#stress response

[villainessbian]

Concept: most aliens can get anxious, can get scared, can get fight-or-flight. What most aliens do not get, however, is stress. Stress is a weird thing even by human standards. It can build up over time or be something tied to a very limited situation. It can be caused by a lot of things, and it comes in a lot of different ways. But it's a core human reaction, when a situation is wrong, it causes stress until it is righted. And it even affects different people differently!

Cue Human Cassandra, on a ship with her friend and co-worker Human Pauline. The ship is crewed with a mix of species. It's a cargo ship - load up in a space port, unload in another, get news and supplies during their stops, and live as an ever-shifting family as some of the two dozen crew members, give or take, get replaced. Some leave come payday, and new ones come looking for the thrill of low-level adventure, experiencing warp drives across the safer roads of the known universe.

But getting the supplies you need, or want, in stops is never so easy. Humans are new to the galactic community, and their needs misunderstood. Most broad-edibility food is bland for them, but that's okay. A big enough bag of their condiments can last them years. But ADHD meds... now that's less easy to get, the further from Earth you are. And a contract too big for their captain to pass on came up, much farther than the two humans expected.

Cassandra's mood deteriorated, her work priorities out of order, her sleep schedule in disarray. Little by little, she grew restless, shifting moods and gears unpredictably. A few weeks in and she was a mess, barely able to keep up with the minimum her job doing maintenance and running safety diagnostics for the route charting team required of her. While Pauline could help with the mechanical aspects of keeping the ship running, picking up the "slack", the safety had to be double-checked by the charting and pilot teams. When the curves of asteroid probability reached beyond a certain level, several hundred simulations had to be run, time-consuming processes had to be used, to avoid any collision at speeds beyond speed c. Some truly exotic things happened to ships that experienced those, but none of them contained the words "surviving crew." A safe route avoided any probability of collision over .1% and when going faster than light, any choice of course required thinking in 3 dimensions plus relative time to navigate dangerous probability fields in one piece, finding time-specific corridors and accounting for a dozen variables at once.

After she had a breakdown over a path she would normally have been able to find in under a minute, Pauline spoke to a concerned pilot team member:

"You have to understand her, this is a stressful situation and she's doing her best..."

"What do you mean by 'stressful'?" Gabalt asked. The furry little creature stood on two arched legs, and barely reached up to Pauline's shoulder, opening three wide eyes with curiosity and concern in equal parts.

"Things are... getting difficult for her, and keep getting more difficult because she does not have medication to help her brain be efficient. It makes her tired, and inefficient, and as it goes on, she's less and less able to cope with the situation. The longer this goes on, the worse it gets, and that is stress. Getting more tired because it takes more energy to deal with the situation, and less efficient because she's more tired, and things get harder because she's less efficient, on and on until something can solve the problem and the stress goes away."

"That sounds... hard. Do all humans have to deal with this?"

"Well, everyone has sources of stress, but she's got a disability. Without her meds, she gets stressed all the time. Not a lot all at once, but it always adds up."

"Oh no! So she'll be stuck like that until we get closer to Earth?"

"Most likely, yes."

But the most momentous thing to happen this day was not her breakdown. Not an hour later, alarms blared up. The simulation holograms all displayed blinking red masses - the less-travelled "safe route" was not as well protected! An asteroid range had been detected cutting through the border field, and it was in their way!

Pauline froze up, not knowing what to do. Gabalt was too surprised to act fast. All the courses from the ship's library of regular manoeuvres suggested a crash chance of over 60%, and mere seconds to act before entering the field!

Before anyone could react, Cassandra came in running from her corner to the front of the bridge, slamming the warp drive shutdown button. Most holograms stuttered and collapsed, the exit from FTL essentially dividing one or several of their dimensions by zero.

Looking quickly at the few remaining ones and gazing at the screens showing the current outside situation like a large window would have - plus a few critical extra points of data - she adjusted the angles manually while everyone still shuddered from the gravitational and temporal whiplash of suddenly coming back into normal time. Unblinkingly, she spotted the asteroids on the route while the ship was still going, if not at relativistic speeds, still fast enough for a single pebble they met to vaporise the Whipple shields, the outer hull, the inner hull, the crew members, and the hull again coming out if they but grazed it. Confirming the angles visually, she played with the reaction wheels, the thrusters, the gravity drives, to divert the ship's course just enough to miss a collision while not risking any grave injury on board. There was no time to react - if anything showed up straight ahead on the "unaugmented" outside view screens, it was too late to not get splatted. After half the crew had had the time to get thrown to the side or on the ground due to the rough handling, she'd managed to avoid any crash.

Gabalt was reeling. While it was surely not impossible, these was the kind of moves experienced veterans would never wish to attempt, and the margins for error were ridiculously low! She'd saved the ship and everyone on it, whereas she'd been unable to do a simple safety run so soon before?

