Firstly what is it?
It’s the body’s response to perceived, assumed or actual trauma, or dangerous/risky situations.
If any of your body’s senses; seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting or touching, is reminded of or experiences trauma or danger it will respond by putting the body into defence mode, usually called 'Fight' or 'Flight'. This mode of defence isn’t always what the actual situation in front of you really needs, and on a lot of occasions is an over reaction.
What happens is that a part of the brain triggers the body to produce stress hormones called Adrenaline and Cortisol (for a diagram and deeper explanation of what happens to us when under stress, see the 'Conflict Resolution' film in the 'Video' section.) These chemicals cause the heart to beat faster, breathing to become shorter and quicker, sometimes accompanied by sweating and/or nausea (your body doesn’t need to digest food at this moment so it stops suddenly, hence the nausea in some people).
Muscles, especially biceps, quads and calves receive oxygenated blood and get the body ready for action. Normally the brain receives information through the senses. It is processed in one part then passed to another to take action. If there is a lot of adrenaline in the processing part, it stops working and information short circuits to the action part without processing, and the person will do or say things they might regret afterwards.
For example, they might get suddenly angry and hit someone or something, they can hit walls or other solid objects, or say things they don’t mean, because they aren’t thinking about the consequences, just acting to defend.
Where does the response come from?
Commonly the trauma is in the persons past. Something happening in front of them triggers a historic response, usually from somewhere in their childhood, but not always.
When an initial trauma happens, the body responds to it and will remember the situation and the response. If any of the senses then recognise something that reminds it of the original trauma, it will move into fight/flight immediately to defend itself.
Let's say that when the initial trauma happened the person was maybe nine years old. If the body is reminded of that initial trauma it will trigger a response that is the same as how the nine year old responded at the time. This might seem to be out of proportion to the current situation. This can be because no other learned controls have been put in place to respond to these feelings, so the person just reacts in the same way year after year, just like when they were 9. This is called a trigger.
Everyone has triggers, not all are unpleasant though. For example, in my teens we used to holiday on a dairy farm, which I preferred to the beach. I milked cows, mucked out etc. Today if I walk past cows, or a field that has recently had manure spread on it, my body is triggered through my sense of smell and immediately produces endorphins. I feel very happy and relaxed.
But let's talk about the unpleasant triggers as these are the ones that cause us anxiety. Sometimes in broken or separated families, children witness heated arguments and sometimes domestic abuse or violence. In these situations they can feel helpless to protect, knowing that there is danger to someone else or themselves, but not being able to do anything about it. In schools it’s not unusual to find students and staff who have experienced this in their home life and who have an axiety response to it.
If it’s a student, then they can be triggered by a member of staff using a tone of voice or language that reminds their bodies of the arguments or dometic violence, then they will respond to that in the classroom. They might shout at the teacher, strike out at another student, throw something or walk out slamming the door.
If it’s a staff member and the class gets noisy or one student won’t do as they’re asked, this could trigger a feeling of being out of control, as they’re reminded of the feelings they have around arguments or domestic violence. The teacher may find themselves getting upset or angry, and begin to feel they can’t cope.
There are a large number of other examples I could use but I hope this illustrates that our responses don’t always fit with what’s in front of us.
How can you cope ?
Frequently I hear children and adults say that the feelings just happen. However, over time during our work together, the vast majority become aware of the sequence of trigger and response and they learn to regulate themselves before they get into full fight or flight mode.
Often, but not always, the first thing a person notices is nausea or a clamminess. Next is a tensing of the body, clenching of fists, clenching of the jaw, volume of speech may rise.
Next some sort of action; arguing, running away, striking a person or object, throwing something, or indeed any behaviour which, once you’ve calmed down, you would regret doing.
A sign of high background adrenaline levels are bouncing your legs regularly or continuously. Fiddling with something, tapping your fingers or an object such as a pen. If these are happening it can help to learn to self regulate.
