The Anatomy of Stress and Anxiety

When you are in a mental rut you develop some thought patterns, characteristic of this issue and overtime they become thoughts habits that make you feel bad.

It is important to understand the way our neural pathways work, and also understand the parts of your brain where positive and negative emotions are located, that has been found by doctors through the years by observing patients with several brain damage in the different hemisphere of the brain and the consequences.

The more you activate certain areas the more they become automatic. This is how a pianist who practice again and again, slowly learns to play the different pieces of music automatically, because in the brain the area that manages the fingers develops more. The same way when you are anxious you become pessimistic, your mood generates the same thoughts patterns, this activates the same area of your brain, you develop related emotions to the thoughts and hemisphere you are activating that makes you feel bad and you end up this way trapped in more anxiety, at the same time it destroys the dendrites of your neurons and you feel lost, like being in an jungle full of threats, you are fully alert and accelerated.

I repeat, you end up in a jungle.

(Parts of the brain where neurotransmitters are produced)

Stress has the same anatomy, when you keep yourself working long hours or in a lot of pressure for long hours, you change your circadian rhythm that affects your biological clock. You end with issues for sleeping, with a mind that is not clear and then you stop enjoying life and thus your mental wellness is badly affected. Nobody can fight a tiger for 8 hours, not naturally.

You must understand that 8 hours of stress is not solved with 1 hour of exercise in the gym or in a session of yoga even if those 8 hours are the exceptions but not the rule in you everyday life, because the damage of stress in your body is biological, at a cellular level, where you end up throwing stress hormones that accumulate in your system, your body as consequence can’t fight free radicals, you oxidase internally which means your system can’t clean internal waste, fight cancer or even the chemicals of your environment that entered your body by air, through your skin or by your food.

You end up affecting not only your immune system or your natural capacity to repair your internal organs, but above all you stop producing positive neurons that you need to feel good and you increase the availability of the neurotransmitters in your brain that reflect stress like epinephrine and norepinephrine, this is why your thoughts also accelerate and you have that sensation of losing control or going mad with awful body sensations.

Yeah Sir, you are a very complex system and you need to know this to manage your stress and responsibilities level, whatever your salary level is. Learn more about yourself, how your brain works and how you work internally in order to dimension different aspects of your life with the right filters.