You're listening to The Uppercase Life where we're taking care of ourselves so we can take care of others. Stress is a part of life. If you're trying to do difficult things, or really if you're just trying to stay alive for any length of time, you should expect to experience stress. All those stress itself is normal, and it's nothing to be ashamed of.Unmanaged stress can really become dangerous to your health. It can also affect your relationship tips and just your overall quality of life. And, you know, if we're honest, we are living in a fairly stressful time, it seems, and a lot of us are living with more stress than we realize due to multiple what are called stressors. Studies have found that right now in 2022, Americans in particular are dealing with an elevated level or reported stress due to some global external circumstances.And you can probably think of these off the top of your head. I mean, we've been through a COVID 19 pandemic. We've seen political unrest, we've dealt with wars and Ukraine and the cost of living and access to goods has become higher and more challenging. So when you're experiencing stress, it's the result of what doctors call stressors, the things that are stressing you out.And when you experience a stressor, what happens in your head is your amygdala sends a signal to your hypothalamus. It goes through your nervous system and it prepares your body for fight or flight. You know what that feels like, right? The stress response is meant to provide a short burst of energy, and it's supposed to help you address the stressor.You know, like fight it or fly it from it. Run away from it, and your cortisol levels elevate while your body and your brain is readying itself for action. And, you know, most stress just ends up being what is called acute stress, which is a fairly short period of time, and it's based around a particular incident. So, for example, you get cut off in traffic, you can feel that physical response as you feel stressed out about the fact that this person cut you off, you were in danger.You might feel angry. Also, something like giving a public speech or asking someone out on a date, being called into your supervisor's office, or maybe having to talk to somebody about something that is sensitive in this type of stress. It's really normal, but it may cause irritability, anxiety, sweating, headaches, and sometimes you'll experience stomach pains or you can even feel your heart beating fast, or depending on how you're feeling about the thing that is stressing you out.But then, apart from acute stress, there's something called chronic stress. It's a more prolonged and dangerous version of stress. Chronic stress, maybe because of ongoing financial struggles. Or maybe you're having health issues over a long period of time. And it's not really self contained. Small acute moment. Maybe you've been abused or maybe you're just in a dysfunctional relationship or they're other things that are causing long term stress.And for that you may start feeling fatigue. A lot of times people experience a loss of appetite or changes in their appetite. It'll affect your sleep headaches, perhaps. Maybe you have difficulty concentrating. And if chronic stress gets left untreated for a long time, it can really have serious consequences. It can lead to problems that are going to put you in the doctor's office.Things like insomnia or even obesity and heart disease, diabetes, hypertension. These are all things that we've linked to chronic stress. And ironically, studies are showing that chronic stress can actually make your brain more receptive to more stress later on. So I read this quote from Christopher Berglund in Psychology Today. He said, Cortisol is believed to create this domino effect that hard hardwired pathways in your brain and might create a vicious cycle by making a brain that becomes more predisposed to be in a constant state of fight or flight.So essentially, the more often and the longer period of time your stress, the more easily you may get stressed in the future. And some of you are hearing me say this and you are probably nodding your head and saying, yes, I just live in a constant state of stress. I am stressed out so much that I'm used to being stressed out.And so I just live in a stressed out world. I want to tell you that is going to cause you long term problems. And you probably already know that that isn't something that is good for you or even manageable. So what do we do when we endure stress and we should be enduring stress? You should be experiencing some stress because you are trying to do difficult things.You're endeavoring to accomplish things that maybe other people aren't willing to try, which means that you're going to experience pushback and resistance that other people don't. So if stress is part of life and it can help strengthen us if we respond to it correctly or weakness if we, you know, fail to manage it in a healthy way, how can we manage stress?So...
