The Neverending Stress Cycle

“Did you see the news?” “Whatever you do, don’t look at the news” “Maybe wait to look at the news…”

Of course, all three of these sentences will make me immediately look at the news. If I haven’t seen the news already, that is. I bounce from site to site, trying to pick apart the actual facts from the immediate flood of takes. Most of the time, the facts aren’t better than the takes. I feel a sinking in my gut. If I focus, I can feel my jaw hitch and my shoulders rise. Energy courses through me, I can almost feel it gather at my fingertips and in my calves.

What has attacked me? What has pounced and given me this surge of adrenaline? Not some lion. The news. The news is the lion and I am a hapless zebra.

If you feel some kinship with this, then congratulations, you too have experienced part of the stress cycle.* And now, we all need to complete it.

The stress cycle

When you’re up against the wall, whether you’re facing real physical stress or the psychological stress coming at us at all times through the magical little smartphone (stressphone?) we keep in our pockets, the cycle is the time. Scientists recognize four phases to this, which conveniently all start with “R” so four Rs!

1. Resting state: Whatever you were before something happened. Drinking coffee, chatting with a friend, dropping a kid off, living your life.

2. Rising stress: When we’re staring at our little (or big) stress screens, it’s easy to come out of body, to not notice this part. But check in for a minute (I know for me sometimes this really does feel a bit like dropping back into my body). What’s your jaw doing? Your gut? Shoulders? Legs? How’s your head?** Pop into your body for a hot second and evaluate. THAT feeling, that rising panic? That’s stress, and it’s the same biologically whether you’re facing a real bear, or a bear of a headline. It’s like a primal scream, flowing through your body.

3. Response: This is what you DO with all that energy, all of that stress. We’ll get back to this one.

4. Relief phase: The reset, which can feel like exhaustion or completion, depending on how step 3 goes.

At first glance this seems pretty reasonable. You are walking along the path and OH NO it’s a BEAR! You run from the bear and your stress response gives you a surge of adrenaline that gives you wings better than Redbull every could. You escaped the bear! WOOHOO.

The problem is that we live now. There are far fewer times to run from bears. Instead, the bear is the bear of a headline. And it’s pouncing on us almost as often as we can look at it.

Yes, we can run from the news (physically)

Our stress responses, much like our lumbar spine, was not designed for the modern age. The burst of cortisol wrung out of our adrenals is supposed to help us run. Fight. Flee. Throw things. It’s supposed to help us ACT.

But most of the time, when we see the headlines…there’s very little most of us can actually do. We can (and should to the extent of our capabilities) call our elected officials. Donate. Volunteer. Protest. Organize. Absolutely.

The problem is that few of those things are things that can be done when we see the headline. And most of them aren’t necessarily good ways of actually completing the stress cycle. It’s not really a surge of relief to donate $10.

So do those things! Please do them.

But in the meantime, we can in fact run. Because the stress cycle is a physical response, and often a physical cure is what will get us through it.

Options for releasing all that pent up tension include:

1. Literally running, in place as hard as you can or outdoors or on a treadmill. Workouts of all kinds.

2. Screaming

3. Maniacally laughing

4. Angry cleaning

5. Dancing

6. A Good Cry!

7. Anything involving a punching bag.

8. Heck jumping up and down I will take it.

Longer term, we can often feel better through things like a hug, time with friends. Some people find steady breathing can bring us back to baseline. But while they are recommended and can bring us back to baseline, I personally find they don’t deal with the pent up NOW. The pent up scream rippling through your flesh.

All of those options above are ways to complete the stress cycle. We can’t run from the bear, there’s no bear. But we can put down our stress boxes for a moment. We can jump up and down and cry and dance. We can release our body’s scream.

But We Must Witness!

Must we?

Really. In this moment. Right now. Must we? If there is literally nothing that we personally can do? If ALL we can do is watch and silently panic? What good does that do? Who does that benefit?

Learning enough to know what you have to do is one thing. Bathing in the trauma of others is another. Our pain cannot help them. Only our action can. And our action requires our ability to function effectively.

That requires a clear head, and clearing your head means completing the stress cycle.

Now, when I see a headline, I try to remember to stop. To drop into my body, to find that rising bodily stress. I ask my friends “how are we completing our stress cycles today?”

And then, sometimes, I drop my phone, and scream.

Resources!

• Stanford: Stress Cycles: What They Are and How to Manage Them (2021)

• Harvard: Understanding the stress response (2024)

• OHSU: Completing the stress cycle (with handy flow chart)

• The Conversation: Stuck in fight or flight mode? 5 ways to complete the ‘stress cycle’ and avoid burnout or depression. (2024)

Where have you been?

• I’m sure you’ve heard of “Alligator Alcatraz,” and know how cruel it would be to people detained there. But it’s also cruel to the Everglades, to a delicate ecosystem.

• People (ahem, Journalists, ahem) often forget just how big of a role name recognition can play in elections. Disparity is who gets coverage really does matter. By Kendra Pierre Louis.

• Yes, birds yell louder around our noise. Coyotes can tolerate only so much of our activity, deer love our gardens. But we are also physically shrinking cod, growing chipmunks and more. All by our presence. By Emily Anthes.

• The new federal budget will eliminate bird banding funding, the one thing that allows scientists to track the health and population of birds across the country. Birders, rise up! By Rebecca Heisman.

• It’s the 50th anniversary of Jaws, but our fear? That’s millennia old. By Molly Segal.

• If you depended on your doctor telling you what vaccines were available, and are now very worried you can't because recommendations are changing and no longer backed by science? Scientific American has you with the science backed chart from 2024

Where have I been?

• Writing about vanilla and bees, and how if climate change continues as it has…pollinators and plants maybe much less likely to find each other.

• The audiobook version of my book is on sale right now on Audible. The narrator, Courtney, did a lovely job with it! Highly recommend.

*Yes, this newsletter is usually about human/nature interactions. But before that, I got a PhD in physiology and pharmacology, and my focus was neuroscience. I also teach anatomy on the internet for fun. Believe me, I know stress cycles both personally and academically.

**”I haven’t heard any complaints.”