A few days ago, I was sitting on my back deck working on the laptop. Out of the corner of my eye I saw some movement in front of me and I glanced up, expecting to see one of the many birds that are normally here. Instead I found myself staring at a young black bear that was walking across my lawn towards me.
As much as I love all wildlife, this was an immediate threat to have a bear this close.
Thankfully, the bear decided to not climb up on the deck, where I was, and instead pushed through the bushes on the edge of my property and headed across the street.
Let’s consider what was actually going on in my brain and body during this interaction.
I was initially in a state of rest and digest (“green” in Polyvagal Theory) when my brain detected movement on the edge of my vision. My amygdala, the entrance to our survival mechanism, identified that there might be a threat and started preparing me.
My eyes tracked towards the movement in a motion called a saccade and my sympathetic nervous system was activated, preparing me for either fight or flight (generally called a mobility response or “yellow” in Polyvagal Theory). The sympathetic nervous system then increased my heart rate and started pulling more oxygen into my lungs. Simultaneously, it pushed glucose into my muscles to prepare me for rapid movement and flooded my system with adrenaline and cortisol.
Since a mobility response is so energy intensive, it also started shutting down what it considers non-essential services like my immune system and growth. Interestingly, it also shuts down my prefrontal cortex as long term strategic thinking just isn’t helpful in an immediate danger situation. We need fast reaction here, not thoughtful planning.
Then as I watched the bear head away and my brain realized that I was no longer in danger, it activated the parasympathetic nervous system to reverse all of those things that it had just activated.
When this happens once, our body is well able to react to a dangerous situation. When we go through this response frequently then it’s incredibly stressful on our bodies. Unfortunately our brains can’t distinguish between a bear in the backyard and our bosses giving us a deadline. We react in very similar ways and when it happens often, we talk about this as stress and/or anxiety.
Understanding what’s really happening when we talk about workplace stress or anxiety is helpful when we want to make things better. This is our survival mechanism responding to a perceived danger.
In answer to the obvious questions:
- Yes, I really did have a bear in the backyard last Sunday. It got about 3m from where I was sitting before changing direction.
- No, the picture isn’t the same bear. The one in the photo is about the same age but was taken last summer.
See also: Anti-anxiety toolkit to quickly release some of that anxiety.