Tag Archives: chronic stress

The Relaxed State

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Sorry, I was such a downer in my last post! I hope that I did not scare you! It is not all about fear and stress and sharks. Another state we can enter is called the relaxed state, where our heart rate and muscle tone are normal and we are creative and hopeful. This is the state where we would like to spend most of our time, but it is not always practical. As I said in my last post, we need those stress states so we can get away from the neighbor’s dog or get that document filed.

Polyvagal Theory

Polyvagal theory describes our autonomic nervous system and how it regulates our health and behavior. Below is a chart that explains the different nervous system states and some of the hybrid states that we need on occasion:

Isn’t it nice to know that we are not always in a fear/stress state? Whew! This theory uses gentler words than the ones I used in my last post. It also explains that our emotions in these states will be different depending on whether we feel safe. In the mobilized state, for example, if we feel safe, we will feel energetic and motivated. If we are feeling unsafe, we experience the “fight or flight” response and can be anxious and stressed. So we can be mobilized at work if we feel safe, without feeling anxious and fearful. Nice!

In the immobilized state, as you can see, if we feel safe, we can feel blissful and dreamy. If we are feeling unsafe, like in the freeze response, we may feel depressed or hopeless.

The fawn response is noticeably missing from this diagram. The Polyvagal Institute explains that it is still being researched and developed and therefore did not make the chart. If you would like more information about the polyvagal theory, please check it out here: https://www.polyvagalinstitute.org/whatispolyvagaltheory

Another Perspective

Dr. Dan Siegal, a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, came up with the concept of the Window of Tolerance. In this window, you can learn new things, work at your best, and relate well with others. You might occasionally go out of this tolerance in emergency situations, but you are highly regulated and can bring yourself back into that window where you function at your best.

As mentioned earlier, some of these symptoms of dysregulation can be helpful to get emergencies done or thrive in your career. As you can see from the photo, it is natural and effective to sometimes be in these arousal states. However, hanging out in these aroused states on either side is not good for your mental or physical health. Here is a great article about the window of tolerance: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/making-the-whole-beautiful/202205/what-is-the-window-of-tolerance-and-why-is-it-so-important

Good News

I don’t know about you, but it feels good to me that we do not have to live/work in a constant state of fear and stress to get the work done. You can see the similarities of these two theories: one says that we can get things done in the relaxed state, and the other says that we can get our best work done in the Window of Tolerance. They both say that we need these other states to survive, but we should not spend too much time there as it is not good for our mental or physical health.

So how do we get to these optimum states?

AWARENESS AND PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE

Here are some ways you can apply Polyvagal Theory to your life and live in the relaxed state more often:

  • Recognize your physiological reaction to stress. Is your heart pounding? Do you sweat? Do you go into freeze mode and cannot speak?
  • Practice self-regulation. When you are feeling stressed, find ways to help you regulate. Not to self-promote, but I did a post on deep breathing. This is one of the ways you can self-regulate when you are feeling stress.
  • Build social connections. People help us reduce stress? Don’t they cause us stress? Positive social connections can help soothe our nervous system. Call a friend or loved one when you are feeling stressed to help you calm down.
  • Identify triggers. Pay attention to who or what causes you to have a stress reaction. With this awareness, you can prepare for future interactions that might help you reduce the stress response.
  • Seek professional support. If you are feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or burned out most of the time, it would help you to find someone to talk to, either a coach or therapist, who can help you identify your triggers and physiological reactions to stress and how to manage them.

Next time I will talk about awareness. I believe it is the key to making positive changes in your life.

Deep Dive into the Four Stress Responses

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I thought it might be “fun” to look at the four different fear/stress responses and discover where we might find them in a law firm or other demanding work environment. Doesn’t that sound fun? As a recap from the last post, here are the steps from fear to chronic stress:

  • Step 1: The initial threat triggers a fear response.
  • Step 2: The brain prepares the body by releasing stress hormones.
  • Step 3: If the stress or fear is continuous, the response can become chronic.
  • Step 4: In this state, fear and stress are interchangeable.

The four different fear/stress responses to a threat are:

Fight: Standing up to something that might harm you.

Flight: Running away from something that might harm you.

Freeze: Standing still when something might harm you.

Fawn: Comply with someone who might harm you in an attempt to reduce the threat.

So let’s say the Diver Person in the picture sees a huge Great White shark with big teeth in front of them. Their brain will say “Yikes” and start releasing stress hormones to get them ready.

The diver just saw Shark Week and they are feeling bold. So they decide to Fight the shark by hitting it in the gills as they learned in one of the episodes. Perhaps they did not see Shark Week and decided they better run. So they initiate the Flight response and hide behind one of the rocks or if they panic, swim to the surface as fast as they can and get the bends. Let’s say they watched Shark Week and are absolutely terrified when they see the shark and do not know what to do. Their brain tells them they might as well just give up, so they go into Freeze mode and swim in place, waiting for the shark to come and eat them. (Interestingly, in this response, the brain releases pain-numbing endorphins so it doesn’t hurt as much to be eaten.) Perhaps in one of the Shark Week episodes, they show how to communicate with sharks, so the diver compliments the shark using the Fawn response to reduce the threat. (Disclaimer: I made up the part about communicating with sharks. Do not try this at home.)

