One of the most important things to understand about stress and survival responses is that fear rarely looks like fear. Once you can make your peace with that, everything else starts to make a lot more sense.
I’m going to do my best to distill a very complex web of variables into an easily digestible format here to try to help you navigate some of what you’re going to see from both yourself and other people over the next while.
For me, all of this information is organized in a kind of complex thought-map flow chart that would NOT make any sense if I tried to draw it for everyone. So, please bear with me and feel free to ask questions about any of this to help clarify when it gets a bit clunky. Also, recognize that this will be a series of posts because otherwise it’s going to be a huge novel and no one wants to have to sit and read that.
Ready? Let’s begin.
First, the behavioural response you’re going to see from any given individual to any given stressor depends on a few things: a) their underlying brain architecture type, b) their underlying nervous system type, and c) the nervous system response to d) the stressor itself.
Brain Architecture Types
Brain architecture types are incredibly complex and I could write a whole book just on those, but that’s totally outside the scope of what I’m trying to accomplish with this blog series, so I’ll just say that there are 6 main ‘normal’ architecture types and a whole bunch of fun, other side categories. You don’t need to know any of that, but if you’re interested you can do some deep dives on it and I’m happy to provide some good information around it. The important take away is to recognize that not all brains process information the same way.
The best way I can help make this make sense is to think about the things that people focus on from a values and activities perspective - someone who is artistic and musical has a different brain structure than someone who is analytical and methodical is different from someone who places significant value on protecting others, etc etc. The ways that our brains process information and then organize that information into ‘what we should focus on’ is the underlying basis for the base personality types that we see in the people around us. Some people love math and science and don’t care much for emotions. Some LOVE emotional experiences and would rather Feel something rather than dissect it analytically. This is generally why we have so many different political parties - the different brain types all look for people who generally match the underlying value system that our brain structures dictate. This is why conservative values people cluster together, and liberal values people cluster together, etc etc. Political parties, successful ones, try to have as broad a value system as to appeal to the most brain types possible without becoming so broad as to alienate their base brain types. That’s neither here nor there, but it’s also a fascinating area of research.
A main takeaway point for this post is that it is incredibly important that you recognize that underlying brain structure is unchangeable. You are not going to get one brain type to change to another brain type, no matter how much you try to argue with or convince them. They literally can’t do it. The sooner you accept that about people, the easier it all becomes. Nervous system type you can absolutely change over time based on the experiences that that brain type encounters, but you will NOT change the way someone’s brain structurally functions.
A handy way to think of it is the piano versus the piano player. The type of piano a person has to work with is unchangeable - you’ve got a whole range of kinds of pianos from grand pianos to electronic to an app on a iPad. In this example, the piano you’ve been given is the only one you get. You can’t change that. This is different, however, from the person who is playing that piano. So, you can have the biggest, most complex, beautiful grand piano matched with someone who can only shakily play hot crossed buns, or a beat up electronic synthesizer that’s missing 3 keys matched with an orchestra level pianist and that person is still going to make the most beautiful music on that sucker. The piano player can get better or worse at playing the piano they have. THAT’S the only piece of this equation that can be modified - how that brain type is programmed. But if that piano is missing some keys, you’re not going to change that. You can’t make another person process information the way your brain processes information if it doesn’t already do that. You can program it to learn how to put more emphasis on the things you want it to, but it’s not going to happen YOUR way. You have to learn ITS way to do that and work with it to accomplish it.
Why this is important - during times of stress, we look for people whose brain types match ours. This can lead to tribalism and a lot of distrust and aggression towards ‘other’ brain types. People get all worked up and say things like, ‘I just don’t understand how so and so can believe/support x/y/z thing’. This leads to judgement and arguments where you try to ‘logic’ this person into matching YOUR brain type, which, again, is impossible. When you really stop for a second and look at it, most arguments between people really come down to both sides trying to convince the other to match their brain type. Learning how to see things from the other brain type’s perspective rather than trying to convince them to match your own is how you can mitigate and avoid most of that and actually get the thing you want accomplished. But! To do that, you have to learn how to let go of a very particular nervous system response in yourself first.
