The Mismatch Between Your Brain and Your Life
Why your stress isn’t the exception, it’s the rule.
Did you know that in any room you enter with 30 people, almost 21 people are struggling with stress and burnout right now? Based on recent data, 70% of people have at least one feature of stress or burnout. If this is you, you’re not alone and it’s not your fault. Stress and burnout aren’t the exception, they’re the rule.
There many reasons to blame for this unprecedented rise in mental health conditions. Broadly speaking, we live in a world that’s fundamentally mismatched with how our brains are wired. Your stress response—the fight-or-flight mechanism—was evolutionarily designed to protect you from immediate physical threats, like running away from an actual tiger in a forest. But today, those threats have been replaced with tigers that never seem to go away—political headlines, financial constraints, relationship challenges, humanitarian crises and climate disasters. Not to mention overflowing inboxes, back-to-back meetings, and a constant flood of notifications.
Your brain and body’s biological stress response can’t differentiate between a charging tiger and a looming deadline– which is why you experience feelings of doom and gloom, even when you rationally know you’re not in immediate danger.
However, unlike a tiger charging at you, modern stress doesn’t stop. It’s a relentless, constant cycle with one onslaught after another. You can’t “fight or flee” your email inbox or your demanding boss—so your body stays stuck in a heightened state of stress. Over time, this type of chronic stress leads to burnout.
What’s happening to your brain and body during chronic stress:
• Amygdala triggered: Your amygdala is the part of your brain that powers your fight-or-flight response. It’s a tiny, almond-shaped structure deep in your brain (you’ll never look at almonds the same way again). Its sole function is survival and self-preservation. Your amygdala is also called your reptilian brain in science, because it’s the part of your brain that didn’t evolve like the other parts. In a nutshell (pun intended), your amygdala is caveperson mode.
• Prefrontal cortex offline: Your prefrontal cortex is the thinking part of your brain. It controls decision-making, organization, strategic thinking and future planning (it’s the adulting part of your brain). If you put your hand on your forehead, the area right behind that is your prefrontal cortex. When you’re stressed, your prefrontal cortex is essentially hijacked by your amygdala. By design, your amygdala is focused on your immediate needs and not future planning, so you can now see why it’s easy to feel stuck, distracted, and unable to get out of your own way when you’re stressed. It’s not you, it’s your biology of stress doing exactly what it was designed to do.
But it’s not all doom and gloom. The good news? Both chronic stress and burnout are fully reversible! You have the power to rewire your brain and body for less stress and better mental health. The key is to work with your biology of stress rather than against it.
Next week, I’ll dive deeper into how rewiring your brain for less stress isn’t about eliminating stress (because that’s biologically impossible). It’s about learning how to transform your relationship with stress—so that it can serve you, rather than harm you.
This week’s mental health reset: Pay attention to your stress triggers this week. What moments signal your brain to power up your stress response and get into caveperson mode? When you have a minute, write these triggers down. Awareness is the first step to making meaningful change possible. When you name it, you can tame it. Next week, we’ll start rewiring your brain for less stress, together!
Until next week,
Join me LIVE: Your burning mental health questions, answered by me! Join me live every Thursday in May at 12pm EST on Substack for a Q & A. Send me your questions in the comments or reply to this email and I’ll answer them live. If you have a friend or family member struggling with stress or mental health, share this newsletter as a resource. Let’s support one another through this difficult time.