Your Body Has a Healthy Reaction to an Unhealthy Situation

Author: Majken Lorelei Matzau

"Something is seriously wrong," my client said to me, choked with tears. "I can't sleep. My body aches. It's as if swarms of bees are buzzing inside me constantly. My stomach hurts, I can't think, and I feel almost paralyzed with anxiety. What's wrong with me?"

When you meet a person in stress collapse, you often hear an assumption in him (or her) that there must be "something wrong" with them. Their body, their nervous system, their mind – everything is in uproar and feels beyond control, and so it is assumed that something must be terribly, dreadfully wrong.

But nothing could be further from the truth. Because when you have been under severe pressure – whether briefly or over a long period – it is natural that the mind, the nervous system, and the body all respond with restlessness, high tension, and sleeplessness.

That is simply how we are built by nature.

What is stress?

A classic definition of stress (from Richard S. Lazarus) is that stress is a state experienced when the strains and demands placed on a person exceed the resources that person is able to mobilize.

Seen this way, stress is neither positive nor negative. Stress is a natural response to being overloaded, and in that sense the stress reaction is an extremely effective servant, since it allows us to continually regulate our burdens and our lives in response to the messages our stress signals send us.

The modern cave dweller

The most important biological mechanisms to understand when it comes to stress are cortisol and adrenaline – commonly known as the fight-or-flight hormones.

Because although human thought and emotional life have developed alongside our technological and societal development over the past ten thousand years, our fundamental biology is still the same as that of the cave dweller.

When you as a modern human experience pressure, the fight-or-flight hormones are activated in exactly the same way as when we, as cave dwellers, experienced pressure at the sight of a bear or a wolf.

Our ancestors in the forests and on the savannahs benefited greatly from the activation of these powerful hormones, as they increase physical strength considerably.

In the same way, athletes today use these hormones – one of our body's forms of natural doping – for physical performance, just as the momentary increase in physical strength creates a greater chance of survival in crisis or accident situations.

In our formalized working life, however, it is not considered appropriate today to fight your manager or flee the meeting room during a budget negotiation. We maintain appearances and keep a poker face, while the stress hormones rage on the inside.

When the shutdown comes

When stress hormones are activated in high volumes, cognitive functions are put out of action. Your cognitive abilities are your capacities for thinking, memory, and problem-solving.

When the fight-or-flight hormones are activated, physical strength increases, which as mentioned is useful for survival in physical surroundings under severe stress.

But in a rational world that demands constant thinking and problem-solving in complex situations, the activation of the fight-or-flight hormones has an unfortunate effect, since stress reactions – often known as "the shutdown" – block access to rational thought.

People who have been under pressure for a long time have very high levels of stress hormones and stress signals in their physical system, and exist in a constant state of alert. A long range of complex factors, demands, and imbalances – particularly in our complex, modern working life – can be the reason the stress hormones have been raging over time.

Constant volcanic eruptions of stress hormones flood the physical and psychological system, and the capacity for clear, rational thought, memory, and problem-solving becomes clouded.

This feels terrible and beyond one's own control. But it is not the same as being ill, or as something being seriously "wrong."

The nervous system is, after all, responding entirely naturally and healthily to a situation that is unhealthy.

There is nothing wrong with you

This is why one of the most powerful interventions a professional can use when working with a person in stress collapse is to make the following clear to them:

"There is nothing wrong with you. You are simply overloaded. Your body has a healthy reaction to an unhealthy organization (or situation)."

At this point, the person suffering from stress often breaks down in tears, relieved not to be "wrong." Because like everyone else who becomes increasingly overloaded over time and therefore feels inadequate, our stressed friend has also assumed that he himself is the "problem" – rather than turning his gaze outward to the conditions, and to whether he could in fact have solved his task at all.

But dear friend

There is truly nothing wrong with you – no matter how fiercely the stress hormones are raging in your nervous system. Your body is designed to respond in crisis situations, and the only thing you need to do right now is to shield yourself from all the crises, which most likely stem from imbalances outside yourself, in your job or in your private life, and to help yourself and your nervous system quietly and gently find its natural state again.

Your natural state is wellbeing. Everything else is a response to strain. And if you stop, for a while, fighting to fix all the problems or "doing lots of things to get well again," you will automatically and naturally feel better as the stress hormones subside, and your mind and nervous system become clear, calm, and light once more.

With warm regards,
Majken Lorelei Matzau

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