Pauline was white as a sheet, but this was nothing compared to Cassandra, shaking violently and breathing unevenly.

"Pauline? What is she doing?"

"That's... probably the adrenaline."

"What's it for?"

"It's from stress. When it comes it overcharges the body. It's like the traditional, 'fight or flight' instinct from survival in prey-predator paradigms, it lets you move fast but paralyses thought... it feels pretty bad after a lot of it is released though. Now she's crashing down, must be harrowing."

"How did she do that? And you said her thoughts were paralysed for precision manoeuvres?"

Cassandra's voice came, nearly a mutter: "I just... had to. do it."

Gabalt needed to understand what happened.

"What do you mean you had to? Someone had to do it, but why you?"

"It- it was very stressful, I saw you freeze, and so."

"But... but HOW did you do all that? That was extremely complicated, few pilots -whose main craft is directly piloting- would want to even try doing that when given a choice!?"

"I had to. do it, so I did. I couldn't. couldn't make a mistake."

"This makes absolutely no sense."

Pauline interrupted. "She just works like that. Lots of stress and when people freeze up, humans with her condition... sometimes, surprisingly, function better in the moment than others can."

"Ah. So it's a human thing. of course, it's a human thing. NOTHING MAKES ANY SENSE WITH YOUR ACCURSED SPECIES" the diminutive pilot pouted.

And so one more story of the humans doing the impossible spread around. Humans of a subtype, more easily harmed, sometimes unstable and needing help for the simplest things... accomplishing odd, unthinkable, borderline heroic feats under duress none could be expected to withstand - but only then. Cursed, blessed? No story-teller seemed too certain. But the "magical" species never stopped surprising all others. And a new proverb developed: "it's not over until the human says it is".

[omg-snakes]

This is an interesting stress behavior that we don't see very often in corn snakes!

The tail wiggle that you see here is called caudal luring and it's distinct from the vibrational shakey-tail threat display. This is a defense maneuver!

Shakey-tail is intended to trick a potential predator into thinking the snake is a venomous rattler.

By contrast, caudal luring is a last-ditch effort to get a predator to attack a snake's thrashing tail instead of their head, while the head is focused on leading the body the heck outta danger. They may lose part of their tail, but they have a better chance of living to tell about it. Some snakes and other reptiles may use caudal luring as a hunting strategy, too!

This snake is definitely stressed, not hunting, so I recorded a 5-second clip and then focused on helping them feel safe and in control of their body by loosening my hold on them and letting them move freely through my hands. They stopped the behavior and we moved on to the next part of the handling session.

A tiny bit of stress with a positive outcome can inoculate against future stress. The goal isn't to prevent any stress from ever occurring, but to limit stress to what is necessary for proper husbandry (in this case, taking a length measurement and transferring to a feeding cup) and to work with the animal to help them overcome stress when it occurs.

[katimorton]

Being stuck in survival mode, or a fight flight freeze or fawn response, can cause you unnecessary anxiety and lead to overwhelming thoughts. This survival mode response can cause you and your body unnecessary stress and anxiety. Many of us learn to live in constant fight or flight due to societal pressures or perhaps childhood trauma or emotional neglect. Living with this trauma can lead us to feeling overwhelmed, anxious or stressed constantly, or perhaps your anxiety and stress can be easily triggered by small or large events that bring up a trauma response. The good news is that there are therapeutic approaches and therapy types that can help to work on this. But we must first recognize what it is, if we're doing it, why we're doing it, so that we can determine what type of help we need to stop living with constant anxiety and stress. Do you relate to this? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Related videos you may find helpful: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn, Understanding Your Stress Responses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP6SX...

Dealing with trauma triggers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNG1B...

Are you stuck in freeze mode? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0l25...

[lifblogs]

I hate how strong the fawn response is. You won’t even realize you’re being hurt or wronged till afterwards because your brain already registered the event and decided to change your emotions and reactions into pleasing ones. And once you’re safe and have calmed down you realize, “That was fucked up,” and then the shame hits because, “Why couldn’t I have done anything to stop or change my situation? Am I that stupid that I didn’t realize I was being wronged?”

I understand my brain chose this stress response for survival, and I understand it’s not stupid, and I’m not stupid. And yet the shame is there.

[skeletonfumes]

bandcamp friday again, if you feel like supporting bandcamp has waived all their fees for the day. Could us anything atm, kind of desperately lol.

[alephnol]

[zylphiacrowley]

Have this weird gross feeling like I want to throw up. Like not because I'm ill or anything, I feel fine (as in not sick), but man there's this gross feeling in the pit of my stomach that I just can't shake and it's making me physically unwell.

