Fight or Flight

For a long time, I thought fight or flight was something that happened when you were actually in danger. You know, a bear on the trail, a car coming at you, or one of those situations where your body clearly needs to react NOW. What I didn’t realize was that my nervous system wasn’t necessarily waiting for a bear. Apparently, a mortgage, an overflowing calendar, travel, unfamiliar places, new people, work deadlines, family responsibilities, and trying to wear six different hats before lunch could get its attention just fine.

I’ve always been someone who can handle a lot. I solve problems, figure things out, take care of what needs to be done, and move on to the next thing. For years, I saw that as a strength, and in many ways it is. But there is a difference between being capable of doing a lot and asking your body to continually adapt to a lot. I could mentally tell myself, “I’m fine, I’ve got this,” while my nervous system apparently had not been included in that meeting.

The body is constantly taking in information and deciding how to respond. Travel means different surroundings, different beds, different schedules, and different people. Work brings deadlines and decisions. Finances bring their own special kind of joy. Add relationships, responsibilities, exercise, lack of sleep, the news, technology, and everything else modern life throws at us, and the body can spend a surprising amount of time preparing for, responding to, or recovering from something. None of those things individually has to be “bad” for the accumulation of them to become a lot.

That was an important realization for me because I had spent years doing many of the things we associate with being healthy. I ate well, exercised, took supplements, and kept going, yet I didn’t understand how much time my nervous system was spending on alert. When I discovered frequency and began incorporating a Reset into my routine, I experienced something different. My body relaxed in a way I hadn’t realized it needed to. I wasn’t asking myself to stop traveling, stop working, sell the house, avoid new people, and move into a cabin where no one could find me. Although there are days when the cabin has some appeal. I was simply giving my body another kind of support for the life I actually wanted to live.

That has changed the way I think about fight or flight. Stress isn’t always something we can or even want to eliminate. I want a full life. I want to travel, meet people, build a business, hike mountains, help others, try new things, and continue saying yes to opportunities that stretch me. The goal for me isn’t to make my life smaller so my nervous system can handle it. It’s to support my nervous system so I have more capacity for the life I’m choosing to live.

Maybe the better question isn’t, “How do I get rid of all my stress?” because good luck with that. Maybe it’s, “What am I doing to help my body come out of fight or flight when there isn’t a bear?!” For me, one of those answers is a Reset. I can’t always control what life puts on my plate, but I can pay more attention to the nervous system carrying the plate.