A stressed brain is a useless brain
People under chronic stress are at higher risk for ailments such as heart disease, autoimmune disease and mental disorders, like anxiety and depression.
“Stress can destroy much more than just physical health. Too often, it eats away at our hope, belief and faith.” – Charles F Glassman
Stress happens, and that’s not always bad. Starting a new job or getting married can both be happy events, but they also can be really stressful. There are some kinds of stress that just don’t seem to go away though, like the feeling that you’re drowning in work, but are still perpetually worried about making ends meet.
If you deal with a lot of stress every day, for months or years on end, then stress doesn’t just feel awful, it actually causes you physical harm and more. Psychologists call any event or situation that puts pressure or threatens your wellbeing a stressor, while stress refers to your psychological and physical reactions.
People under chronic stress are at higher risk for ailments such as heart disease, autoimmune disease and mental disorders, like anxiety and depression.
In response to a stressor, increasing cortisol levels paired with a boost of adrenaline can literally paralyse the brain’s critical abilities. In this stressed state, we no longer focus on the task at hand, but instead we shift our focus and attention to the stressor, which results in a sub-par performance of our task.
In addition to how we respond, prolonged stressful states can actually negatively affect the way we learn and intake information. Furthermore, stress lowers our body’s ability to fight off illnesses because our immune systems weaken with our hormonal surges.
Just remember that whenever one is faced with a stressor, an event or situation that threatens their wellbeing, a threat response gets triggered which means the attention moves away from using your thinking brain to focus on the ‘lion’ or threat in front of you.
