stress management

How to control fight or flight anxiety

It’s a late-night and you’re shutting the lights off in the unused part of your home. You have to pass a dark, exposed window to get to the bedroom, and realizing this sends a nervous zap up your spine that urges you to bolt for safety as you approach the vulnerability.

Does that sound familiar?

What is the fight or flight response?

Your body’s acute stress response is commonly referred to as the fight or flight response. In the animal kingdom, it aids survival by powering the body’s systems with the explosive energy necessary to escape danger.

You can thank physiologist and Harvard professor Walter Bradford Cannon for formally describing the reaction in the early 1900s. He was also one of the first to insist that emotional stress, not only physical trauma, can trigger fight or flight.

For modern people, the source of the reaction is often vaguer than an obvious physical threat in front of us. We tend to anticipate danger more often than it is present.

One example is the sudden urge to seek shelter when you realize your back is to a doorway or exposed window at night time. While this may have been helpful when locks and various other security devices were more primitive, civilization has recently kept us (fairly) safe and your neighborhood probably isn’t known for its packs of marauding bandits.

Civilized comforts mean that many times, our fight or flight response activates in the absence of real danger. Because the stressor only has to be a danger in our imagination, those of us with disordered thinking often find the response engaged when there isn’t something real to fear. It’s quickly exhausting and leaves you searching for ways to control fight or flight anxiety.

What does the fight or flight response feel like?

The first step in dealing with or adjusting your body’s reaction to stress is being able to identify when it’s happening. Modern triggers aren’t usually as obvious as their historical counterparts when even average humans commonly had to face something they had a good reason (from a life-preserving standpoint) to fear.

But we still find ourselves anxious when there is no clear and present danger.

Physical symptoms of hyperarousal

When you sense trouble, your sympathetic nervous system flips fight or flight’s ‘On’ switch. Your heart races. Adrenaline (also called epinephrine) is a major hormone and neurotransmitter involved in this response, responsible for binding to the receptors that regulate your heart’s output, the blood flowing to your muscles and your blood sugar.

The major reactions require energy that gets provided in the form of glucose (sugar), which is produced when the epinephrine binds in your liver. Sudden muscle tension is meant to support the strength necessary to run or physically defend.

Another boost comes via the ‘stress hormone’ cortisol, which (as mentioned) temporarily increases sugars in the bloodstream. Personally, that’s the part where I get dizzy.

Emotions in fight or flight

Those physical symptoms – the adrenaline dump, racing heart, etc. – are especially distressing without a clear trigger, and lead to the mental struggle that many find most difficult.

Anxiety and aggression are common emotional responses to the physical process going on in our bodies when stressed. There’s so much tension still there even when you aren’t actively fighting that your mind remains hypervigilant and anxious. This is true both for people with and without added panic disorders.

These symptoms are helpful for short-term bursts of energy but begin to wear on a person’s long-term health if they’re experienced consistently. Because living in this state is such a drain on the body, it’s critical to recognize and then to prioritize mindful stress management as a regular part of your life.

Relieving your nerves

With a better understanding of fight or flight and its triggers, we should consider how to identify and control it in our daily lives. Anything I mention in the next section is something I’ve personally found effective and, if not, I’ll be making that very clear.

As you leave fight or flight mode, your parasympathetic nervous system activates what’s known as ‘rest and digest’. You can strengthen and even control this parasympathetic response in a number of ways, mostly by directing your body.

BREATHE! – An easy method called diaphragmatic breathing is particularly useful for calming your nervous system.

An anecdote on the effectiveness of breathwork: I was recently obligated to attend a corporate awards ceremony-slash-dinner that hosted 200 people. It was a familiar venue where I was married a few years ago, but I got overwhelmed by the sudden chorus of voices having separate conversations when I walked in beside my husband. Using mindfulness techniques like breathing exercises as we sat really helped get me through my initial urge to avoid the situation.