But seriously, the Fawn response is a new addition to the fear response list and is found when humans are either abducted or in chronically abusive environments. I am hopefully not offending anyone by making a joke about it. If you need more information, please go here: https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-does-fight-flight-freeze-fawn-mean#1-3 If you need help, please call 911 or the National Domestic Violence Hotline (USA) at 1 800 799-7233.

Stress Response in Demanding Workplaces

Fight

The Fight response is found quite a bit in the legal field as you have seen on tv. (Some of the lawyer stuff on tv is true, but not much.) In some types of law, like litigation, fighting is the core. Someone does not like what someone else has done to them and so they sue, using a lawyer. The lawyers do not engage in hand-to-hand combat (that would be pretty cool), but they are in a battle of words, and the lawyer who knows the law best wins. They may be fighting in court as they tell the judge and jury why their client should be the victor.

Two lawyers in court.

Law firms are also very competitive places to work. Not only are lawyers fighting with lawyers outside of their law firm to defend the virtue of their clients, but they are also fighting each other. They are fighting other associates for partnership, trying to get a raise, or striving to make the billable hour requirement. Law firms have a hierarchical leadership structure and the bottom wrung have to fight their way up the ladder.

Flight

The work itself is a constant never-ending battle. There are multiple deadlines from the court, clients, and your boss. If you work in a larger office, the work never stops, even if you finish your work, you need to help your neighbor finish theirs. You are always running from one deadline to the next.

I know that I am stretching the Flight response a bit here. Technically, in the Flight response, if you encounter a threat, you would run away from it. You would not get much work done this way if you ran away from every task that threatened you. Running away from your boss if they gave you a tough assignment would not be good for job security.

Chronic stress occurs when you are constantly bombarded with events that your brain and body say you should run away from, but you don’t. After being overly exposed to stress, you might decide to run by quitting your job.

Hyperarousal

If you consistently expose your brain and body to a fight-or-flight response, you might be living in a hyperarousal state. You are on constant alert, easily startled, and might become irritable with angry outbursts. Living in this state for a long time is not good for your health and can lead to health issues such as exhaustion, headaches, high blood pressure, digestive problems, chest pain, muscle tension, aches and pains, and a weakened immune system. I will talk more about this in a later post, but wanted to introduce the concept here.

Freeze

We have all been there. Your boss asks you for that assignment that you forgot to do or did not have time to do, or your partner asks why you forgot the milk. You just remembered something due yesterday. You freeze. You do not know what to say or do. Your brain is telling you that you cannot fight or run.

The freeze response in law firms might occur if you are constantly exposed to deadlines and work and you are becoming overwhelmed. You might start feeling numb or empty, depressed, cannot think clearly, fatigued, and detached from yourself and your environment.

Hypoarousal

This state of shutting down is called hypoarousal. Instead of being in a hyper-response state, we are in a low-reaction state. It has its own set of health issues with chronic occurrence, which might include digestive issues, sleep disturbances, and substance abuse. Again, I will talk about this in more detail in a later post.

Fawn

As I mentioned earlier, the Fawn response is a newer addition to the list of fear/stress responses. It is a reaction of child abuse or neglect victims as a survival mechanism to minimize harm by becoming highly agreeable with the aggressor. Signs of this type of response are overdependence on the opinions of others, having little to no boundaries with other people, and being easily controlled and manipulated.

Where do I see this response in law firms? Well…..let’s just say that some people who work in law firms are not very nice. They are probably living in a chronic stress state themselves and taking it out on those around them. The subordinates who have to work for these people might engage in a Fawn response with them. They are overly pleasant to these people who are being mean to them and do not have boundaries so they might work 60-70 hours a week.

That’s just corporate America you say! We need to Fawn to get ahead in this world! Do we though?

Let’s get positive

Sorry to scare you with all of these fear responses. I do not mean to be negative. I just wanted to give you an idea of the different responses we have to threats in our environment and help you understand chronic stress and its effects. While lions and tigers and bears may no longer be a threat, we have new threats in our world, most of them in our work environments.

There is a solution. There is a middle ground. A place where we are at our best. It is the optimal zone where you can deal with the daily stresses of life. Stay tuned!

Do you want to share some stories of where the fear responses show up for you at work?

What is stress?

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Stress is such an overused word these days, so I thought it might be a good idea to explore what it means (especially since it is in the title of my blog).

Here are some definitions I found:

The Cleveland Clinic defines it as “the natural reaction your body has when changes or challenges occur.”

The World Health Organization defines stress as: “a state of worry or mental tension caused by a difficult situation.”

