How the stress response works in the body causing us to overeat, overspend, over drink, over exercise, over sleep, and all the other “overs”.
We are all familiar with the feeling of our heart beating faster, our breathing rate increased, sweaty palms, maybe butterflies in the stomach and our thinking not working as well as it should.
I experienced a massive case of this earlier in the year when I was doing some work with my business coach and we decided to make some video blogs. In the introduction to the blogs I was going to say “Hi, I’m Kay, and I help entrepreneurs tap away their money blocks”. Easy Peasy, right? Wrong. Every time the camera was turned on, I completely forgot what I was going to say. COMPLETELY. One time I even forgot the “Hi, I’m Kay”
Now I pride myself on being a fairly smart cookie, and certainly smart enough to remember a simple phrase of what I do!!! What was going on? The stress of having a camera videoing me. Just STRESS.
But that stress was enough to have me forgetting even my own name.
All the blood had drained from my forebrain – the thinking part. The part that was operational was my limbic brain. The feeling part, and I was feeling that this is not fun, I can’t remember what to say, what if I mess it up, maybe I can’t do this, it is too hard. I would like to run away, and go and eat.
The limbic brain is part of our brain that contains the amygdala. It is a really important part of our survival mechanism. It reminds us that it is not a good idea to touch the hot stove, that we need to put shoes on to walk across grass in Australia in the summer, and react quickly when there is a car coming towards us. It helps us to survive, in a similar way to a smoke detector. It sends out a warning signal that tells our body to prepare to run, to fight, or to freeze. In the case of doing videos, it froze.
We have all felt the amygdala telling us there is danger. Think about a very near miss in the car, and you will know what I am talking about.
What is harder to pick up is the stress we feel on a regular basis.
The feelings that we have when someone yells at us. When we are having a fight with our partner or child. The stress we feel when we are asked to stand up in front of a group and talk (or in front of a camera which to me is even scarier than people.)
The stress might not make sense to our logical brain. How can a camera be scarier than real people? But for us experiencing it, the stress is real. For our bodies the stress is real. The stress hormone cortisol is released. This hormone is responsible for some of the body’s reactions.
A marvelous piece of research was done by Dr. Church where he gathered a group of people and measured their cortisol levels. He then divided them into three groups – a control group where nothing happened, and group that received an hour of standard talking therapy and the third group received an hour of tapping. He then re-measured the cortisol levels in their blood. The first two groups, their cortisol levels went down by 14%. In the tapping group their levels went down by an average of 24%, and some as much as 50%. These same results have been shown in MRI scans and in PET brain scans in other research.
TAPPING REDUCES STRESS
Fantastic results, but how does this help us as entrepreneurs?
Imagine yourself as a young child and you fell over and hurt yourself. After cleaning you up and making sure that there was not significant injury it is possible that your carer offered you something nice to eat – “to make you feel better”. And it did. And it worked the next time too. In my day, when you were good at the dentist he gave you a lollipop. So your system learnt that when you have faced a stressful situation, then you need to find something nice to eat. And it learnt that lesson well.
Imagine this same child had to do show and tell at school, and they messed it up. The other children laughed at them. They felt awful, and their system, in an effort to keep them safe, and not face that dangerous situation again, sets off the smoke detector if there is a remote chance that they will be in the same situation again. No more standing up in front of a group of people and taking.
This same child is now in high school and wanting to do well. They make a decision that they need good grades so they can get into their chosen University. Everyone they tell says “that is great, I think you can do it, but you will have to work hard, you know.” So they work hard, get good grades and get into the course they want. What have they just learnt – that working hard gets them what they want. They would have been praised by teachers and parents, and many others. They were rewarded. And now have a belief system that says if you want something you have to work hard to get it.
And so the experiences of our early life set us up for our current behaviors.
We lose some weight and look good when we exercise – so need to do more exercise. It feels good, calms down the stress response and get praised too.
We have a hard week at work, life feels a bit crappy, let’s go out and spend some money and feel better. We even have a phrase for it – “retail therapy”.
Or maybe your choice of destressing is to have a drink or two or three. Or maybe you choose to sleep all weekend, or party all weekend, or talk on the phone for hours, or take drugs, or maybe you would prefer to have a yelling match with your partner and that destresses your system.
None of these behavior’s is taking you towards your goals. None of them are helping you have the life of your dreams. The business that has fantastic work/life balance, with fun and time freedom. The healthy body that has the energy, and fitness that you want. The bank balance that has great savings, and investments that yield passive income. The loving relationship where you both feel supported and cared about.
Tapping can rewire the brain and take away the associations that have been set up in child hood. And it can calm down the smoke detector so that the stress response is not triggered and now we can choose the behaviours that we want.