Understanding Stress
Internally Generated
Stress
Survival Stress
Where you are in a physically or emotionally threatening situation your body adapts to help it
react more effectively to meet the threat. This is controlled mainly by release of adrenaline.
Adrenaline causes a number of changes that help you to survive. The main ones are:
- it mobilises sugars: this gives your body access to more strength, energy and stamina.
This helps you to fight harder or run faster.
- it reduces the blood supply to your skin and short-term inessential organs. This
minimises bleeding if you are hurt, and ensures that energy is not wasted on processes
that are not immediately useful.
- you may experience nausea or diarrhoea: this eliminates excess weight that might
otherwise slow you down.
You may have experienced these changes as 'fear'. However where speed and physical
strength are important this adrenaline stress will be helpful and beneficial - fear can help you
to survive or perform better.
Where calm thought or precise motor skills are important, it is best to control and, ideally,
eliminate these adrenaline responses.
In as much as these adrenaline changes shut down the function of organs that are essential in
all but the short term, prolonged exposure to adrenaline can cause ill-health.
Highly Recommended Books
For an excellent book on stress management, try
The Book of Stress Survival - How to Relax and Live Positively
by Alix Kirsta. This is a very pleasant, well-presented, sensible approach to stress management. It covers many important areas completely
ignored by most other books.
Understanding Stress
Internally Generated
Stress
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