[unwelcome-ozian]

[bibliosauruswrecks]

Why does our hair fall out when we’re stressed that just seems like a dumb defense mechanism

[tielt]

->

[jppres]

Fungistatic effect of Moringa oleifera Lam. on the metabolism changes of Candida albicans

Image: Flickr Article published in J. Pharm. Pharmacogn. Res., vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 179-190, January-February 2023. DOI: https://doi.org/10.56499/jppres22.1533_11.1.179 Basri A. Gani1*, Cut Soraya2, Vinna Kurniawati Sugiaman3, Fitri Yunita Batubara4, Dharli Syafriza5, Silvia Naliani6, Sri Rezeki7, Subhani Jakfar8, Muhammad Nazar9, Kemala Hayati10 1Department of Oral Biology, Denstistry…

[blixarchiviumofwishes]

You can't escape it.

The behavior I will call "human reaction to circumstance", is everywhere. It cultivates the way you think, respond to situations, evaluate them, etc, and the same for those around you. Of course everyone is different, and has been brought up and impacted differently by their surroundings.

What I find intriguing is an individual's response to a certain situation. Let's look at a few examples.

Joe is a teenage boy, just about to start his senior year of private highschool. Joe is well liked by his teachers, and earns good grades. He is also an athlete on the school baseball team. During the final game of the season, Joe strikes out, leading his team to a crushing loss, or so he views it. Joe's Coach tells him not to be bothered by it, he can try harder next year. However, the teenager beats himself up about it, saying he should have done better, he shouldn't have missed the pitch, and that it's all his fault, despite there being several strikes during the game.

Tyler is an older man searching for work. He's single, with only a widowed mother to take care of. Tyler has sent in multiple applications to many firms of varying fields. He believes he can master any field if someone just gives him a chance. When a few of his forms are rejected, he picks himself up and tries again.

Ann is a working mother of three, and has been married for ten years. She is very lenient with running her household, which leads to messes around the house, and her children leaving work undone. She makes several attempts to train them how to be responsible with the help of her husband, but the children always revert to their bad habits, leading to arguments and punishment.

I apologize if these examples are unrelatable or bland.

After reading the scenarios, ask questions. What led Joe to react to the team's loss the way he did?

Why did Tyler respond the way he did after getting rejected?

Why is Ann blatantly hypocritical?

"Human reaction to circumstance" defines how and why these people reacted the way they did. The University of New Hampshire provides a means of understanding this phenomenon with a simple acronym.

A - Activating event (usually imprinted in the memory): what happened in either of the subjects past that may have influenced their interaction with the people and circumstances around them?

It's possible Joe's parents have very high expectations of their son, and have strict boundaries on what is success and what is failure. Living under such conditions would either put Joe under constant stress, or desensitize him from their demanding mindset.

It is possible that Tyler was taught at a young age, either by more experience, or his parents that life won't always work out, and that he must keep trying, even when everything seems to be going wrong.

It is also possible Ann's parents never paid attention to their daughter's uncaring attitude when it came to cleanliness, and she, as a result, unknowingly passed it on to her children. Since her parents never saw a problem with her messes, she doesn't realize she's the reason her children are messy the way they are.

B - Belief: religion often has a part in how devoted a person is to success, or traditional values, such as persevering and cleanliness (or lack thereof.)

C - Consequences: How the figures presented deal with their situations based on what they've gone through in the past, and the events, good or bad, that follow as a result.

It all stems down to the mind. The mind is easily moldable, especially during vulnerable periods of our lives. Combined with your personality (influenced by experience to a degree) this creates this psychological reaction.

Thank you for reading, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask, I'll do my best to answer.

Please don't quote me, I'm not a trained Psychologist.

UNH PACS. “What Triggers Your Emotional and Behavioral Reactions?” Psychological & Counseling Services, 15 Feb. 2023, www.unh.edu/pacs/what-triggers-your-emotional-behavioral-reactions.

[saipushpalearner]

Stress Response

Stress response mastery starts with DiSC. Understand how D, i, S, and C styles react to stress and create strategies for better collaboration. 

[the-exhausted-xexandaler]

I keep wanting to use the line, but the larger bodied coworkers of mine don’t stand still or talk about their diets long enough for me to use it so I’m just gonna say it here.

Me: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about needing to exercise so much. You’re in great shape.’

Them: Well geez thanks, but I’m still a bit insecure about my body.

Me: C’mon man, Round is a fantastic shape to be.

In reality, I don’t like to fat shame. I just came up with this after a stressful day at work, and making jokes is my main way to relieve my stress.

[stephanieviolet]

If anyone wants to read a whole ass book about our stress & how to deal with it, Emily & Amelia Nagoski (sisters) wrote Burnout: the secret to unlocking the stress cycle. Another way of dealing with stress I use is jumping jacks or running in spot.

Day 29 - Psychosomatic Bullshit