Issue 135: Build Unshakeable Stress Resilience

I had a great opportunity to speak to the Atlanta chapter of the Princeton Women’s Network recently. We chose as my topic Stress Resilience: The Mind-Body Connection. Writing that presentation got me thinking about habit, ritual, rhythm, and flow as elements of stress resilience.

Come join me in this conversation. I’d love to hear how you use these elements to support your own health and wellbeing!

In Wellness,  Mary Virginia

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Over the millennia, our bodies evolved to toggle between protective mechanisms and healing mechanisms. The body-mind is enmeshed in tightly designed programming to seek, support, protect, and defend our health and safety.

Whenever there is a threat, regardless of whether it is a physical, health, emotional, or psychological threat, the body is designed to respond with a singular focus on surviving it. This is called the stress response. And boy! When some car runs a red light and we’re able to maneuver our own vehicle out of the way in a split second, we’re so happy that we have an automatic protection system!

However, when we become chronically stressed, perhaps because of a traumatic experience, a health situation, or maybe because of daily demands, we begin to burn out and our physical and mental health suffer.

The Stress Response

When you think about it, there’s a lot that your body does without your conscious awareness. Among them are physiological processes that are kept running by what’s called the autonomic nervous system. Autonomic means the same thing as automatic. This nervous system automatically assures these major processes keep happening while you don’t even notice:

• Heartbeat
• Blood Pressure
• Tear Production
• Blinking
• Sexual Arousal
• Breathing
• Digestion
• Saliva Production
  
• Waking Up/Getting Sleepy
• Urination/Defecation

The autonomic nervous system is made up of three components:

• Sympathetic Nervous System: stimulating, energizing.
• Parasympathetic Nervous System: calming, renewing; supportive of digestion, elimination, and procreation.
• Enteric “Gut” Nervous System: digestion, elimination, immune response, mood.

These nervous systems, together with the cardiac (heart’s) nervous system, collect data from the body and send it up to the brain. The brain interprets the message, forms a story to define it, assigns it meaning, and then sends messages back down into the body about what it should be doing. Mind you, all of this happens in a split second.

Remember, we’re toggling between protection and healing all day every day. The story and meaning assigned by the brain reflect how the body communicates either danger or safety up through the vagus nerve. The brain dictates next steps based on the story and the meaning. That is, does the body still need to be protected? Or are we safe?

We love the sympathetic nervous system! It stimulates cortisol production as morning arrives so that we wake up and have energy to start our day. That stimulation contributes to clear thinking, focus/attention, and generally helps keep us engaged into the afternoon.

The sympathetic nervous system, though, is also thought of as the “fight or flight” nervous system. If any part of the body feels under threat for any reason, the bold, fierce, protective sympathetic response leaps instantly into action to help us think clearly and move fast. Adrenaline is fast to be released and quick to be metabolized. Cortisol, on the other hand, is slow on both counts. It lingers in the system for hours, keeping us on edge and alert to danger.

But you know what the body doesn’t need when it’s in danger?
Distractions like feeling sexy or hungry or having to go to the bathroom, or, you know, being sleepy. The sympathetic nervous system messes with these automatic functions when it’s triggered to protect you.

Here’s the Catch
I’m describing this like the threat is a saber toothed tiger in the woods. But your body doesn’t distinguish between threats, whether physical, emotional/psychological, health/illness, overwhelm, losses, etc. It doesn’t know that you’re “just” having a bad day or that you lost your job or got in an argument with your significant other. It only has one action to save you from danger: the stress response.

That persistent overstimulation sometimes goes by another name: anxiety.

And when you feel so overwhelmed that you become absolutely bound, unable to fight or flee? You freeze (or flop). Another name for this is depression.

How about when our stimulating cortisol levels remain high, but we’re completely worn out from being “on” and not sleeping? We’re wired and tired. Absolutely buzzing and frazzled. This is when we get brain fog, memory issues, irritability, lack of focus, extra distractibility, mood swings, etc. etc.

Our bodies eventually let us know it’s been too much for too long: heart issues, blood sugar and cholesterol dysregulation, weight gain, insomnia, illnesses, nutrient depletions…even cancer.

Resilience

Resilience is built when our bodies spend more time feeling safe, even choosing that feeling of safety as a coping strategy during hard times. In terms of our autonomic nervous systems, this means fostering and nourishing our parasympathetic nervous system response. It doesn’t mean we get rid of stress, but that we have greater capacity in the face of hard things.

The parasympathetic nervous system is also known as the “rest, digest, and procreate” system. I like to think of it as “rest, digest, and renewal.” Quality sleep, good digestion, clear thinking, creativity, thoughtful decision-making, not getting sick (or recovering fast), normal hunger patterns, stable mood, … everything continues to function (even if it’s sometimes toggling into protection).

The American Psychological Association defines resilience this way:

“Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands.” Adapted from the APA Dictionary of Psychology.

Essentially, how we engage with the world, the resources we access, and the skills we cultivate and practice can successfully bolster our resilience.

Intuitive Living

Let’s look at some of the daily resources and skills that can support your resilience.

