Good morning!
How can you tell if you are in stress mode (in the automictic part of your body and nervous system)?
Its easy to know when you can actually feel your heart beating out of your chest or your palms sweating and mind racing. It can be harder to tell when you are not actively feeling the effects of the initial stress response. For example, are you able to turn off your flight or flight system after getting home from a crazy stressful day? In this case, a better initial question would be- how can you tell if you are in stress mode when you “feel” fine?
Self awareness is the answer which is ironic because this goes down when you are in stress mode. In a stress response your attention goes out to your environment to access for threats to your safety. This is why you can feel fine and also be in stress mode without knowing it. Luckily our bodies give us plenty of signs if you know where to look. These signs start out small and grow over time if the underlying internal stress environment is not resolved.
Some of the signs you might notice are:
Physically it will be harder to stand up straight and you will notice that you are defaulting to a leaned forward or slumped posture. It will be uncomfortable to correct your posture with your conscious mind since your subconscious mind is defaulting to fight or flight posture. Poor posture, poor muscular coordination, and poor biomechanics will lead to pain and tightness somewhere in your body. This pain will most likely come and go for a while and get worse or move to another area if Nervous system is not addressed. You might find your digestion not working as well as it has been and overall lower energy levels.
Some emotional signs you might notice are: anxiety, worry, mental chatter/ running mind, trouble sleeping, irritability , and being on edge all the time.
Another things that is important is to observe your habits. Are you naturally wanting to do positive things and willing to delay gratification – examples could be reading, working out, meditating, yoga, journaling, eating healthy, going to bed in time, drinking / thirsty for water?
or
Are you craving things not so great for you in the long run? Such as going home to watch Netflix and skipping your working out, getting fast food instead of cooking, drinking to cope with stress, staying up late ect.
Finally observe how you are handling stress in life. Are you going with the flow/ making the appropriate shifts or are you trying to control and force everything? Check out this old post on flowing vs shifting as an preview to a possible triad of change email in the next weeks. https://nextlevelchirodallas.com/7-29-19-going-with-the-flow-vs-making-a-shift/
Any of these signs could help you determine if you are in stress mode. Only after you become aware you are in stress mode, are you are able to do something about it. There are many more ways to know if you are operating in your peak state or not, these were just some that I though of while writing this. Let us know if you have other ways of knowing that we did not include here.
Next week we will cover how we, your Network Doctors, check to see if your system is in stress mode and to what degree. We will also cover how this effects the entrainment you get that day.
May 13, 2020 By