Why Your Body Freaks Out Even When Your Brain Knows It's OK
Three data-backed tricks for getting your body and brain back on the same level.
McLittle, Jacob Lund, primipil | Canva As evolved as we believe we are, as modern humans, there are some "Stone Age" reactions in our emotional brains even today. Sure, we control tiny computers in our hands every day, send astronauts to space and more, but our genes don't adapt as quickly.
One problem in this mismatch is how our bodies go into "fight or flight" instantly, but communicate to our much newer-thinking brains much later. For many of these survival reactions, we do not notice them happening. These stress reactios can sabotage our minds and bodies, our health and well-being.
Understanding your brain
The great neuroscientist, Paul MacLean discovered that on a very high level, three main functional components make up our brain, processing information and making decisions.
1. Your instinctive brain
Also called the reptilian brain, this part of the brain is the seat of all automatic bodily functions, digestion, breathing, circulation, etc. It is unconscious, you are not aware of what is happening there.
2. Your emotional brain
Also called the mammalian brain or the limbic system this part of your brain generates all your feelings based on the sensory information it receives. It also manages our human survival response, fight, flight, or freeze. Note that the emotional brain is subconscious, which means the emotions come up, and you don’t control them. We have only limited awareness of what’s happening there.
3. Your thinking brain
Also called the neocortex, this part of the brain handles all your logic, speech, and thinking of the past and future. It is also where your sense of self resides. This is the only part of the brain where your awareness resides. Here, you are conscious.
How can your body freak out while your mind knows you are okay?
It is because of the different functions within the three brains.
The initiator of getting your body in “freak-out mode” is your emotional brain activating the fight or flight response. It receives signals from the outside via your senses, which it interprets as a danger to your survival. Then, within a few hundredths of a second, it will communicate that danger level to your instinctive brain and command it to get the body into survival mode.
Photo: Aleshyn_Andrei via Shutterstock
During "fight or flight", your instinctive brain will:
Pull up to 70% of your blood out of the thinking brain for your muscles.
Create tunnel vision and selective hearing to focus only on the “danger” perceived.
Send out stress hormones that make you restless, trigger-happy ready for a fight.
Tense up your muscles to cause back and neck pain, often resulting in headaches.
Pull more blood out of your gut, which causes poor digestion.
Pump up your blood pressure and heart rate.
Make your liver dump glucose into your bloodstream as fuel to fight or run.
These are just some of the more recognized responses of your survival system, the fight or flight response. But isn’t this strange? You may think, "I’m not in great danger, but I feel my body and system are out of balance." What could trigger that kind of reaction in my body?
Surprising triggers for "fight or flight":
The answer to this question may be a big surprise! That's because your thinking brain interprets these stimuli differently than your instinctive brain.
Here are some examples of what could trigger your emotional brain into fight or flight mode:
When you get an email that your credit card is overdrawn.
Some social media post seems to criticize you or put you down.
A friend says you’re not looking good or your dress is awful.
You lost your phone, or your computer broke down suddenly.
A “frenemy” is doing much better than you or you lose a competition.
These don’t make any sense in terms of emergencies. And yet, hundreds more situations will trigger your emotional brain into an alarm state.
How can that happen? For one, the emotional brain does not have logic like the thinking brain. It looks at incoming information, and if that is critical of you or causes a potential problem, it will raise an alarm.
You'd think you should know if that happens, right?
Here is the second problem. The emotional brain will communicate that alarm to your instinctive brain within a fraction of a second.
Within seconds, the instinctive brain automatically dumps massive amounts of stress hormones into your bloodstream that initiate survival responses in your body. But communication with your thinking brain is much slower. It may take many seconds or minutes until you realize that something is going on. Remember, awareness and sense of self are located in your thinking brain.
An even bigger problem is your emotional brain may not pass the information to the neocortex. It may trigger a low-level survival response, which you don’t notice. Since your thinking brain does not receive a strong signal, you are unaware of what is happening.
Maybe you feel some general stress, but you don’t know why. And most of us are used to a certain level of stress in daily life anyway. This process is a great danger to your health. These low levels of survival stress will sabotage health in many ways, both physically and mentally.