Food & Meals
If you are interested in exploring a nutrient dense food plan, click here for my Food Freedom newsletter.

Build habits and rituals around food that can support your body to stay stable and feel safe via cellular, biochemical, and metabolic resilience. Things like: routine meals at regular meal times. Combine a protein, fat, and complex carb to create time release energy. Prevent physiological stress by fasting overnight for no more than 12-14 hours. Eat mindfully so that you can be fully present and enhance digestion (good digestion signals safety to the brain). And nourish relationships by sharing meals.

Movement
Movement has so many benefits, including directing the body to create healthier new cells as old ones experience programmed cell death. I can’t capture it all here. Still, with it you will develop biochemical, emotional, psychological, and physical resilience as well as expand mood stability. That said, remember to build in rest days for full recovery! Here are a couple of ways movement builds resilience:

Increases Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF)
The “Miracle Grow” of the brain. Enhances neuroplasticity, cognition, & learning & memory; increases the expression of pro-survival genes; regulates glucose & energy metabolism; increases neuronal communication; low BDNF is found in neurodegenerative diseases.

Mood
Increases blood circulation to take oxygen and nutrients to the brain; increases mood chemicals, including endorphins, serotonin, dopamine, and acetylcholine (which supports memory formation).

Eustress
“Good stress.” Appropriate stress on the body through movement inspires it to build muscle, bone, and energy-producing mitochondria. The outcome of eustress is growth rather than depletion. Incidentally, intellectual eustress does the same for knowledge and the brain.

Sleep
Rituals and routines around evening and bedtime boost physiological resilience, which translates into psychological and emotional resilience. By honoring your circadian rhythm and the processes that happen only during sleep, you will enhance the clearing out of pathway-clogging metabolic waste and the repair, renewal, and rejuvenation of DNA, mitochondria, cells, and tissues.

Cortisol rises with the morning for wakefulness, then diminishes as melatonin begins to rise in the late afternoon/early evening for sleep. These habits allow you to become aware of your own circadian rhythm and take full advantage of it.

Nighttime Rituals and Routines
Do not work after dinner to allow your body to release the day and lean into the relaxing evening and night. Choose calming, attractive activities: reading, tv show, play a game, conversation. Rituals and routines train your body to expect and embrace sleep.

Lighting
Choose as dim a light as is comfortable for the activities you choose in the evening.

Bedtime
No screens of any kind 1 hour before lights out. Read, soft music, light stretching, Keep a bedtime routine. Go to bed at about the same time every night, even on weekends. Again, you are training your body to anticipate letting go of the day and sleeping.

Morning
Upon waking, get outside for 5 minutes or longer to take in morning sunlight. Don’t look straight at the sun! But do look toward it. Morning and late afternoon light trigger the pineal gland to coordinate daytime wakefulness and nighttime sleepiness. Bonus if you enjoy it while taking a walk.

Presence Practices
Presence practices create cascading mental and physical health benefits: mood, immunity, endocrine (hormone) system, nervous systems, and every part of you with which they interact.

They increase heart rate variability (HRV), which helps improve cardiovascular health, blood pressure, blood glucose/diabetes markers, immune function, and more. A high HRV has been found to improve behavioral flexibility and emotional resilience.

If you want to pull all the practices together to create the most profound stress resilience, engage in presence practices. Practice them away from your most stressful situations to train your body to be instantly responsive to them when you need them most. Here are some examples:

Breath Work
Breath work such as 4-5-6 Breathing or Box Breathing. We only breathe deeply when we are safe. Regulated deep breathing not only oxygenates your system, but it engages the stretch receptors of your lungs. The vagus nerve captures that stretch sensation and communicates safety to the brain.

Meditation, Yoga
Try the free Medito app for meditation or Yoga with Adriene. These practices increase HRV and incorporate breath work.

HeartMath
Read about the amazing benefits of HeartMath here.

Social Time
Being with others with whom you feel relaxed, who listen to you, who engage with true interest, and who make you laugh increases HRV, which is why you feel better and calmer after being with them. Build pleasant social relationships into your days and weeks.

Stress Resilience is Yours for the Taking

While stress is going to be a part of our lives, we can build resilience to it for free. We will be most successful when we take a multifaceted approach. Nourish your whole self by establishing patterns and rhythms to your life. Your body will come to anticipate these different forms of nourishment, and you will find yourself sensing intuitively what will bolster and replenish your resilience.

Believe me, after establishing these practices, one day you’ll be in a hard situation, and you’ll intuitively begin to move slowly with intention, breathe deeply, and take a pause to absorb the information. This will allow you to decide how to proceed in a way that serves you best. You’ll be strong and capable. And it will feel great.

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“To everything there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”

With apologies to Solomon in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (King James Version) and also to The Byrds, I have crafted a reframed poem to illuminate how to build resilience:

A time to eat, a time to refrain from eating.
A time to move, a time to rest.
A time to connect socially, a time to retreat.
A time to work, a time to be quiet and reflect.
A time to awaken, a time to sleep.

When we listen to the intuitive wisdom of our bodies, we automatically fall into rituals and habits that form a healing rhythm to our days.