The events that occur each day in our lives, whether they simply show up or they are events that we have created, are for most of us automatic external triggers that work as little currents in the river’s flow of our day. They may push us to be excited and happy or they may push us to feel anxiety, sadness or even anger. Excitement and anger in particular have a tendency to release the feel good hormone or adrenaline part of the chemical reaction of the fight or flight stress response.
Today, I invite you to consider that we release little bits of adrenaline throughout our day that we are mostly unaware of. We might release it because we received good news, or we received bad news, or we became angry or perhaps we were startled simply because the alarm went off. These little boosts of adrenaline propel us throughout our day and can do real damage over time.
It can take up to 4 hours for blood vessels to re-dilate after the stress response has been activated. This is compounded when we jump from adrenaline reaction to adrenaline reaction without any timeout to breathe deeply. When we breathe slowly and deeply we are inviting the parasympathetic nervous system in to balance our adrenaline reaction and minimize physiological damage. Over time we can begin to see signs of burnout and severe sadness as we “use up” our adrenaline response.
To optimize mental health consider observing what triggers, for you, the adrenaline reaction known for faster speech, faster shallow breathing and a desire for movement and under normal circumstances (no tiger in sight) learn to invite your balancing parasympathetic system in immediately upon observing your adrenaline response.
Also note that the Adrenaline response can become very addictive. I call it the “First Addiction” because it is the first “feel good – do more” type of chemical in our bodies that we begin to want more of.
Patricia Irwin 