Your brain still thinks you live in a cave
like a wild man
Stress is a biological process. In our wild-man days it provided us with an evolutionary advantage and is ultimately geared towards survival. Life was a tad different back then – with predators lurking out of sight, it was often necessary to engage the ‘fight or flight’ response to flee from the slavering jaws of a hungry beast, perhaps even wrestling it to keep from becoming a delicious dinner.
In our modern world, you don’t need to worry about becoming dinner, but rather about earning enough to consistently provide dinner, or keeping the roof over your head. You have work stress, traffic stress, personal stress – an absolute abundance of stress to contend with. However your ancient primitive “monkey brain’, the amygdala, perceives your stress as a life-threatening situation, and still thinks the best way to deal with this stress is by initiating that fight or flight response. Its reaction to your very often mentally induced stress is to hit the emergency button and “mobilize the forces” to deal with the crisis. Read more…