by Anabel
Last Thursday I decided it was a smart idea to check my phone during a 5-minute break in the stress reduction course I am attending. It was a terrible but, in retrospect, hilarious mistake.
Here I am paying for an 8-week course on how to be mindful in times of stress and can’t leave my phone in my purse for a mere 2.5 hours.
As I reached for my phone, the screen lit up with a text from my colleague, informing me that our superiors had sent us an important email that perhaps required my “proactive reaction.” He had just wanted to let me know so I wouldn’t be taken aback…
Having a faint idea of what this might be about (a possible lawsuit), my heart started racing, my blood pumping. The text did the exact opposite of what its sender intended: from feeling at peace, vitalized, and centered due to the first half of the course, I instantly went into panic mode. When my superiors, who are financially and socially powerful people, want something, everyone runs.
My usual reaction would therefore have involved tending to the matter immediately, no matter where or what I was currently doing. It’s like a really powerful force within me kicks in and swooshes everything out of my way so I can blast through and do my thing. This time, however, I couldn’t take any action because, ironically, I had no time; I was forced to return to my little yoga mat in that beautiful room with that glowing candle.
It was out of the question to prolong the course break to do the exact opposite of being mindful, that much I knew. And so I more or less reluctantly sank down on my spot with my thoughts miles removed from the sanctuary I was in, knowing I was probably going to spend the remainder of the course waiting for its end so I could finally fix the problem. So I could check my phone. Then my email. Then think about the reply. Or should I not reply tonight? Was it really this urgent?
“Stress,” the instructor began saying. “Let me first elaborate on what happens to your body when you are experiencing acute stress.”
No need to explain, sir, I thought. Just look at me and you’ll know, because I am in fact having a quiet little nervous breakdown here, all by myself, amidst your fine circle here, and none of you suspect a thing. Gone was the amazing experience of the 20-minute breathing meditation we’d just done before the break. Gone all the calmness in my centre, the place of peace and quietude I had found during the first half of the evening. Instead, I was positively freaked out.
“With acute stress, before anything happens, your system registers something that you perceive as a threat.”
My breathing stopped. A threat. That’s actually true, I pondered. I hadn’t thought about it like this before, but yes, my system had registered a threat.
I had gotten a message that warned me of something that might be bad. On top of it, I couldn’t go and figure out how bad it was. Obviously, this was a threat. “The trigger itself is actually neutral — this is important! — but your brain interprets it as a threat. Once that happens, a series of things occur. Energy will be directed towards your muscles and your bones; you will feel instant tension in your tummy, your legs, your hands, your jaw. You are getting ready for a fight or flight reaction.”
Now that he was narrating my experience, I could tell that my entire body was tense as an overcooked steak. The course always encourages us to step outside of ourselves for a minute and observe with great interest and curiosity what things do to us. What does anger do to me? Where do I feel it? What does impatience feel like? Now, this was what I call an opportunity: I was at that moment experiencing very acute stress and someone was giving me an exact catalogue of the physical reactions this triggered in me.
“Your immune system will, in that moment, shut down almost completely. Your cell renewal. Your digestion. All of it, shut down. Once you register danger, all of your body’s energy will be directed towards either attacking it or running because essentially, your system — harking back thousands of years — perceives this as a life or death type of thing. Your pulse rate will rise dramatically, your breath will quicken.”
Check. Check. Check.
“Your cognitive functions will be kept at a minimum,” the teacher continued. “Calm, logical thinking will be turned off, instinctive behavior will kick in. You will notice your thinking becoming very narrow, cyclical, and your vision tunneled. This is, by the way, why it is physically impossible for people with exam anxiety to actually think straight; those regions of their brain are quite literally turned off!”
Oh my. Yes. My thoughts had been going in circles. Finding a solution had been impossible, being caught and having to remain incapacitated in this room. And still, even though I knew there was no escape, because I was experiencing this… stress, I couldn’t let go. My system was bound in a repetitive spell of I need to make this right. NOW.
