I once lived and worked and trained to be a therapist at a residential treatment facility located on a farm out in the country in Connecticut. In fact, it was called The Country Place and the most exciting thing to happen all year in the town of Litchfield (Population: 8000) where it was located, was the spring blooming over at White Flower Farm. After hanging out in the country for several months, I was assigned the task of taking one of our celebrity clients into New York City to attend to some personal business that would allow him to continue to pay the $13,000 a month it cost to be treated with “milieu therapy.” What I most remember about that trip was how overwhelmed I was by the “energy” of Manhattan. After living those many months in the bucolic tranquility of upstate Connecticut, the cars and noise and dirt and speed of a big city was something I had to physically steel myself against in order to function. It was not a pleasant experience – it all seemed threatening and overwhelming. It was unmistakably clear to me in that moment, that living in such an environment took a toll on the human body.
Allostasis
Bruce McEwen, a neuroendocrinologist at Rockefeller University, is perhaps the country’s leading researcher on the impact of stress on brain plasticity and neural development. (Reading Bruce’s book, The End of Stress as We Know It, significantly influenced my recent move up to Whidbey Island!) Bruce distinguishes between two types of stress: good stress and bad stress. Good stress he calls allostasis – the healthy capacity to sustain stability in the face of changing life circumstances. Bad stress Bruce calls allostatic load – it’s what happens when we can no longer adapt well to the changes that life requires of us. Pat Ogden, the originator of Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, provides us with a helpful visual for allostasis. She refers to it as our “window of tolerance.” So long as we’re within the window opening, stress is able to serve a motivating, protective function. Once we venture into the area below the window – into hypo-arousal, or above the window – into hyper-arousal, stress begins to cause damage. The challenge for many of us, is first and foremost to recognize for ourselves when we’ve exceeded healthy levels in one direction or another. If we aren’t aware of it for ourselves, it’s unlikely that we’ll be easily able to help our kids with effectively managing stress levels.
Kids today
I often remark to friends that I would not want to be a kid growing up today. Just the amount of energy and information they are required to process in the course of a day, in my estimation, often turns allostasis into excessive allostatic load. When it does, kids just can’t deal. And there are more ways for allostasis to go bad than we realize. Scroll down this link page and take a look: Allostatic Load. Allostasis is constantly moving between protection and damage in the human body, and many problems result from excessive load – those times when stress moves us outside the arousal window up or down, to the damage side of the ledger. Some show up immediately – kids get sick or become easily upset emotionally. Some may not show up for a long time – as later elevated glucose and cortisol levels and bone mineral loss and excess abdominal fat.
Increasing Awareness
Since I’ve learned about allostasis and allostatic load and the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis and its role in releasing adrenaline and cortisol and other glucocorticoids, it has become increasingly easy to recognize and pay attention to how the release of these chemicals feels in my body. For example, when something as simple as a nasty email arrives, I can feel my stress levels rising as I read it. As a result, I elect to do things that serve to reduce their levels as soon as possible. Under excessive stress loads our brain is not “pro-relationship.” It loses its “reflective function,” along with other “executive” capacities – this can result in “flame wars” which erupt frequently on the Internet. Unless someone really understands what’s going on with us in these circumstances, and they have effective skills for calming and soothing, they can’t help much. They may, in fact, act more as a distractive hindrance to being able to restore allostasis. So, we’re often left to our own devices, which, it turns out continue to be ongoing experiments in what really works to make us truly feel better. If it’s not one thing, it’s another – such is the nature of stress-reduction experimentation. One size does not fit all. Each of us has to find our own healthy ways of getting back inside the window. Often for ME these days, it’s being out in the country, Clearing Wood and Drinking Water.
Now there is a term to what I will now refer to as my constant “allostatic load.” Stress has never been easy to deal with and I have been having an especially hard time lately, trying to deal with trauma and having to take a leave of absence from work and participating in IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program). While I know it will help in the long-run, the short-term stress it causes sometimes doesn’t feel like it is worth it. Interesting to hear what causes that may have on me physically. I have been unable to find anything yet to relieve the stress but am working on DBT skills and hopefully will find that relief soon. I am happy to hear that you are able to find your space in the country, clearing wood and in turn, clearing that negativity and stress from your brain. Keep up the blog, Mark. Always interesting, always something to learn from. And usually, something that applies to my everyday life.
Best
Rose
A topic much after my own heart and in my constant review.
What fascinates me most is the window….how does it get to be the size it is when does it contract? There are certainly neuroscience explainations for that! But how does it enlarge? My current experience and favorite theory is that the expansion of the window belongs in work done on with expanding the heart. Where most of my own work (self and others) lies.
Being, now, a New Yorker who does indeed brave the city weekly to see clients (who are also usually very stressed) I often reflect and even bewail the armored hearts and impassive faces often seen here. On the other hand there are striking examples of adaptations to stress here that might be profitably studied. Hearts that become resilient and strong in their honesty and straightforwardness, loving through it all. How is it that people learn to love and live well even in very overstimulating and potentially overwhelming places? How is humor maintained? In a world becoming overpopulated, this seems like important inquiry.
Finally, as mom to 4 I have seen the stress build-up in my own children and how it has effected their health, largely I think brought on by age inappropriate school demands. I wonder how this information might be brought to educational professionals and politicians who seem sure that more, earlier is certainly better. I have four examples to prove that it is not.
Thanks Mark.
Jeanne
Mark,
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Having researched for two year the inner workings of teen relationships, you are right on when you write that the stress of todays world is not pro-relationship and that kids are struggling. I was terribly disappointed in The McAurthur foundations 50 million dollar research study on teens in the digitial world. The presentation at Stanford was a real snoozer. No mention of anything dark about the overload that the Internet, text messaging, media brainwashing brings to these kids. I agree with you, that teens (and parents) are dealing with Allostatic load. One of the things I keep hearing teens tell me when they write to me for help on my myspace page is, “I am too stressed out.” The word they use is “overwhelmed.” We need studies done to help kids cope. I think my newest book, Laid or Loved? The Secrets Guys Wish You Knew About Being a Dream Girl Instead of a Just-In-His-Jeans Girl has a solid approach to dealing with some of todays stress. ( it should, many of the exercises in it came from your teachings Mark
Another great blog. Thanks for letting the world know about Allostatic load. The book The End Of Stress As We Know It has become my bible. It was the genesis for my studying EEG Neuralfeedback in order to help the bay area peeps to lower their stress, turn off their HPA reaction and hopefully mop up some of that roaming cortisol that is killing them from the inside out. Enjoy your less-stressed days at the Island. Sounds like your stress levels are lower!