Stress (Hesitance to training)

I like to tell the story of Barry Sterman’s study of the top-gun pilots. I ask the client if he/she really believes that his job is more stressful than piloting a billion-dollar stealth bomber, and I point out that the stress is not coming from the job–it is coming from the person IN the job.

I note that this level of stress has the potential to become addictive as people become adrenalin junkies, and, just as in the case of all addicts, they continue to seek it at all costs, even as they see that it is undermining their health and happiness, until finally they crash. In the case of stress addicts, adrenal fatigue sets in and they become severely depressed and very limited in their ability to respond. Of equal importance, the choice to maintain any imbalanced addictive lifestyle stunts their immune response, so the likelihood of contracting a serious disease increases significantly.

I point out that they have a choice–albeit a difficult one–to take a fork in the path that will require them to invest 2-3 hours a week for 3-4 months to shift their brains toward the Top Gun mode of operating: actually performing MORE effectively though with a significantly lower cost to their lives and bodies, in all areas. Or continue to surf the adrenalin wave until they lose pretty much everything.

Just as with any addict, I tell them I can guide them if they choose to make the commitment, but I can’t make the decision for them. And I remind them that the longer they wait, the harder the fall will be and the more difficult it will be to make it all the way back to their full potential.

Stress (see Tone under the brain-trainer Approach)

When someone sustains a high level of stress over an extended period, the amygdala–the smoke detector of the brain among other things–can become overly sensitive, which results in triggering the sympathetic response when it is not appropriate and sending the entire physiological environment into emergency response state.   That obviously uses up a lot of energy when it is not necessary and shifts the brain’s resources away from what would probably be more productive tasks.   Especially the prefrontal cortex, which has the job of evaluating the alarm with more complete information and turning it off if not appropriate, is pulled away from its executive functions.

Since the limbic system and autonomic nervous system are linked homeostatically, when autonomic tone goes up, so does emotional tone (and vice-versa).   People feel stressed, then they feel anxious, and, if they keep up the pattern long enough, they end up feeling tired, without resources, and depressed.

Brains faced with constant emergency situations develop cortical strategies to get them through those situations. For example, a person whose life is in constant danger may develop a hyper-vigilant strategy, and that strategy may work. The problem is that once the strategy becomes a part of the brain’s operating system, you can’t just turn it off. And generally that results in the irony that the strategy that the brain used to protect itself from a particular state begins actually to KEEP itself in that state.   When the danger is gone from the environment, the brain keeps looking for it and producing that same emotional response.

So in training tone issues we need to do three things: cut off the incoming stress, begin shifting the brain toward parasympathetic states (RSA breathing techniques, heartrate variability) and begin trying to unwind the cortical strategies that are holding the state in place.  In some cases the brain will resist strongly letting go of one or another of these, so I let the brain guide my training decisions, seeking to find which of the patterns (starting with the most basic) provides a positive response without triggering a rebound.