The Types of Stress Response and the Process of Reset

The personal experience of stress is an uncomfortable and universal experience. Learning to track how we hold and respond to stress is an important step in creating a more stable and resilient nervous system. 

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While the underlying physiological process for stress response is universal (see Stress and the Body’s Response), each of us have our own patterns of stress response, based on a range of factors.  Understanding the different ways you respond to different kinds of situations will provide insight into the factors that underly the response and clues on how to create a more adaptive response. 

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Here are the main ways we respond to over-activation:

• ‍Fight: Fight is an active, aggressive, or confrontational response. While we tend to think of it as always aggressive, it can look like taking quick and decisive action as well. Some examples of fight are yelling at people, feeling like or actually punching a wall, and taking control of the situation.
• ‍Flight: Flight is trying to or wanting to get away from the person or situation that is the source of danger (such as creating an excuse to leave the situation or not calling someone back).
• ‍Freeze: With Freeze, we become rigid and immobilized, sometimes physically and sometimes also unable to move or make a decision. We think of this as playing dead (sitting rigidly and not responding in a conversation, shutting down, and needing to sleep).
• Flop: Flop is similar to freeze, immobilized but the person collapses inward and muscles get all floppy.
• Fawn or Friend: Fawn is trying to neutralize the situation by ingratiating, or appeasing behaviors toward the person or persons who are identified as unsafe.

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When the threat has passed our body starts to come back into balance. We start to breathe deeper, our heart rate slows down, and blood flow is restored to our digestive tract and the higher cognitive center in our brain. We enter into a state known as rest and digest.

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If, for whatever reason, the threat either remains or we continue to perceive a significant threat, we may stay in a state of autonomic system activation. We call this chronic stress, and it is common, especially in the fast-paced Western lifestyle. Our bodies, however, are not designed for chronic stress and even if we “manage it well” it can take a toll on our physical, emotional, and mental health. 

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In fact, stress has been linked as a contributing factor to many of the leading causes of illness such as heart disease and cancer. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Not only do stress hormones like adrenaline have negative effects (high levels of adrenaline can increase your risk of stroke, high blood pressure, and anxiety to name a few) but in addition, your digestion and immune system functions are suppressed when you are stressed!  A double whammy so to speak. 

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Chronic stress can also lead to an increased risk of cognitive impairment, dementia, Alzheimer’s, and things like lower productivity and job satisfaction.  Learning how to “de-stress” or be able to activate your parasympathetic nervous system response (rest and digest), is critical for long-term health on all levels. This is a foundational principle of The Anjuli Method.

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Learning how to “de-stress” or be able to activate your parasympathetic nervous system response (rest and digest), is critical for long-term health on all levels. This is a foundational principle of The Anjuli Method.

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So how can we help our body understand that the danger is over, or manage our stress response in the face of danger? We have two main pathways, the first is top-down: we can use our higher-thinking brain to help step in and interpret what is happening both internally and externally. An example of this is when you tell yourself while hiking and startling at a stick in the path “Oh, that was just a stick, I thought it was a snake, ok, I am ok, there is no real danger". 

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Top-down regulation can be difficult for many of us, particularly when we are already activated, because that part of our brain goes offline! However, through meditation, mindfulness, and conscious movement practices we can build our prefrontal cortex and our neural connections that help us have stronger connections to top-down regulation and our rest and digest response. We can develop an observer part of our consciousness that can be aware of what is happening and still be able to react. Maybe not simultaneously, but sooner. This leads us to a key concept: interoception. A.D. (Bud) Craig, PhD, a neuroscientist and researcher, coined the term interoception in 2002 to refer to the ability to perceive what is happening in your body, particularly your viscera.

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Interoception: the ability to perceive what is happening in your body, particularly your viscera.

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The other way to regulate our system is bottom-up. We can strengthen the resilience of our bodies' ability to receive stressful input while staying in balance. One way we can use bottom-up regulation is the breath. Conscious breathing has a unique place in our toolbox because it is one of the only autonomic functions we can consciously control. By changing our breath we can signal the brain that danger has passed and we are ok.