Stress Response System: Wouldn’t It Be Nice To Be In Control of Your Stress Level?

Your Endocrine system is truly amazing. No, that isn’t a swear word.  This system is responsible for providing you with a veritable smorgasbord of stress response hormones to help you deal with everything life can throw at you. These hormones allow you to fully control your stress level at all times.  Have you ever met an ill-tempered woolly mammoth?  Of course, you haven’t because the Cro-Magnon period has been over for years and when it died, so did the human need to have a highly developed fight or flight response mechanism.  It’s been a very long time since life was all that threatening and we are not cave dwellers any longer.  Some would say we never were. Now, maybe you’ve been in a relationship with a cave dweller (who hasn’t?), but that’s not quite the same thing.  The need for constant reactiveness is a thing of the past.

The hormones, manufactured in your Endocrine system, are deserving of an Olympic medal at times, since they have likely saved your life more than once, even if you didn’t know it. Do you remember when you were cruising along, not paying particular attention, and you almost ended up in the ditch or flew off that bank?  Alternatively, perhaps there was a time when you weren’t completely attentive and nearly lost your footing when you were about to go down some stairs. Well, the hormones, known as Cortizol and Adrenaline, probably saved your life those times, just like all the other times, too.

Are you beginning to get it? Your intricately built stress response system is a big part of your survival, but lately we have been quite overbearing about the demands we place on it. Give the poor thing some breathing room. Rather than overusing it all the time, start making better decisions and use that noggin a little more and not just while driving. Stop abusing your hormones, so much.  The more unfriendly you are about the whole thing, the less effective the system will be.

Of course, I don’t think we are all dummies, but there are two popular book series on the market that think we are, not only, dummies, but, in fact, complete idiots, I'm just saying that perhaps we’ve lost a little of our motivation to be creative with our problem solving. Stop letting life push you around so much and then you won’t need to be reactive and rely on your hormones so much. When we let life push, it will always push hard but when we push back, just a little, the laws of physics mobilize and then we don’t need our stress response quite so much.

Do you remember your high school physics? Remember inertia and mass and when the immovable force met the irresistible object. Of course, we’re all aware there’s no such thing as an immovable force or an irresistible object, but the point is, when we push on something, it will move, as opposed to our being on the receiving end of the push. This is applicable to most everything in life - family, kids, careers, and everything else. So, push back a little or even a lot and take back control.  That way, your hormones can earn a well-deserved break and get a little rest.  It’s just like the commercial used to say, "You deserve a break today," and so do your hormones.