🐝What happens when a giant bee flies in your face?

The big picture from the Symmetry newsletter - LV’s Midweek Memo:

Fight or flight! The dial turns up on the Sympathetic Nervous System. 

(And yes, this did happen to me on the morning that I’m writing this, which is what made me think of it. 🐝)

So What?

Understand your stress response: if you can learn to understand how your body responds to stress, you can learn to not let it run your life.

Don’t let the good stress become chronic stress: We need stress to grow, but too much of it left unmanaged can cause major issues in different areas of your life - from health to relationships to job or athletic performance.

When we are in a stressed state, we tend to over breathe: This can lead to weight gain, a less effective immune system, higher heart rate, higher blood pressure, and ultimately can lead to diseases like heart disease and diabetes.

Keep reading to dig deeper! (A ~1 ½ minute read.)

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You probably just experienced your Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) ramping up! Your body is getting you ready to run from the bee! 🏃‍♂️

The SNS is one of two branches of the Autonomic Nervous System (the other branch is the Parasympathetic Nervous System - PNS - more on that another time). The Nervous System acts as a threat detection device and plays a key role in our stress response.

What happens when the dial turns up on the SNS?

From Symmetry worksheets. Reach out to learn more about learning from us!

As you may have noticed, these things are great if you’re running from a lion (or a bee, in our instance). But in today’s world the SNS kicks on with things like:

• an unwelcome email from a boss/colleague/customer

• someone cutting you off in traffic

• trolling comments on social media

• an upcoming test/evaluation/presentation/meeting

• you get the idea… your life is not actually under threat in these instances

But here’s the thing:

• Stress isn’t good or bad - it just is: it’s our response to it that dictates whether or not it causes issues (mentally, physically, emotionally) in the long term or not.

• We need stress to grow/evolve/get better/stronger/faster/smarter/etc.

• Too little stress is just as bad as too much stress.

Think about hard workouts. As long as you give yourself ample recovery time for muscles to rebuild, you’ll get stronger, right? But if all you do is lift heavy weights day in and day out without getting enough sleep/rest, hydration and nutrition, you will likely end up with injury - the opposite of what you set out to do.

The little choices you make throughout the day will determine, in part, if you’re staying in a more stressed state or if you’re giving yourself time for the Nervous System to recover from a spike in Sympathetic arousal.

As we say at Symmetry, stress + rest = growth. If you need help finding balance between the two, reach out to see how we can help.

Try this Nervous System Reset practice.