What I mean by that - recognize that when we’re happy and calm and not in a stress response, we easily accept and acknowledge other people’s differences. As soon as we start feeling like ‘I don’t understand how so and so could be…’ it’s important to realize that this is YOU in a stress response. The second we’re in a stress response, our behaviour changes from ease and flow and acceptance into trying to control either ourselves or our environment and the people within it. It’s a key hallmark of the line between our normal state and our stress response state. What we choose to try to control during our stress response depends on our underlying brain architecture (people like me are fine, people not like me are threats), our nervous system type (internal versus external locus of control) and the type and severity of the stressor itself (stress response versus survival response, direct threat versus indirect threat, known threat versus novel threat). So, during times of stress, we either try to make the other person match our brain type, or make ourselves match theirs, or avoid the whole thing altogether - all of these are types of nervous system response (fight, fawn, flight) applied to interpersonal relationships, none of which are helpful for working through an interpersonal conflict because you just end up arguing about and trying to justify your own brain type and who should match who rather than find a solution to the issue at hand.
With me so far? See what I mean about complex thought-map flow chart? It gets easier though, I promise. Stay with me, this next part helps this make more sense.
Nervous System Types
Again, super complex area of study with all kinds of facets you can get into if you’re interested, but the key points I’m going to focus on for this blog series are about who and what you try to control when your stress response kicks in. There are two main types - internal locus of control and external locus of control. The fun thing about this is that it’s not a base type. It’s changeable. You may be an internal locus of control type in your rest response and an external locus in your stress response and then may switch back to internal during a survival response, or any combination thereof. You may be an internal type for some types of threats (direct versus indirect) and an external for others (known versus unknown).
The key points to think about when trying to decide which type you are have to do with who and what you try to control both when you’re calm and relaxed, when you’re stressed, and when you’re in a survival response (I go over these in the next section, so hold tight).
An internal locus of control person believes that you can’t control the circumstances, you can control how you respond to the circumstances. They don’t like to believe in fate, but rather that it’s choices and decisions that lead to a particular outcome. In a normal, calm state, they are likely to believe in personal choices and behaviours. There are both good and bad forms of this. They take a lot of personal responsibility for things totally outside of their control. Again, this can be totally normal and healthy. For example, they believe that a lot of health conditions can be managed through proper diet and exercise. Sounds perfectly reasonable, right? But wait until we throw some stress into this situation.
First, external locus of control people tend to find comfort in the idea that it’s fate or luck that determines outcome. They tend to control their internal state by controlling their external state - preferring stimulating or calming environments to cause an internal state of joy or relaxation, for instance, rather than producing an internal state of joy or calm regardless of the external environment. As with internal locus of control folks, there are good and bad versions of this.
So, let’s go back to our ‘health is managed through personal choices in diet and exercise’ person. This person can actually be either an internal or an external locus of control nervous system type depending on what is motivating this belief.
An internal locus of control person believes that it’s the personal control and will power over themselves that causes either a healthy or unhealthy outcome. An external locus of control person believes that it’s external forces of genetics, response to life stresses, the food industry using preservatives, etc, that are responsible for an individual’s personal choices that result in a healthy or unhealthy outcome.
With me so far?
Both are correct. Or rather, neither is incorrect. In a relaxed state, either of those people can exist quite comfortably. But let’s add some stress to this situation.
An internal locus of control person who believes that health is managed through personal choices in diet and exercise goes one of two ways - both ways focus on increasing a dopamine response by controlling their diet and exercise. One will either become more focused on healthy interventions, and one will become more focused on unhealthy interventions - whichever gives them the most reward. Meaning, one will begin to restrict their food to ONLY the healthiest options, the other will begin to indulge in unhealthy options. Add more stress to the point of a survival response and this may result in extreme dietary restriction, like anorexia, or over-exercising. Or it may result in binge eating and becoming overweight or obese. Both are examples of internal locus of control responses.
Make sense so far?