MEDITATE – Meditation is not the art of relaxation. It’s the act – or art, I suppose – of repeatedly focusing your attention back to something. This practice strengthens your ability to redirect your focus during stressful situations and works hand-in-hand with the breathing exercises I just mentioned.

Just like lifting the same weight with your arm every day gradually becomes easier as your body adapts to the repetition, working this ‘mental muscle’ enough will help move your focus faster and smoother.

WORK IT OUT – A great way to get out of this stressed state is to go straight through it via exercise. Adrenaline prepares you with an explosive energy that needs an outlet – use it!

… SELF-SWADDLING? – Just like a baby whose brand new nervous system is overwhelmed by sensation, you can swaddle yourself in tight, uniformly fitting clothing (think compression stockings and athletic wear) or heavy blankets. I know this sounds absurdly simple, but it can work wonders for many of us who have long aged out of babyhood.

If you can get a better grip on your natural reactions to stress, you’ll find it becomes much easier to maintain balance in your daily life. Understanding responses like fight or flight and how we encounter them even during common activity is a big part of achieving that balance.

Go forward with these bits of information on your stress response; I hope they serve you well!

When Your Anxiety Means Memory Loss

Around 30% of people have anxiety disorders and everybody on the planet experiences some kind of stress. Everyone also experiences some memory loss and an increase in blank moments as we age. But imagine being in your 20s or 30s and honestly searching keywords like ‘early dementia symptoms’ or ‘how young can Alzheimer’s present?’

Maybe you don’t have to imagine – I know my own search history’s had similar phrasing after I forget somebody’s name on the sidewalk.

When your memory is affected by anxiety, insidious little thoughts like ‘But what if it is a brain tumor?!’ can seem even more reasonable. Suddenly you’re Googling tumor symptoms for an hour instead of being productive or resting, furthering your stress and occupying your mind all because you had a little mind-blanking moment earlier in the day.

My mind went blank. What just happened?

It’s likely that your stress response took over! The human body’s stress response goes, roughly, like this:

A “Threat” occurs and a distress signal goes to the emotional processing center of your brain, called the amygdala.
If your amygdala agrees that the signal confirms immediate danger, it passes it along to your brain’s primary control center, called the hypothalamus.
The hypothalamus lights everything up; Adrenaline releases, your heart rate increases and all that energy causes a heightened state of alertness that’s traditionally been necessary for the survival of our species.

Now you’re alert and still sense danger – time for a shot of that not-so-sweet, sweet stress hormone: Cortisol!

When Hormones Get Involved

Sitting on top of your kidneys are your adrenal glands, responsible for secreting the main stress hormone – called cortisol. When your stress response keeps going, cortisol is one of the primary hormones responsible for the ongoing physiological effects.

At this stage, your mind is firing on all cylinders, extra sharp thanks to the new burst of hormonal energy.

Do you lose your appetite when you’re anxious? That’s because cortisol shuts down down non-essential functions when your body is under attack. This tends to quiet your digestive and even reproductive systems.

Though you may be craving less food, cortisol makes sure the fight or flight response gets plenty of fuel by telling your liver to turn your body’s protein stores into more glucose (sugar) to use in the sprint away from danger. This process is called gluconeogenesis, a word you probably don’t need to remember how to spell unless you’re planning on writing a keto diet guide.

Your cortisol levels will only drop when you’ve accepted that the danger has passed (even if it really passed long before), and this is the cause of the common ‘crash’ after heavy moments of anxiety.

Why does anxiety make me more forgetful?

There are a few different factors when it comes to how our anxiety affects memory.

Close up of elephant face and eye — Even elephants forget. Credit to Joel Mbugua

Consistently high levels of cortisol in the body have been linked to the loss of synapses (think of these like little highways for information) in the prefrontal cortex, which is where your brain stashes short-term memory.

That’s partly because anxiety and stress are exhausting for your body and greatly increase the demand put on many systems. It’s especially taxing for individuals with anxiety disorders (like GAD, among others) who excess stress on a near-daily basis, reflected in research on the comorbidity of these disorders with impaired memory.

