2/5
Minding your Warning LightsNext, let’s take a closer look at how your mind and body react to these situations. Remember, when we understand the fallout, we’ll start to recognize the signals our bodies send us before problems become problems.
Think of this like installing a warning light for your mental engine.
Sweaty palms, grinding teeth, and cussing like a sailor might be fine if it’s overtime in the big game. Not so much when you’re roasting a few mallows over a campfire on a holiday weekend.
Common Questions
Warning signs are those pesky little signals - sometimes obvious, sometimes more covert - that let you know your mental health might be taking a hit. They can show up in how you feel (like constant irritability or low energy), in your body (trouble sleeping, headaches, tight chest), or in what you do (pulling away from people, drinking more, snapping at coworkers). Everyone’s signs look a bit different, but paying attention to your own patterns can help you catch them before they get the best of you.
Our minds and bodies are high-performance machines that run point on massive amounts of processes designed to keep us alive and safe. When tough situations come up, they do their best to adapt to perceived threats and position you for survival and safety, sometimes without us even knowing.
Just like your organs and bodily systems know what to do without you having to think about it, your mind and body can operate on auto-pilot during difficult situations. This results in defaulting to reactions that have worked in the past to react in a tough spot - whether its a saber-tooth tiger or a work deadline. Problems can arise when your body goes full auto-pilot in situations that feel threatening or damaging, and changes happen quickly to your physical, emotional, and thinking states.
The cool part is that we can learn skills and practices that help us reconfigure our own system to ensure our bodies are better equipped to respond how we want them to, rather than defaulting to those more-destructive reactions. That’s why this work is so important.
Your mind and body can respond to these warning signs in a number of ways, ranging from small, almost unnoticeable changes to more severe. These can be unique to the person and the situations, but we all experience a reaction to some degree. For some, even visualizing having to give a speech or biting into a lemon can cause some of these reactions. Here are some examples of mind and body reactions to tough situations:
- •
Physical: sweating, racing heart, low energy, physical outbursts, tearing-up, muscle tightness, light-headedness, nausea, dizziness, changes in breathing, goosebumps, clenched fists, sleep challenges, restlessness, headaches, and more.
- •
Emotional: irritability, short-fuse, nervous, afraid, feeling blue, guilt, apathy, loneliness or isolation, burnout, and more.
- •
Mental: lack of focus, verbal outbursts, impulsiveness, unreasonable expectations, denial, social withdrawal, need for control, risk-taking, and more.
What’s most important is identifying your own unique reactions and remembering which ones show up. This way we can notice them more and start to manage our actions and responses.