An external locus of control person, under stress, begins to judge OTHER people’s dietary and exercise habits, not theirs. They begin to mock, bully or harass people, either online or in person. The good version of this is trying to make ‘helpful suggestions’ to friends and family. That person who responds to stress by home cooking healthy meals for their family, for instance. LOTS of ‘wellness influencers’ are actually just external locus of control types who are managing their life stress by telling everyone else how they should live, for instance. Add even more stress to that individual, and they become the protestors of the food industry - ‘this totally benign substance MUST be removed from EVERYONE’S lives because I read online that it might harm a small subset of individuals even though it’s health protective for the majority of people and you MUST ALL agree with me or you’re the enemy!’.
You can’t get either an internal or external locus off whatever they’ve chosen to hyper fixate on while in their stress response, especially if that stress response has increased to a survival response. You’ll just further entrench that response because you are accidentally telling them that your brain types don’t match, thereby making you THE threat to their safety. You need to get them back to a normal, calm, relaxed state to turn it off and then redirect them to whatever the ACTUAL things causing their stress are and help them to navigate those things. But that can only work as long as you, too, aren’t accidentally in your own stress response and trying to control theirs as a means of controlling yours.
Why is this important? Having an understanding of your own responses and where you are in the spectrum of response helps you to not accidentally cause a bunch of self-destructive harm to yourself that you’re just going to shame-spiral over later. It also helps you to avoid accidentally over-stepping into controlling behaviours and ruining a friendship. Two external locus of control people with opposing brain types are going to CLASH HARD if they’re both stressed. It’s the cause of many disagreements. It’s also how other people manipulate us into creating a bunch of well-meaning society destabilizing chaos. Get people riled up enough with divisive slogans and social media campaigns and then give them a target and watch the chaos erupt.
The nice part is that nervous system responses are completely and totally changeable. You can choose to replace a destructive response with a more manageable and better adapted response - think, changing from picketing a local farm because they grain feed their cows instead of following some very expensive and complicated feeding procedure that you read about on the internet as being ‘the only way cows MUST be raised so that beef is healthy for all’ because you’re dealing with some health issues thereby causing your own health issues to worsen instead of being able to identify that you’re in a survival response and the actions and behaviours you're taking are actually more harmful to your health rather than helpful because anger and righteous rage FEELS better than sitting in your feelings of sorrow and helplessness at home taking care of yourself properly. Learning to recognize that urge to control someone else’s choices as a nervous system activation and instead going and doing calming activities like going for a walk in nature instead is where you have the most control over your health. In other words - are your stress responses actually lined up with the goals and values you espouse? Do you believe in personal choice but you’re calling for book bans and restrictions on others’ personal freedoms? You’re in an external locus of control survival response. You’re gonna feel really weird about it when you come out of it, I promise you. Do you say you want more motivation and energy to get things accomplished but you’re surviving on coffee and cigarettes and can’t get off the sofa? You’re an internal locus of control person in a survival response. You’re gonna wind up hospitalized for anorexia or a mental breakdown.
Starting to make sense?
Nervous System Responses - Severity of Stressor
How to tell whether or not you’re in a relaxed state, a stress response, or a survival response can be a bit tricky for people at first, but your general feelings and behaviours are the keys for figuring it out.
Do you feel calm, relaxed, happy, and generally looking forward to fun activities with friends and loved ones? Great news! You’re in a relaxed state.
Do you feel agitated, frustrated, annoyed, judgey, confused, unhappy, low motivation, struggling with procrastination? Or! Are you feeling excited, nervous, hopeful, productive, focused? You’re in your stress response. Stress responses can be either good or bad feelings - what we term eustress, or the ‘good stress’, versus destress, the thing is that both are forms of activation of your stress response - it’s the degree of intensity of them that tells you whether or not it’s a stress response. This is why a lot of people confuse a productive, energized state as their ‘rest and relax’ response. Whether or not you have a positive or negative emotional experience of your stress response becoming engaged has to do with the degree of control you feel you have over your preferred locus. Have a giant to-do list but you’re an internal locus of control person? Great! You’re going to get a dopamine hit from crossing things off your list. That normally helps you manage your levels of stress. You’re going to feel incredibly productive and proud of yourself for accomplishing your tasks. Which is all fine and great as long as your stressors remain only as severe as normal stress response level, or you remain healthy enough to use your preferred method of dealing with them. What happens if they or you don’t?
