STRESS RESPONSE
The stress response is a bodily reaction to the real or perceived signal that we are under threat. Stress is produced in your body, that’s why it’s called the stress response and is designed to help you cope with stressful situations. This response developed in our hunter-gatherer ancestors as they may have been attacked by neighbouring groups or tribes and needed to be alert when this happened. To survive we may have needed to go on the attack. Sometimes survival depends upon:
Fighting as hard as you can (fight)
Runaway as fast as you can (flight)
THE PHYSIOLOGY OF STRESS
When was stressed to the cerebral cortex in the brain signals to the hypothalamus to prepare for fight or flight?
The hypothalamus then passes the signal to every part of your body via three interrelated, yet separate systems, the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems.
This prepares you for physical activity that you may be required to carry out in order to survive the stressful situation you find yourself in. The anterior hypothalamus produces arousal of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS is an automatic system that controls the heart, lungs, stomach, blood vessels, and glands.
It consists of two different systems: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system (Toates 1995). Essentially, the parasympathetic nervous system conserves energy levels and aids relaxation. The sympathetic nervous system prepares the body for action. In a stressful situation, it quickly causes your body to react in the following ways:
- Rise in heart rate to pump blood more quickly to the working muscles, to your arms and legs (the extremities).
- An increase in the pulse rate occurs so the heart can pump the blood more quickly. This is often responsible for the feeling of your heart pounding in your chest.
- An increase in respiration (breathing) so you have more oxygen to fuel the increased energy.
- A rise in blood sugar due to the release of glucose from the liver which also helps to fuel the muscles which help you to fight or run.
- An increase in the blood supply to the large muscles through vasodilation and the widening of the blood vessels in these muscles.
- Blood supply to the skin and the digestive system by Vasoconstriction is reduced, through the narrowing of blood vessels to these areas. This can cause feelings of nausea and the feeling of butterflies.
- The adrenal glands release the steroid, cortisol which reduces inflammation, allowing damaged joints to continue being used. Cortisol helps to make glucose available. Cortisol also stimulates the breakdown of fats. However, over a long period of time raising levels of cortisol have a detrimental effect on the immune system as in the case of long-term stress and susceptibility to illnesses such as colds.
- The release of endorphins, which are natural painkillers, helps prevent us from being disabled or slowed down by the pain of injury.
Psychological and behavioral changes also occur during the stress response. For example, the senses might become more acute, time may slow down as you become more focused on specific tasks such as running or fighting.
You may thus become less focused on other complex tasks. Fidgeting or pacing often occurs as a desire to move takes over giving an intense feeling of restlessness. You may find that your emotions become more acute. For example, if you feel the situation is beyond your control, you’re likely to experience fear, and if it feels that attacking is the best solution you may feel anger instead.
See on the next sheet a list of symptoms that you may experience due to stress or anxiety. Mark the symptoms which you experience most frequently and intensely.
Did any of them surprise you?
With that in mind please also complete the next exercise below with specific examples in mind. This will help you to begin to identify the types of situations and with which people you tend to experience the most discomfort when thinking of being assertive.
REMEMBER
The stress response prevents us from being able to think through our options and decide on a course of action which is adaptive and follow it through. To be assertive we have to think about the words we’re using and express ourselves without becoming aggressive or passive.
So what is it that prevents us from being assertive in some situations?
If we think of a particular situation to illustrate this response. Imagine that someone you work with criticizes your work.