Recently, researchers have found that short-term stress fires up molecules that limit some of the brain’s memory and learning processes. Studies like this are key to better understanding of why we have increased difficulty learning and recalling information when under stress.

Reduce stress & improve memory

So the results are in when it comes to the link between anxiety disorders and memory loss, particularly with anxiety disorder as a predictor of future cognitive decline. They go hand-in-hand.

That doesn’t have to read as grim to those of us suffering, though, because there are many avenues to treatment that can even begin at home.

A few things that are completely under your control can contribute to anxiety-associated memory loss. Sleep quality is a common area of suffering when we experience excess stress, and happens to be one that we can self-treat (to an extent! You’re likely not a medical professional and neither am I).

Sleep better, think better

Approximately 70 million people in the United States suffer from sleep disorders, insomnia being the most common among them. Insomnia sufferers experience great difficulty falling and/or staying asleep, and the disorder has a high comorbidity with anxiety. This makes it very likely that improving your sleep will jog your memory.

That’s not to say your symptoms are necessarily reversible, but there’s certainly hope for staying sharper in the future. A big factor in your sleep quality is timing – sleeping at night, when it’s dark out. Sounds pretty obvious, but there’s good research that backs why you should do your best to sleep when it’s dark, not when it’s noon.

Spoiler alert: More hormone talk!

Melatonin is a hormone released by your brain’s pineal gland in the evenings under normal circumstances. Elevated levels of melatonin in your blood will help you wind down and get to sleep, but those levels are only present naturally in darkness.

Why? Because bright light harshly suppresses melatonin production in the human brain.

I personally didn’t realize that until I brought up to my doctor that I’d been using a special feature on my computer and phone to reduce blue screen light in the evenings. It was easier on my eyes, for sure, but didn’t seem to help me fall asleep any faster. She vaguely explained that the brightness mattered and, being a little bit of a jerk, I double-checked to confirm her advice with a quick Google search.

Sure enough, making sure you’re exposed to plenty of light during the day will help keep your circadian rhythm strong.

Lazy Like Me: Better productivity with less pressure

Better productivity doesn’t have to mean your alarm is set to the sunrise, but I’m getting pretty sick of the urge to run back to bed and hide my head under the covers. I work from home, and the scheduling freedom that allows tends to turn people (me) into overthinkers who struggle with perfectionism. It’s tough to find somebody who’s immune to that productivity paralysis, and I’m certainly no exception when left to my own devices. Luckily (at least that’s my spin on it), I’ve got OCD and no shortage of time to have obsessively researched how more productive people manage to get things done.

That translated to many hours spent prepping food or playing video games while listening to the interviews or audiobooks of folks who, by my estimation, have got it together. It also earned me many battle royale losses because you can’t pause an online game to take notes when you hear a useful point – and it’s not like I was scoring more than rookie numbers in the first place.

But that humiliation and note-taking come to benefit you, dearest procrastinator, because we can save you time with this summary of my (informal) education in motivation!

The aim here is to cover productivity basics and tricks (‘hacks,’ if you’re trendy) that I learned to trick my squirrel brain into motion over the past several years. And I’m doing it in one post because you shouldn’t have to bother with the digital legwork I’ve already done.

I want to give you actionable tips you can’t unsee, but in a primer that takes minutes of reading instead of the hours I’ve spent consuming this sort of content.

The Building Blocks of Productivity: Fuel and Rest

I’ll give you the bad news first: The basics of becoming a more productive person are the toughest part. To sustain long-term productivity healthily, your diet and sleep cycle should be on-point. That’s a significant struggle for many of us, but you can start by arming yourself with bits of information to help make the right choices as you go along.

Let’s start with the hint that kicks me the hardest:

Getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep on most nights* is not negotiable.

