OUR STRESS RESPONSE, DEFINED. Over hundreds of thousands of years, our human brains and bodies have evolved an automatic, involuntary and highly orchestrated response to life-threatening situations called the stress response. It is a biological cascade that is orchestrated by the brain and carried out by the body. The stress response is protective and includes physical, mental and emotional components. It allows you to escape or resist a life-threatening situation by:  

• increasing the heart rate, breathing rate and blood pressure (all of which deliver more blood and oxygen to the muscles), 

• releasing hormones (especially adrenaline and cortisol), 

• releasing energy reserves from storage (glucose and fats to fuel the effort), 

• narrowing focus, 

• sharpening the senses, 

• heightening alertness, and a host of other responses that increase the likelihood of survival. 

INDIVIDUAL VARIATION. While the stress response is automatic and involuntary, how often you activate the stress response, how intensely, and for how long, is highly unique to you. 

Additionally, the stressor can be an active threat in the present moment or a future-based (imagined) stressor, yet still elicit the same response in our brains and bodies. Our response is  an internal reaction orchestrated by our brains, happening below our level of awareness and beyond our conscious control. There is a substantial body of research indicating that the way we perceive threat or danger and the intensity of our response is learned from adverse experiences occurring in our early childhood years, which prime our nervous system to respond in a habitual way at the subtlest levels for the rest of our lives. 

WHY A PROLONGED STRESS RESPONSE IS A PROBLEM. The stress response is an energetically expensive state, for it uses resources without producing anything (unless you are indeed escaping or resisting a life-threatening situation). 

The amount of time we spend in an activated stress response state determines the rate of wear and tear on the body, for this state diverts energy away from any activity that isn’t crucial to our immediate survival, such as any of those restorative, reparative, reproductive processes.  

This was not a problem for our ancestors who might activate their stress response for a short period and then quickly return to baseline spent resting, digesting, restoring, maintaining, and rebuilding. 

However, modern life is a chronic assault on this system. In contrast to our ancestors, we experience perpetual low-level stressors, which activate our stress response continuously, prevent our bodies from re-establishing a relaxed baseline, and deplete our resources. Simply stated, our stress response, which is designed for short and infrequent life-threatening situations, gets overused. 

RECOGNIZING THE SIGNS OF CHRONIC STRESS. Because our stress response largely happens below our level of awareness, and because this activated state can become habitual over time to the point of seeming normal, it can be difficult to recognize the signs of chronic stress. 

In this activated state, your brain and body are burning energy much faster than usual. Because energy is diverted away from restorative functions and redirected to immediate survival functions, the effects of chronic stress often reveal themselves as difficulties involving our restorative, digestive, healing, reproductive, and rebuilding processes. Additionally, because the stress response has physical, emotional and mental components, the effects can be wide-ranging and show up as:

• digestive issues, such as acid reflux, indigestion, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), leaky gut

• belly fat and insulin resistance 

• fatigue and low energy 

• insomnia 

• irritability and impatience

• lowered immunity, prone to catching colds

• mental fog, confusion, inability to focus, creative blocks, difficulty problem solving, headaches

• mood disturbances such as excess worry, looping thoughts, overwhelm, anxiety, depression 

• reproductive difficulties like infertility, impotence, and loss of libido 

HOW NEUROFEEDBACK TRAINING CAN HELP. Stress management includes both managing the stressor and managing our response to the stressor. NeurOptimal® neurofeedback addresses our response to the stressor through brain training. 

Brain training optimizes your brain’s flexibility and resilience. Flexibility refers to the ability to move fluidly from one state to another, matching an appropriate response to the situation at hand. Resilience governs how quickly you return to more efficient patterns after responding to a novel stimulus, such as a stressor. 

Additionally, many NeurOptimal® neurofeedback users report feeling more patient and less emotionally reactive. They find themselves more tolerant of uncertainty, with a greater capacity to respond calmly to their usual stressors, as well as to the unexpected challenges that come their way. Whereas the stressor and their response used to seem inseparable, users often report a gap between stressor and response, which allows them to respond more calmly, rather than reactively.