The body and mind get out of sync
Is this weird or not? My computer suddenly stopped working, and all hell is breaking loose. There is less blood in my brain, I get tunnel vision, stress hormones make my body ready to attack, my muscles tense up, and I get a headache, my stomach feels strange my gut stops working, my heart pumps wildly, and my blood pressure goes up.
This is bizarre. What I need more than ever is to be calm and collected, focus, and think clearly! Why is my brain screwing things up so badly?
Maybe you need to do another exercise to clear your mind. It will help to process new information.
What I am telling you now about our human brain will sound particularly strange in this modern high-tech world. But the genetic blueprint for our brain is at least 70,000 years old, maybe older. Genetic science tells us that our genes change that slowly. From the seven fight-or-light reactions we listed above, you can see that our brain wants us to be ready for a stone-age fight against a wild animal or an attacking enemy tribe. Is this helpful in the modern high-tech world? No way!
That is why it is so crucial to use mind-body techniques to help us relax and stay calm. Isn’t it interesting that the last of the three techniques we mentioned above are about as old as our brain? There are many other techniques.
Three ways to experiment with balancing your mind and body
1. Move!
Even stretching your muscles while sitting in a chair is a great start. Exercise, walk, run, lift weights, anything that gets you going.
2. Go outside
Get out into nature, our most ancient environment, it will soothe your nerves.
3. Reflect
Practicing journaling, gratitude, and forgiveness will all ease and energize your mind.
Tricks to help “un-freak” your body
You’re probably sitting in a chair right now. Therefore, here are a few things you can do even while you sit.
1. Tighten as many muscles as you can.
Start with your legs and tighten your big leg muscles, tighten your belly muscles, bend your arms, and flex your biceps, back muscles, neck, and throat. Hold this for about 15 to 20 seconds or as long as it feels comfortable.
Take a deep breath or two. How do you feel? A little more energized? Feel the power in your body? Just a little more refreshed? Tensing your muscles that way increases your human growth hormone. That’s good for body and mind.
2. Try a simple breathing exercise.
Inhale quickly and then inhale again a little more to fill your lungs. This is a two-stage inhale. Now, slowly exhale through the nose or mouth, whatever feels best.
Do these eight to 10 times and notice how your brain and body start to shift. This little exercise has been proven by neuroscientists in their labs to help relax deeply and feel more balanced.
3. Use three movements as old as humanity.
They have been used for millions of years. You can do it sitting or standing. Do the moves for about 15 or 20 seconds each, that’s all.
First, clap with your hands as you applaud. You could even applaud yourself for doing this.
Second, make some back-and-forth sideway movements, like a simple dance.
Third, drum with both hands on your desk or your chair. You can drum on your chest like you have seen big monkeys do. This last move stimulates the thymus gland, which sits right under your upper breastbone.
Stimulating that important gland can improve your immune system for up to four hours.
How was that experience?
Did it help un-freak your body just a little? Did it help your brain think more clearly? At the end of the article, we’ll mention a few more ideas. Now, let’s look at why our body can freak out even when we think everything is okay.
Hopefully, you will be more relaxed and energized by one or more short exercises.
Why the science matters
Understanding the brain-body connection and disconnection is a tool. First, know that our brain is tremendously complex. It is made up of about 86 billion neurons. The processor in your laptop has about 3 billion transistors to compare.
As we learned earlier in this article (and hopefully now you know well!) these are the reptilian or instinctive brain, the mammalian brain or limbic system that we call the emotional brain, and the newest part of our brain, the neocortex or the thinking brain.
The three levels of the brain are all we need to understand how our brain is connected to the body. They also help us understand how connections are perceived in our mind, the way we think, feel, and experience the world.
That way, when you feel that "emergency mode" kick in, you can remind your body that you are safe and allow your rational brain to regain control of the ship.
It’s time to take this seriously and take action now!
Fritz George Sauer, MS, is an expert and coach in science-based stress relief, helping clients find the guilt-free path to balance in their personal and professional lives. He is an author, experienced business manager, and consultant and is also deeply spiritual.