine what is going on in our environment. For example, the uneasy sensation we experience in the gut when walking down the street and being confronted by a large dog, whether the danger is real or imagined. Feelings and emotions are also the types of sensations we experience when we are angry, or sad, or when we feel happy or appreciated. Scientists have discovered that the brain produces a certain type of hormone called neuropeptides, and there is a different neuropeptide for each type of feeling or emotion we experience. They also found that there are receptor sites at the cell level throughout the body and the brain that respond to specific neuropeptides, and these responses are what we experience as feelings and emotions. Because of this hard-wiring, our first response to any experience is almost always emotional. 

So how do our thoughts, feelings, emotions and body work together to respond to what we encounter daily? Our five senses — sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch provide sensory inputs to the brain so it can determine what’s going on in the physical surroundings — how pleasant, or how hostile it is. There is a part of the brain that processes feelings and emotions, and when the sensory inputs reach it, it accesses memories and evaluates the experience — all in a split second. 

When an experience matches the parameters of our expectations or falls outside those parameters, the brain releases appropriate neuropeptides through the blood stream to the various parts of the body. The receptors at each cell in the body detect the appropriate neuropeptide and respond by either stimulating or inhibiting cell function. So for example, if two people walked down the street and were confronted by a large dog, each person may experience two completely different neuropeptides at the cell level. One person’s response may be tempered by memories of past experiences with large dogs that were benign, whereas the other person may be completely unfamiliar with large dogs or has had some unpleasant past experiences which may trigger a different neuropeptide that creates a fight-or-flight response. The fight-or-flight response increases heart rate and blood pressure and redirects more oxygen and blood sugar to the muscles so they can prepare to run faster or fight harder, while reducing the activity of other organs that are not critical to this function — such as digestive organs. 

Many of our daily life experiences do not elicit dramatic responses of fight-or-flight, but do vary depending on the expectations we place on our experiences. It seems that life today is so much more hectic than it was even two or three decades ago, and there is tremendous change all around us. In any kind of human interaction whether it is in the workplace, at home, in personal relationships or elsewhere, we are always encountering new or different points of view — much different from our own. In a split second we are consciously or unconsciously comparing what we are experiencing to what we consider “familiar” or even “desirable”. If the results are different, it triggers an instant emotional response and the muscles in the body respond by tensing up. The mind, the part of the brain that thinks, reasons and creates strategies to deal with the world around us, often does not have a chance to intervene and assess the situation rationally before the emotional response occurs. If we can train ourselves to take a deep breath before responding to any new situation it allows enough time for the mind to intervene and resolve the situation in a rational manner, and we are then able to relax the tense muscles. But how often does this happen with each experience we have daily? 

As mentioned previously all our feelings and emotions are tied to memory and learning — so we learn to avoid repeating undesirable or even potentially dangerous experiences. And, we learn to seek out those that are pleasant and enjoyable. Any memories with unresolved feelings and emotions attached to them will unduly influence how we think; and therefore affect all subsequent experiences. Unfortunately, many of us do not fully understand this link between our mind, feelings and emotions, and the physical body; and how they are all connected in a “feedback loop” of information. Least of all we really do not understand the effect of feelings and emotions on the physical body. All too often we are so uncomfortable with our own feelings and emotions that we do not know what to do with them; instead we choose to bury them. 

When we have difficulty releasing the bodily tension, and the body and mind are caught in a constant state of alert, it affects our ability to sleep, diminishes our ability to operate at peak efficiency and eventually leads to burnout. The organs and tissues of the body are also robbed of much needed nutrients, vitamins and regulatory signals from the brain to keep them functioning at a healthy level. 

Recent medical studies have shown that excess stress is very toxic to the body, and is linked to many of our current chronic disease processes: asthma, allergies, headaches, high blood pressure, heart disease, and is also known to weaken the immune system. A weakened immune system leaves us open to all kinds of infections and diseases. 

A holistic approach to dealing with stress has to include not only our physical body, but also our feelings and emotions and our mind. Eating healthy food, drinking clean water, daily exercise, taking time to rest and relax, getting adequate sleep are all important. But it is also essential to find ways to diffuse unresolved feelings and emotions, and develop flexibility in our thinking so we can deal with the unfamiliar and the unexpected that we encounter in our daily life. 

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