Vital Reactions

Back to Black

Last week, I prompted you to think about what you do to feel better on the daily. What do you do to energize when you’re lagging, or lift your spirits when you’re feeling low? For most of us, how energized we feel and how we feel emotionally are interlocked. And there are consistent, almost predictable, moments throughout the day when we enter the red, hit up our energy reserves, and subsequently feel like we are struggling to get back into the black.

While there are many factors, such as sleep and nutrition, that go into our daily energy flows, we lose a lot of vital energy to stress, especially the minute stressors that we face throughout the day. Back in November, I posted a lot on stress and the way our brains respond to stressors in our environments by shoring up our breathing, blood flow, and musculature to prepare for a fight. Because we are hardwired to be able to handle major dangers and calamities, we have to constantly build that part of our brains that self-soothes so we can determine when a stress response is really warranted and when we should take it down a notch.

Building neural networks and making them work better for us comes from habitual action and interaction. The more we work our “relax muscles” and “empathy muscles” in our brains, the more we have them at the ready. The idea is to promote a sense of calm and rationality so we can use our brains for clear thinking and feeling. While there isn’t a region of the brain that can flat-out calm us down, we can take back the parts that threaten to hijack our ability to reason by breathing, meditating, or rhythmic articulation (like chanting).

Stressed vs. Traumatized

There will always be a need for that basic fight-or-flight system to exist within us. It plays an important role in keeping us safe from harm or major trauma. In biomedicine, there is a physiological term “vital reactions” that refers to the vital responses our bodies engage to heal from a trauma like an incision or the breaking of a bone. They are life-saving reactions that protect us and let us keep going and living strong. Like the rescue squad in our communities, they are there for an emergency, though hopefully never needed.

When I think about my own daily stresses, I have to ask myself: Do I need an auxiliary mental vital reaction here or is this a situation that demands a rational, even keel? Or in other words: Is this stress or is this trauma? What kind of response does this feeling merit? Should my reaction be life-saving or not? 

Marshaling my brain and body to go to battle could save me or it could just hurt me worse. Having an angry reaction to a minor disagreement, like when debating strategy with a coworker, and then staying mad or overwhelmed is me getting stressed. This is a case where I would be better off breathing, relaxing, and rethinking my initial response. Being targeted, treated with prejudice, shamed, or attacked, like when someone harasses me at school or on the street, is me getting traumatized. This is a case where I need to remain alert and get to safety. I need to respond immediately, vitally.

It’s not always easy to see the distinction clearly in the moment, which is why any inclination of stress is worth checking on. For me, recognizing the onset of a stressor and then examining what kind it is helps me to let the rational mind wedge its way back into the picture. That way, my reaction, vital or not, can be intentional and provide me with the best of all outcomes: my own safety and wellness.