Long term stress is bad for us. Unfortunately sometimes we can’t do anything much about it, for example, we simply have to stay in that well paid but deeply unfulfilling job to pay the mortgage.
However, it is also true that we carry an unnecessary load of stress when our vision is not functioning as well as it should (this has nothing to do with wearing glasses!), our balance system isn’t firing equally on both sides and we are carrying an old injury that has not been fully rehabilitated – the brain is still busy protecting that area from further damage even though the healing has taken place.
I’m currently reading the book,’Behave‘ by that wonderful author, Robert Sapolsky. I can’t recommend it highly enough if you want to understand more about why we do what we do – and learn much more about your brain in the process. He writes clearly – and very amusingly.
Here is a paragraph from that book explaining why we ‘perseverate’ – which equates to, ‘Lunacy defined: keep doing the same thing and expect a different result’.
These stress effects on frontal function also make us perseverative – in a rut, set in our ways, running on automatic, being habitual. We all know this – what do we typically do during a stressful time when something isn’t working? The same thing again, many more times, faster and more intensely – it becomes unimaginable that the usual isn’t working. This is precisely where the frontal cortex makes you do the harder but more correct thing – recognise that it’s time for a change. Except for a stressed frontal cortex, or one that’s been exposed to a lot of glucocorticoids. In rats, monkeys, and humans, stress weakens frontal connections with the hippocampus – essential for incorporating the new information that should prompt shifting to a new strategy – while strengthening frontal connections with more habitual brain circuits. ((Behave. Robert Sapolsky. Pub Vintage))
As a reminder, the frontal cortex is the newest part of our brain and one of its many jobs is to make executive decisions. It overrides decisions made by the older parts of the brain – takes the harder path. The hippocampus stores contextual information: have a few near misses on the motorway and the hippocampus learns that motorways are dangerous places; the amygdala learns the fear.
Decisions made by the older parts of the brain are very fast and lack accuracy; they are made in times of stress and are designed to keep us alive and away from danger. The whole point of this is that high base levels of stress enable this fast decision making and disable the slower, more accurate and usually more desirable decision.
Your boss is horrible, you feel stressed and there is the biscuit tin. Hippocampus remembers that eating biscuits when stressed at work is very nice and makes you feel happy. Frontal cortex knows eating biscuits makes you fat and sleepy. The higher the stress, the more likely the biscuits win.
All of which means just paying attention to the brain and trying to rehabilitate unhelpful behaviour by mental therapies, or just paying attention to the body and trying to rehabilitate that persistent knee pain will not lower base stress levels without paying attention to vision and vestibular systems as well. The rule is simple: All of the brain, All of the body, All of the Time. No one part works separately to the rest; it can’t.
And, as a slight aside, yesterday we heard on the news that a recent study has found that taking common medications like statins or metformin seem to have a positive effect on people with severe mental illness. I’ve no intention of exploring this – but the journalist interviewing the scientist (possibly Dr Joseph Hayes of UCL) remarked that it seems that there is a link between disease of the body and disease of the brain. The scientist was overjoyed at this and said he’d been trying to get this across all his working life…..
And the good news is that as the brain and body are rehabilitated, near misses on the motorway have no long term effect; you realise your horrible boss is just dumping on you and stop taking it personally – and those harder decisions become easier – and you get profoundly happier.
Reducing sustained stress is a win-win for us and those stuck around us. ((Behave. R Sapolsky))
What can I say other than, ‘See me and learn true happiness’
Great stuff. Our emotional response is a temporary solution. It activates stress hormones to supercharge our metabolism. The presence of an angry bear in the forest requires an immediate response to personal dangers. The brain orders a supply of cortisol from the adrenal gland to help us respond to the immediate need for personal safety. The metabolic boost is temporary but supplies extra resources for confrontation with immediate danger. We borrow metabolic resources that we would normally use for other activities to improve our chances of survival. Stress may block out rational thought, perhaps, but more importantly, it depletes cognitive resources needed to solve complex problems. The bear population that is growing has wandered from it’s natural habitat. A pounding heart or surge of energy is not going to solve that problem. Indeed, these dangers can be stressful but the solutions requires deeper thought. It is not stress that we must avoid but rather the bears that deserve our attention. Biscuits can replenish our borrowed reserves and balance our metabolism. We may feel secure at the moment but we have no long term solution. We are no longer motivated by threats of danger. We must engage the rational mind and discipline ourselves to achieve long term success. Perhaps, this is what separates humans from bears in the first place.
You describe stress well. The article is about how this long term stress leads us to making quick and easy decisions for very good survival reasons. Engaging the rational mind – what I call the frontal cortex – is not discipline, it’s improving how the brain and body communicate with each other: the better the information coming into the rational mind -from absolutely everything, all the time – the better it can make a good decision. Unfortunately this knowledge is exceedingly sparse in UK. Thank you for your comment.