Stress and overwhelm make our field of vision narrow and focus our attention on what's right in front of us.

This is an adaptive behavior, because it concentrates our attentional resources on the threat that we are trying to handle. Our brain's main goal is survival, so anything that is seen as a threat becomes the focus so we can attend to it and deal with it so it doesn't take us down.

This matters a lot in our modern context, because our stressors are varied, they are are psychosocial (meaning, they come from our social situations + perceptions), and they often go unresolved. When being attacked by an external threat, we generally mount a stress response that gets us through that situation. When we mount the stress response again and again and again, against all sorts of psychological and social stressors, we never really complete the stress response cycle and it runs on repeat.

How does this affect us?

First, when we are stressed on repeat without resolution, this contributes to wear and tear on our bodies, and is associated with poor mental and physical health.

Second, that narrow field of vision keeps us from seeing situations from multiple perspectives. In turn, we have trouble accessing creative solutions to our problems.

Third, the stress cycle on repeat causes us to be exhausted. Exhaustion ALSO keeps us from finding ways out of stressful patterns or situations.

It's common for people to advise others to "be less stressed" but very infrequently is there concrete advice for how to do this. In my next post I'll share some research-backed suggestions and will explain how and why these work. Understanding what's happening in your body and brain can help reinforce actually doing these behaviors, and can help us process why it makes sense to prioritize these actions.