You are not your stress response.

 

It’s easy to think:
“That’s me, I’m a very stressed person.”
-or-
“I’m an angry person”
-or-
I’m a sad person.
-or-
I’m under pressure.
-or-
I’m feeling impatient.”

What you are observing is your stress response. Your brain is good at responding to stress.  Stress responses are activated throughout the day. The response is ultimately there for survival. Buried underneath the cloak of those all your well rehearsed response habits, under those layers of stress response, is you.

You see yourself reacting to stress so often that
it’s easy to think you are your stress response.

Who wants to be a brusk, angry person?

Who wants to be meek, depressed, and sorrowful? 

These successful stress responses become routine and common. Like a scent in a room that becomes un-detectable. Your nervous system has normalized your stress responses. The tensions become deeply learned. It’s easy to get trapped. It’s easy to lose control of these tensions. Much of the reason your muscles are tight (and likely sore) is that they so often run in the patterns of your stress response.

 

You can even get trapped between simultaneous of opposing stress responses, between activation and withdrawal. This is when you quite literally become pressurized between front tension and back tension, you feel under pressure, as if you are being crushed in the jaws of a vise.

Underneath the blanketing habit of stress response, is you.

Want to get unstuck from stress?  Learn to restore voluntary control of the tensions of your stress response. This mindful movement practice, Somatics, is the most efficient way to do that.