S.O.B.'s Sneakiest Trick
The sneakiest trick played by our S.O.B. (Stress, Overwhelm and Burnout) enemy is that it cuts you off from your most important tool – your mind. It keeps you confused and flustered so you forget who the real enemy is and start to feel as though the way you feel is normal, or simply “the way things are”. This S.O.B. is like an abusive partner, manipulating and gas-lighting you into thinking you’re the one who’s crazy – not the other way around.
If your body’s stress response is functioning typically, “once a perceived threat has passed, hormone levels return to normal. As adrenaline and cortisol levels drop, your heart rate and blood pressure return to baseline levels, and other systems resume their regular activities. But when stressors are always present and you constantly feel under attack, that fight-or-flight reaction stays turned on. The long-term activation of the stress-response system and the overexposure to cortisol and other stress hormones that follows can disrupt almost all your body's processes” (The Mayo Clinic).
But don’t despair. There is always hope and a way out! When you feel frustrated, look for solutions. Stress, overwhelm and burnout trick us into seeing only the here and now, cutting us off from the big picture. This sends your mind into searching for tips and tricks INSTEAD of true solutions, and the cycle of S.O.B. (Stress, Overwhelm and Burnout) continues, holding on tighter and tighter, making it even more difficult to escape.
Another way to understand this is to observe your daily responses to outer stimuli – your usual, predictable pattern of behavior are the habits your body is trained to follow. In a perfect world, we would have enough time to think through everything we do. However, stress has a modifying effect on the process between outer stimuli and your response. Stress causes you to react instinctively, from that “fight or flight” point of view, instead of taking time to react reasonably.
The problem is, because your body is operating from a position of stress (and your hormones are all out of whack), you don’t even realize what you’re doing! My mentor Michael Frisina, PhD calls it being “forever stuck in lower brain functioning, never engaging your upper brain”. A vicious cycle that can only be broken with concerted, conscious effort. When in stressful situations (or in ANY situation – remember if you’re stuck in the abusive cycle of S.O.B. your brain identifies nearly every situation as stressful), remind yourself to breathe, take your time, and think through your response instead of reacting instinctively.