When your ability to manage your stress response in your preferred locus is exceeded, or the stressor is novel or severe - you’re going to be shunted to your survival response.
Survival responses are like stress responses but on steroids. Instead of agitation and frustration you feel anger and rage. Instead of low motivation and procrastination, you feel overwhelmed, lethargic, and shut down. Instead of excitement or nervous, you feel anxious or panic. Instead of productive and in control, you are DRIVEN to accomplish and can’t slow down even when injured or exhausted. Again - survival mode is your stress response on steroids.
Unfortunately, most people have been cycling between survival and stress responses for so long they have absolutely no idea what their relax response even feels like. They often mistake the exhaustion portion of their stress response for their relax response. If you just want to stay home and rest, that’s you in the exhaustion phase of a stress response. If you feel calm, happy, capable of and looking forward to fun activities - that’s you in a genuine relaxation response.
This is incredibly important to know because the things that you do to manage any of these states do not work for the others. Meaning, trying to manage a survival response with the things you normally do for a stress response will only make it worse. Going for a walk, eating healthy, spending time with friends - good luck with that. None of that will work. Those are all stress response management things.
Survival responses ONLY respond to one thing - SAFETY. The end. You gotta do what makes you feel absolutely SAFE. Only way to turn off a survival response.
Once you manage that, then you have to do the things that get you out of a stress response and back into a relaxation response - the things that you do when you feel happy and relaxed and safe.
Here’s the trick to stress responses though - the things that get you out of a stress response are the first things that fly out the window in a stress response. As soon as your stress response kicks in, all of those things that you do when you’re feeling good and happy and relaxed are the LAST things you want to do. Unfortunately, they’re also the only things that will drag you out of a stress response.
This is where people often get stuck. They’re great at doing the safety things to turn off a survival response, but then forget to do the stress management things that drag them all the way fully back into their relaxation response, so they wind up just cycling through survival and exhaustion.
Relaxation responses are all about creativity, flow, stability, balance, nature, friends, reading, puzzles, etc. They’re all the things you WISH you had time to do. But, again, here’s the thing - make time for them. You have to force your brain into a relaxed state. It won’t go there willingly.
Here’s why - your brain’s job is to keep you safe, not happy. Know what’s safe? Familiar patterns it knows what to do with. That’s why ANY novel stressor that your brain doesn’t yet know how to handle will immediately have you trying to control either internal or external factors that it DOES know what to do with. The more afraid of that new stressor you are, the more your brain is going to fight you in even acknowledging that it’s the real problem. If you go all the way fully back into a relaxation response, you’re going to have to face the actual stressor. So, instead, your brain wants to keep you safe by cycling through ‘freaking out about known, easy to solve problems’ and ‘recovery from the stress of that’ because that’s easier than having to deal with the things you don’t know how to solve yet.
This is why you can’t logic a stress or survival response. The thing that person is sooooooo convinced is the actual problem isn’t. But being able to acknowledge that IS the issue we need to address. Because the thing that scares the absolute crap out of our brains the MOST are stressors we’ve seen only a few times and don’t know how to handle yet. Our brains will fight tooth and nail to have us repeat familiar patterns; they will lie to us like dogs and convince us that this other thing is the real problem, they will manipulate everyone around us into not questioning it, etc etc.
You can’t logic it. Logic is the absolute enemy of a stress response. If you try, it will attack you because you’re, again, accidentally telling it that you have a different brain type and are therefore now the enemy.