I suddenly found myself outside of me. Poor me, shrunk down on my little yoga mat. My system giving me what felt like a heart attack. I was hot, furious, fear-stricken. My thoughts grinding. What a thing to go through just because someone wrote me a text message.
Suddenly, calmness started to settle. I felt safer again. I was here. In this room. I had gotten a text, not a death threat. Huge difference. Except that my gazillion-year-old system couldn’t tell the difference.
The teacher went on to explain one more mind-blowing thing: he said that, once the neutral trigger (stressor) was registered as a threat and our fight or flight system got running, the reaction differed drastically depending on our personality. He showed us which brain regions were responsible for that step. Somewhere behind our forehead, our personality, our memories, and our patterns form. And that is where we generate common reactive patterns. Some might freeze. Some might attack. Some might get demonstratively cool about things. These reactions are often, deep down, learned behaviours. Which, of course, means that they can be unlearned.
Realising that this was my pattern meant that I could start looking at it mindfully, gently noticing how the stress manifested itself in my body.
In mindfulness, rather than striving for something to be different from what it is, we simply take a welcoming interest in what is in the moment, whatever it is. Whether it feels pleasant or unpleasant. When we’re present and aware in the moment, no longer on auto-pilot, we’re able to home in on the symptoms of stress: the heart racing, the blood rushing, the ears humming…
These things so often go down automatically that we often don’t even know they are happening. As long as we are unaware of their existence, we have no choice. Because automated thought processes take over; we will act out of instinct, not out of who we choose to be. Only in becoming mindful, by interrupting the chain reaction of stress, do we get to decide what happens next. When we treat our body as a “plane for perceiving sensations,” as my teacher calls it, and take an honest and non-judgmental interest in it, that’s when we can step outside our racing minds for a moment.
Try it the next time you undergo stress, fear, shame or anger. Pull your attention away from your thoughts and, just for 30 seconds, zoom into your body. What is happening where? Chances are that, before you’ll know it, you will hear your thoughts, but you are not so much IN them. You will be able to say: I am thinking these things because I am terrified. How would I approach this matter if I weren’t? How bad is it really?
And what is the moral of the story? Following my stress reduction session and for the remainder of the day, I chose not to check my emails. I lit a candle at home and relaxed, figuring that the world could wait for me to reply. And when, after taking a few deep breaths and centering myself, I did check my email the next morning, things were not nearly as bad as I imagined they would be.
Find Anabel’s other work here: www.anabel.ch
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About Admin
Thank you so much for writing this – it really resonates with me, and reminds me to keep going with the mindfulness exercises I’ve been learning. My favourite when I get that work stress thing you describe above is to STOP and take a couple of minutes to water my plants (at home or at work), and just focus on taking pleasure in doing that one thing, even in the middle of a crisis.
Jo x
Hello Jo, Marvelline speaking. I am so happy to hear that you have found something useful in my little article, thanks for commenting and sharing your pausing technique! It is something I myself am trying to apply but it’s a process to integrate it firmly into everyday life, isn’t it. Anyways, wishing you lots of joy along the journey to a mindful life 🙂
This is a truly excellent piece. It really hits the spot. Clearly, Marvelline is an exceptional writer. Great to see her here on Everyday Mindfulness.
Jon, Hove
some emotional reactions are hard wired into the human mind. As you point out, objective reality is our reference point. Next time you are abused or the victim of a crime, observe you emotional retsnioac. They are universal, ie the desire for vengeance and justice – the hard wired reaction.
No creditcards, no phones, no facebook, no tv
They’re optional. I have downgraded my smartphone to an old – but very enjoyable nokia 3310.
Too hightech for me. Was hard not to look down at it all the time, in the train, when walking to the train, at home, in school,…
Became addicted both to it and facebook, had to quit 🙂
Then I remembered I didn’t need them before, so why should I need them now, felt much better before I used those things.
With love
Michael