And my favorite from Merriam-Webster:

“a state resulting from a stress.” (No help Merriam!)

Ignoring the third definition, the first two discuss two aspects of stress. The first is a bodily reaction to a perceived threat and the other talks about a “state” implying that stress is more of an ongoing issue. It is both.

The Cycle of Fear and Stress

You have probably heard of the fight-or-flight response. These are natural human reactions to threats in our environment that might put us in danger. Back in the day when humans were trying to stay alive in the wilderness, these responses would help us stay alive by either fighting creatures who were trying to eat us or running from them. We might also be fighting or running from other humans. (There is also the freeze response, not very helpful unless you are an opossum.) The fear response was needed to survive. Our brain releases stress hormones when we perceive a threat that increases our heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration, to help us get ready to go.

In our modern world, most people do not have the same threats. While humans can still be a threat, we have created new threats in our world: work deadlines, tests, scary movies, roller coasters, bosses. Our body has the same chemical reaction to these new threats as it did with the old ones. In the old world, once the threat had been vanquished, our bodies would go back to their natural state. Our new threats can be continuous (in highly demanding work environments for example), and our bodies are in a continuous state of fear/stress, which leads to chronic stress.

According to the Cleveland Clinic, chronic stress can lead to serious health issues such as exhaustion, headaches, high blood pressure, digestive problems, chest pain, muscle tension, aches and pains, and a weakened immune system. Mental and emotional symptoms of chronic stress are anxiety or irritability, depression, panic attacks, and sadness.

Here are the steps from fear to chronic stress:

  • Step 1: The initial threat triggers a fear response.
  • Step 2: The brain prepares the body by releasing stress hormones.
  • Step 3: If the stress or fear is continuous, the response can become chronic.
  • Step 4: In this state, fear and stress are interchangeable.

A story of fear and stress in a law firm

As I mentioned in my first post, I have worked in law firms for more than 30 years and have experienced the continuous demands and stress of that work culture. Here is an example story of a stressful event, that happened quite often. I also thought it would be fun to share what different stressors we had back then., before e-filing. This happened about 20 years ago in a large law firm in Portland, Oregon.

It was a Friday and a motion for summary judgment was due. For those of you who do not work in law firms, it is a document filed with the court that can sometimes get your client entirely dismissed from the case. There are usually multiple documents filed with the motion itself, such as declarations, exhibits, etc., all in an attempt to get a judge to agree to dismiss the case before it goes to trial. The deadline for filing this type of document was set in stone. If we missed the deadline, we could not file the document. This could mean a malpractice claim against the attorneys if they had a way to get a client out of the case and they did not do it.

Back in those days, e-filing did not exist. We had to provide a copy to all parties (or their attorneys) by mail or in this case, hand-delivery. No e-mail service was allowed, so you had to make sure all pages of this huge document (and its accompanying documents) were copied for everyone. That was part of the deadline. Luckily the courthouse was not too far away because we had to hand-deliver the document to the court as well. We also had to fill out these postcards for each document for the court to mail back to us as proof of filing.

Three attorneys (and their assistants) were working on the same document at the same time. Sometimes they would make changes to the same paragraph and it was hard to know whose changes to use. The senior partner made the final changes. Earlier in the day, the senior partner asked when we had to get the latest version so we had time to make copies for everyone and get it delivered on time. Knowing his habit of doing everything until the final minute, we gave him a final deadline 30 minutes before the actual time. Somehow he figured it out and did work up until the final minute.

When we finally got the last revision, someone put it in final and ran off to make multiple copies. We had prepared the other documents so they were ready to go. We were an assembly line as we stuffed all the envelopes for the court and all the other attorneys on the case. We missed the messenger’s deadline, so one of the attorneys ran the document to the court himself.

By some miracle, we were able to get the document filed with the court on time and all of the parties/attorneys were delivered their copies on time. Whew!

Can you determine the different fears that might release stress hormones in this event? The fear of not making the correct changes or missing the changes from each attorney. The fear of the upcoming deadline and missing it. The fear of doing something wrong so that it is kicked back by the court. The fear of not getting enough copies or not serving the other parties on time. The fear of getting fired if you did miss the deadline. The attorneys are also worried about the context of the document and whether it will work with the judge. They might also be fearing malpractice if they miss the deadline. All these different fears produced stress hormones in our bodies so we were in fight mode, getting this document ready to go. Many of us wanted to run. If any of us had gone into a freeze-fear response, then we would not have made the deadline.

These types of deadlines happen DAILY in law firms. Court deadlines, client deadlines, boss deadlines. We do not have to worry about running the document to the court like we used to or making enough copies, but there are still plenty of deadlines to worry about. It is hard to keep up, especially when it is a common battle. It is no wonder that many who work in these environments are experiencing chronic stress. It is not a lion chasing us, but it might as well be.

Do you have a workplace stress story you would like to share? Please leave a comment.