Only safety will do. When a person feels safe enough, and THEN happy and capable enough, that new thing becomes less scary and the brain will chill enough to hear how to handle it. But you have to approach it based on brain type - what THAT brain values, not what YOUR brain values. That’s the key. To learn that, you’ve got to get real curious about how this person in front of you perceives and processes the world, not try to convince them that they should do it YOUR way. They’ll shut you right out.
Types of Stressors
This brings us to indirect versus direct and known versus novel stressors, and then I’m going to bring it all home for you and show you how to put all of these pieces together, I swear. Stick with me just a bit longer.
So, the type of stressor you’re dealing with also changes how you’re most likely to respond not just to it but also to the people and things around you.
Direct stressors - think, like, your boss at work, your spouse, the guy who just cut you off in traffic - that’s something that you can attack directly. Your brain can conceptualize the threat easily. Versus indirect stressors - financial worry, a pandemic, vague body symptoms you can’t make sense of - you can’t attack these with aggression and defeat it with your bare hands. Your brain has to strategize and plan and try to solve a very complex problem without all of the information or skillsets to be able to handle these stressors.
Known versus new or novel stressors - pretty self explanatory. Is this a stress you have previously encountered and learned to solve correctly, versus something you’ve encountered but are still learning to solve correctly, versus something you’ve never encountered before? Interestingly, the brain responds to things you’ve encountered before but haven’t learned how to solve correctly yet with the biggest stress response, followed by new stressors that are clearly a threat, followed by new things that may or may not be a threat yet, followed by known threats you know how to handle.
Here’s the thing about these that’s the important take away - your brain HATES indirect stressors, especially ones it has encountered before but hasn’t learned how to solve correctly yet. The brain likes known stressors that it can directly deal with and conquer. Anything that isn’t that, it will trick you into believing that whatever is actually the problem isn’t and is instead this thing you have control over - something you know how to solve - regardless of whether that’s something internal like food choices or external like the people around you. Think of it like, these economic tariffs yeah? You’ve maybe been in a tight financial spot before but after a few months of stress and worry and cutting back, it solved itself, or maybe you’ve seen your parents worried about money, maybe you’ve never had a problem with money before and this is your first time having to deal with it. If you’ve previously learned financial management skills, your brain will be more likely to want to tackle the issue directly. But, more often, we revert to pre-programmed behaviours we’ve seen other people (most often our parents) do when faced with similar issues. Maybe you’ve seen mom and dad argue about money when you were a kid, and so suddenly you’re arguing with your spouse about money right now instead of meeting with a financial planner and getting the information you need to help you navigate this without worry. Maybe you have no previous experience with it and so your brain is super focused on the knee pain you’ve had off and on for years but now it’s keeping you up at night and you can’t focus on anything else, because your brain DOES know what to do with knee pain. Only, unfortunately, the knee pain won’t be solved until you can address your financial worries. And your brain won’t allow you to even think about your financial worries. Every time you try, it’ll distract you with your knee pain.
See how that works?
This is an important thing to understand. Whenever you feel the need to hyper focus on something else, be it someone else’s behaviour, or the amount of exercise you're doing, or that yard work you haven’t done in 3 years but is now super important to get all done today, or that physical pain you’ve had off and on for years that is now driving you up the wall - you’re in your stress response about something ELSE and your brain is just picking something it knows how to handle to direct attention to rather than the thing actually stressing you out that you don’t know how to handle. This is a vicious circle, however, because by directing all of your attention to this thing you CAN control rather than figuring out how to handle the thing actually stressing you out, that other thing just festers and doesn’t get handled and you get more and more worked up about the thing you have control over until it gets out of hand and you’re yelling at your spouse or family members, or you’re in the ER for that pain they’ve already checked a dozen times, or you’re sneaking fast food and candy bars in your car or haven’t eaten in three days.
Learning how to recognize WHEN you’re doing that and then re-directing yourself to figuring out the thing actually stressing you out is honestly the only fix for that. You know that thing that you haven’t done for 5 months that would take 20 minutes to do but you keep putting off and instead come up with a laundry list of other things that are suddenly more important to do so you couldn’t possibly do that one thing that completing would actually turn off this response so you can have your life and brain back? We often term this ‘procrastination’, but it’s actually just this stress response cycle process. There’s a skill set here though that I’m going to get into in the next post to help you out when you notice yourself doing this.