Yeah, yeah – you think you’re the individual case who can get away with less, but in the background, your body is paying for every lost hour. The severity of sleep deprivation symptoms will vary from person to person and I know it’s no fun to start winding down for bed when it’s the last thing on your mind, but forcing yourself to is a critical area of discipline that can improve your life exponentially if you’re not getting enough rest. There’s even evidence that not getting enough sleep harms your ability to lose fat.

*The asterisk is here for us smartypants who frequently negotiate with our bodies for less rest. Every few days, maybe missing a little is okay. But over time this tactic will undoubtedly fail, and you don’t want to be that grouchy guy, do you?

What You Eat Affects Your Energy

The other rough point is nutrition. Maintaining a (generally – even The Rock loves pancakes) healthy diet is hard in the sense that it requires some education going in and takes discipline to balance out, but it’s the other non-negotiable part of the puzzle.

I’m aware of how aggravating this can be to hear repeatedly, but even the tiniest improvement in your eating habits *will* benefit every aspect of your health. Don’t think of it as a vast, daunting overhaul of your life or any of that strict madness, because that’s the kind of overwhelming thinking that led me to avoid making changes. Make a couple of healthier choices at a time and watch your habits change for the better.

Bottom Line

To avoid turning this post into a sciencey nutritional sesh, I’ll share my biggest takeaway from a few years of trying to clean things up:

Stop doing what you already know you shouldn’t.

You don’t need to spend time studying or buy a book to start cleaning up your eating habits a little. When you’re standing in the checkout line and reach for something that you know *probably* isn’t nutritionally dense or valuable, thinking to yourself “I know I shouldn’t, but…”

For once, that voice in your head isn’t just a jerk. It’s *correct*.

“PUT THAT COOKIE DOWN NOW!” – Arnold Schwarzenegger in the cinema masterpiece Jingle All The Way

Stop reaching!

Yes, there are more psychological layers to dietary habits than that, but what I’m trying to drive home more than anything is that you already have the tools to start by altering some small choices. You don’t need a rundown of macronutrients tailored to your daily activities if you’re just looking to improve a lazy or unhealthy diet — at least not right away.

If you like lists…

Now you’ve got two ways to practice a little self-improvement:

1. Work toward being that ‘boring’ person who prioritizes sleep.
2. Pick a part of your diet to adjust for the better – big or small – and gradually develop healthier habits that way.

Those basics help provide the energy that fuels accomplishment. They work differently from person to person, but you don’t have to eat and sleep like Michael Phelps at the Olympic Village just to improve your health a bit beyond the (lacking) average.

Combine this balance of fundamentals with some of the points I’m about to run down, and you’ll have a solid base for achieving whatever it is you’re determined to do.

Better productivity by asking questions

Giving yourself prompts is essential!

You can better direct yourself by asking some fundamental questions to establish a framework of what needs to get done. This creates a hierarchy and keeps you from wandering from task to task, potentially wasting a lot of time half-completing little nothings.

If these sound like the words of experience, well, lazy as charged.

Consistent forward momentum is far more critical than taking giant leaps all at once, so focus on small, incremental progress more than knocking half your work out of the park in one sitting. An idea of the goal and the structure it’ll take to accomplish will get you there a lot faster than aimlessly flailing at a disorganized, overwhelming ‘To Do’ list with no obvious entry point.

Let’s start with a manageable grip of questions. Introducing…

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What Do I Ask Myself?

1. What task will make another easier or obsolete?

This is your most important question, and even though the old ‘Kill two birds with one stone’ adage is crass, it applies. Any job that covers multiple items on your to-do list means far less work for you in the future, and it’s tough to see that as anything but good!

2. What can I accomplish in bite sizes/the time I currently have available?

You don’t have to complete something all at once. Even if you’re jumping around your list, tackling anything that can be worked on in pieces is better to progress than staying idle.

3. What will most impact the next 24 hours?

This one is pretty simple: If there’s something on your list that would have a noticeable impact or make you feel significantly better in the next day or two, prioritize it! Take every opportunity you can to ‘rig the game’ and set yourself up for little hits of reward and accomplishment this way.

