Attuning to acute and chronic stress
This journal highlights:
✓Differences between chronic and acute stress
✓How Acute Stress can cascade into Chronic Stress
✓Key opportunities to support during the Stress cycles
We all have a well-defined perception of how stress can spike in our daily lives - looming work deadlines, a constant barrage of emails, juggling multiple appointments, ticking off things on our ever expanding to do list, caring for others within our working lives. Managing the multiple demands of our current fast paced experience of living is enough to trigger the cascade of stress hormones that produce well-orchestrated physiological changes.
When we are caught in the tide of acute and chronic stress, it is hard to imagine our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) acts in our best interests, however, the deeply adaptive and protective strategies of our inner/outer and in-between surveillance system are in service to our safety and survival.
Acute Stress:
The initial protective and adaptive response is known as “fight-or-flight”, enabling a quick response to perceived life threats and danger. In a simpler world, we would have time to respond quickly, catch our breath, assess, rest and recover after the threat passed, In fact, short term acute stress can contribute to providing motivation, energy and agency to engage in immediate challenges and is part of engaging in life.
Short term acute symptoms include:
•Energy: Increased feeling of racing - heartbeat, thoughts, darting eyes
•Tension: Muscles preparing to mobilise - think honed and prepared
•Increased blood supply to extremities - Shorter breath and decreased digestive function.
•Sleep: Decreased during Acute episodes we are on high alert
Supportive Strategies:
Assess: Is the danger or threat real or perceived (from past experiences - our ANS stores data which can cloud our
perception). If real - act, if perceived - find a pause.
Choice: How could I best respond to this challenge?
Breath: Physiological sighing breath to slow down panic
Anchor: Find an anchor of safety and connection to support you - a safe place, person, space - even recalling
this for a few moments can offer support during acute stress.
Chronic Stress:
When the baseline of stress continues to build, without recovery time, the non-life threatening “day to days” add to our already burgeoning stress levels and we can begin to tip toward chronic states of stress. The overwhelm and
collapse of “too-much” can lead to complex health impacts.
Chronic stress symptoms include:
•Heart - high blood pressure, promotes the formation of artery-clogging deposits
•Blood Sugar - long-term exposure to stress hormones can impair insulin's effectiveness, leading to a condition called insulin resistance.
•Mood - Increase in anxiety depression and addiction
•Sleep - disrupted with added fatigue.
Supportive Strategies:
Energise: Chronic Stress often requires a gentle infusion of energy to find the path forward. Energy can come in the
form of a stretch, a warming gentle movement and even a breath that is clearing, warming and engaging.
Nourish: What brings you nourishment when you are depleted? Soft lighting, warmth, gentle smells, sounds that encourage a sense of connection and safety.
Connect: What offers a non-demanding connection for you? Nature, a cuddle from your animal or gentle human, a warming cup of tea
What do I need? Consider what type of support feels nourishing for you - sometimes a warm hand to hold can be enough, a slow and kind conversation where no-one is trying to fix, simply listen can start bringing some warmth and vitality to a depleted state of self.
Other general tips to support your Autonomic Nervous System to regain a sense of balance
Rest - pure and simple
Sleeping or waking rest invaluable for depleted nervous systems. In times past this would be called convalescence; a time to be cocooned in warmth, nourishment and with space to receive and recover. Time without deadlines and the immediacy of needing to respond to queues from others can provide the ANS a calming anchor and space to rest.
Building interoceptive awareness
Interoception reads internal body messages so restorative practices such as mindfulness, gentle movement, breath awareness and engagement with the space around us in nature can allow us to notice and welcome the messengers from our body as they arrive, without urgency.
Developing interoceptive awareness may lead to proactive management steps. Bringing awareness, context and choice to life’s day to day stressors life can offer the necessary space for slow changes.
Nature
The anchor of gravity, the colours textures and quiet present humming of nature often unnoticed when stress takes and danger/safety come into sharp focus.
Participants in studies on Shinrin-yoku (Forest Bathing) regularly report alleviated symptoms of depression and anxiety. When researchers looked at these two biomarkers, they confirmed elevated levels of serotonin and decreased levels of cortisol after spending time in nature.
Rest & Restore Wellness Retreat provides a safe and nurturing environment in nature for relaxation, therapeutic support, personal growth, self-care and recovery from overwork, chronic and acute stress or burnout.