Mindfulness is a useful tool in teaching the body to self regulate. One exercise I use is 'elephant breathing'.
For this exercise, you breathe in through your nose for 5 seconds, out through your mouth for 5 seconds, doing that 5 times. When you breathe in focus on what the breath feels like going through your nose and filling your lungs right up. Hold for a couple of seconds, then breathe out through your mouth, focussing what the breath feels like coming back up and out again.
‘Elephant’ is a 3 syllable word ‘el-e-phant’ so saying this between each number means that by the time you’ve counted to 5 elephants, you will have been breathing in (and then out) for 5 seconds.
If you practice this once every half an hour (or whenever you remember is fine), then your mind will train your body to notice when you are consciously trying to calm down. When your body notices this, it will remember to calm down. This is a way of consciously setting up a calming trigger to counteract any triggers that make you angry, stressed or anxious. Soon enough, when you're stressed or anxious and you start breathing slowly using the 5 elephants, then your body will trigger itself back to calm.
It takes lots of practice, and interestingly most people forget to practice when things are going well, so setting up a practice routine is really useful when you’re consciously creating a calming trigger to cope with anxiety.
There are loads of mindfulness exercises out there that can help with focusing yourself on something other than the situation, or person who has upset you. Tomorrow Charlotte will be taking us on a walk through the woods to teach us how to shift our perspective away from something and towards something else. This skill in shifting your perspective can really help to manage anxiety.
This weekend Mel will be taking us through a meditation designed specifically to help us shift our perspective and embrace imperminance. It can be very useful to remember that emotions aren’t permanent. That no matter how frustraited, anxious or upset you feel in one moment, that feeling will pass and you will experience another feeling soon enough. Nothing lasts forever, not even anxiety or anger.
Here’s an exercise to try… It’s called The Big Picture:
When you’re stressed you tend to have very tunnelled vision and so don’t take on the positive effects of your surroundings. Each morning I either lean on my door frame, or if it’s raining I stand in the porch, and close my eyes and slow my breathing to the elephant speed. I do this for 3 or 4 minutes ( which can seem like an eternity!) Then I begin – still with my eyes closed – to imagine that I am expanding outside my body and actually into the air around me to a radius of about 5 metres. I imagine that I have expanded and breath there for another 3 or 4 minutes. Then I expand myself again to about 20 metres wide! I breath for another 3 or 4 minutes. When I open my eyes, I look up at the horizon or tree canopy and focus in on what I can see or hear. The effect is to connect you to your surroundings, and help your endorphin (the feel-good hormone) levels to rise.
Another useful tool for processing emotions can be to channel anger safely. Decide a place or space where you feel safe. It can be a particular room, a specific spot in a room, or perhaps a place in the garden. This will be known as you ‘safe release space’.
Here we’re going to take the advice that we give our kids when they’re having trouble expressing an emotion in a constuctive way. “Go to your room”! That’s exactly what we’re going to do when we feel angry. We’re giong to go to our room or safe release space and we’re going to let it out.
Do whatever you need to do to safety let the anger out. Maybe it’s shout, maybe it’s punch a pillow, maybe it’s to shake your body from arms, to torso, to legs. Really really powerfully shake your whole body to shake off the feelings. It might sound a little crazy, but it really does work to shift the feeling! Once you have expressed the anger, the chemicals present in your body will have been processed and you will feel different physically as well as psychologically and emotionally.
Having a good cry is great, as it also helps to process feelings, and big boys like me do cry!
I have also been known to find a space to myself, usually in a woodland somewhere and have a good scream. I did this one day in Glen Doll, which is next to Balmoral. I turned around after I’d finished to see a red deer stag looking at me. It actually just sighed then turned round and slowly walked away! He got it!
Apps like Headspace can be useful for guiding you through a shift in perspective. There are also some really good and informative pages on the NHS Choice website, which is a well researched source and can be found here https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=nhs+choice
Take care everyone… and … I’ll be back 😊