The other thing to be aware of is you don’t want to become the thing someone else who’s in that state decides to unleash all their pent up stress on, so it’s also important to learn how to recognize when other people are in that state and not poke the bear but instead help guide them out of it. Because people also love to turn indirect threats - financial worry, etc - INTO direct threats they known how to solve by directing all that stress at a ‘safe target’. They’ll blow up at customer service people, parents, co-workers, friends, strangers on the internet, anyone they feel they CAN defeat. You don’t want to accidentally be someone’s safe target. Especially if you’re in your stress response as well, because now that person you just tried to help is a direct target that you can use to directly attack over all the indirect stress in your own life you don’t know how to solve… That’s what leads to friendship and relationship ending blow-ups.
Want to prevent that from happening? Great. In my next post I’ll give you some strategies for how to recognize when you’re in your stress response, and how to make sure you’re addressing the actual cause of it so that you don’t blow up at the people in your life. Depending on how long that post winds up being, I’ll either then go over how to help someone else come out of their own stress response so you can actually help them, or do that in the post after that. I’m genuinely trying to keep these manageable reading lengths.
All clear as mud? It gets easier the more you play with it. I promise. The important take away is to try to recognize your patterns and trace them back to the real beginning. What started the cascade of your brain trying to grab control over something familiar to solve rather than trying to solve the original thing that got you started in your stress cascade? THAT’S the thing to put your focus and attention on. It’s the only thing that stops the spiral. But, for that, we need to learn strategies for managing the stress of dealing with it that aren’t destructive patterns.
Think of it like someone who’s lactose intolerant but the only way they know how to manage any stressor is by eating cheese. So, say something at work happens that they don’t have an easy, ready-made solution for. Our brains hate that. Rather than sit in that uncomfortableness and try to solve this new stress, this individual goes and grabs pizza on their way home for dinner. They then have the usual lactose intolerance symptoms, but instead of making the easy cause-effect connection, they panic about their symptoms. “Why is this happening? I don’t understand what’s causing this? Why do I feel so terrible?” Etc. Etc. They do, in fact, know exactly what’s causing it. That’s the point. Your brain knows exactly how to predict the outcome of lactose intolerance. It knows that it’s self-limiting. You’re going to sit on the toilet for a while. And then it will be over. It does NOT know how to predict the outcome of your work stress. So, it uses the very familiar and known lactose intolerance symptoms to express the underlying stress and panic of the work event. It gives you something known and familiar to hold on to as an outlet for expressing your underlying feelings about the thing you don’t know what to do with yet. This is all fine and good if it’s just an occasional work stress. But if the work event doesn’t magically solve itself and continues, this becomes a nasty cycle. This person winds up in my office genuinely terrified of their symptoms and totally not making the connection to their work stress.
You’d be amazed how often this happens. And how shocked the person is when they finally come back out of their panic and are bewildered by their own behaviour. When I say the brain is sneaky and lies, I mean it. You genuinely can’t see the connection while you’re IN IT. You have to be calmly brought out of that panic state to be able to see it and then I give you strategies and solutions for dealing with the actual thing causing the stress. It takes a bit of practice, but once you get the hang of it, you never have to use cheese (or yelling at your spouse/kids, or binge drinking, or whatever your preferred strategy is that has become problematic) as your coping mechanism again and you can happily handle whatever life throws at you.
Plus! Once you get the hang of it for yourself, it becomes so much easier to recognize it in others, and it becomes second nature to then, instead of coming at them with hostility and aggression and trying to control their emotional responses so that they don’t make you feel unsafe, you’ll be able to sit with them and talk with them calmly about whatever they want to rant about until they feel safe enough to confide in you about what’s actually underlying all of that bluster. Only then can you actually help them.
I’ll talk about that more in the post after the next one. Stick with me.
As always, if you have any question at all, you know where to find me!
’Til next time, Folks!