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Feel overwhelmed by the task ahead?

Plan to do less than you’re capable of. More often than not, you’ll exceed it, but even if you don’t, you’ll still have accomplished something useful. Forward momentum is far more important than how much you’re accomplishing if you traditionally struggle to get started.

Don’t hamstring yourself by worrying about not having the time to get the task done perfectly or all at once. One percent every day is still great progress. Sure, it’s more comfortable to sit back and say “I shouldn’t bother because I can’t accomplish enough,” but that’s just as crippling as letting perfectionism get in the way of your progress. Even half-doing something (that you can edit later) is better than reconsidering and later regretting having nothing to show.

That’s great when you’ve already scheduled. But how much time, relative to the rest of your day, should you devote to working? That’s up to you, but if you give some time to working on being more efficient with your time/energy each day, you’ll find yourself getting more done in a shorter span of time.

Accomplishments while depressed

Be willing to be uncomfortable at the moment to achieve your higher goal and build the bigger picture for yourself. It’s important to remember that depression and anxiety commonly cause people to withdraw, closing the border walls of their world while making it harder to push outside of those boundaries without substantial discomfort. Your world will want to get smaller, and it’s up to you to keep stretching your comfort zone ever so slightly as it tries to recceed.

When you feel aimless, help someone. Make that your purpose at the moment. It’s almost a mindfulness or meditation practice on its own to focus your efforts on improving somebody else’s situation. Not only is it rewarding and better than being idle or stagnating, but you’ll also find mirrors to your position and see first-hand how looking at the bigger picture can lead to a much deeper understanding of the control you *do* have over many outcomes in your life, even when you feel helpless.

Further Your Free Time: Choose Your Adventure

What happens if you don’t have to do anything immediately? Say you have a regular job and you find yourself finishing your day’s work, coming home and relaxing. But you feel you’re in a rut. Maybe it seems like you’re not moving forward with your life outside of surviving. If you’re not very attached to your primary source of income, or maybe you don’t have one, it’s natural to want to stimulate your mind and inspire yourself to grow.

But how? You’re not the kind of person who has a library of leather-bound encyclopedias in your house for fun – you’re not quite sure how to direct your free time.

Pause.

Patience! Time for a preachy moment.

I see too many people complaining that they’re stuck in a rut because they don’t have the free time or extra money/loan potential to further their learning. That’s just not true. I understand many feeling they’re in an impossible situation, but most of us genuinely aren’t, and there are at least a couple of moments in a week where we could put a little extra time into growing our potential. Again, this is easier said than done, but a potential employer (or recruiter, LinkedIn lurker) is going to look favorably on the candidate who’s shown initiative to better themselves by learning on their own time.

Let’s say you don’t have any work commitments at the moment (and you’re not on the clock), but you’re not *quite* in the mood to sit back and play that latest game you bought. Aside from throwing money at your favorite “guru”’s course to hear some fluffy language, why not look into the free or cheap learning available to you? I’ve got some personal recommendations for young professionals or people just generally seeking to sharpen their skills. I don’t have any more formal education than you do, most likely, but I’m confident that these are accessible resources for almost any level or style of learner.

DuoLingo / TinyCards
Google Digital Garage (Digital & Marketing Fundamentals)
Google’s Academy for Ads

Not Only For Over-Achievers (Or, ‘If I can do it…’)

So ‘just’ clean up your diet and sleep schedule oh /and/ don’t forget these tips! No problem, right?!

If you’ve got a sweaty brow and growing desire to smack me around for making this all sound casual and easy, hold on.

Aside from there being plenty of better reasons to be annoyed with me, I want to emphasize that next to nobody does this stuff overnight. You grow healthy habits in tiny pieces, *so start!* Move toward the smallest action with the most significant impact, but don’t spend too much time thinking about doing it or you’ll end up paralyzed – like many of us have been – by your quest to perfect it before you even get started.