Are you anxious, depressed—or way too stressed?
Let’s start with the obvious: sometimes it’s all of the above. Still, under a medical model that seeks to overgeneralize in order to create generalized treatment forms, specificity is your friend. Unfortunately, many of us never learned how to identify feelings or how they manifest in your body and mind—enter therapy.
Many people come into therapy with complaints of anxiety and depression. At the same time, feeling anxious or depressed is not the same as having anxiety or depression as an overarching diagnosis. So how do you tell the difference?
First, some information about how your body works.
What is Stress?
In psychology, stress is identified as your body’s response to a demand. That response often comes in the form of releasing cortisol, a hormone that helps regulate many parts of your body, including your immune system and vital organs.
Image Credit: VectorMine/Shutterstock.com
Cortisol is necessary for your functioning, which tells us that some amount of stress is necessary. Whether it’s to get you up in the morning or motivate you to tackle a problem that you’re facing, when you experience stress, your body has been activated to respond. But what happens when there’s nothing you can do in the moment?
Measuring Your Window of Tolerance
The window of tolerance is a metaphor for the capacity you have to function with a healthy amount of stress. Your window will expand when you metaphorically “fill your cup” with self-care and receiving care; your window will shrink when you are pouring out by expending effort.
When you are in your window of tolerance, which means your nervous system and body is regulated, stress shows up by adding a little bit to your cup in anticipation of needing to pour some out. Chronic stress, however, can overflow your cup and lead to an excess of unused energy in your body, lifting you out of your window of tolerance. This often triggers a trauma response, because your body registers the amount of stress you’re experiencing as the size of the threat you’re facing. When you’re hyper-aroused (arousal being the function of cortisol), this can look like fight or flight and feel like anxiety.
Sometimes, the amount that you are pouring out to cope with stress is more than your body is able to add to your cup, which can run you dry. When your cup is empty, or you are hypo-aroused, this can look like a freeze response and feel like depression.
Image Credit: The National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine
Dysregulation in Survival Mode
Hyper and hypo arousal are forms of dysregulation in your body. Why does this matter? Well, when you are dysregulated, your body is operating in survival mode. In order to do that, it will unplug as many parts of you as possible in order to direct the power you have to facing the “threat”. Unfortunately, one of those parts is your cerebral cortex.
Back up, what’s a cortex? Below is a nifty hand model of the brain that Daniel Siegel pioneered.
The cerebral cortex is often referred to as the rational mind or your mammalian brain. This part of your brain is the one that responds to pro-social tools (think: mammals live in societies), such as encouragement and validation as well as shame and guilt. When that goes offline, you’re operating from the limbic system, or the reptilian brain. This part of your brain is concerned with your survival (or regulation) and nothing more.
OK, So What?
TL;DR When you are dysregulated, the tools and strategies that speak to your rational mind are not useful.
If you’re regulated and experiencing anxiety, you might have learned to use affirmations or change your thought patterns; you might also try to distract your mind or address the source of the stress in order to relieve the stress that you’re feeling. If you’re dysregulated, that won’t work.
If you’re regulated and experiencing depression, you might try to remind yourself that getting out of bed and going for a walk will make you feel better; you might also try to use guilt or shame to motivate you to face the stress head on. If you’re dysregulated, that won’t work.
If you’re dysregulated, you might feel like you’re anxious or depressed, but find that those feelings dissipate once you’re regulated again. If you’re dysregulated and experiencing anxiety and depression, chances are that you won’t be able to cope with either of those feelings until you are regulated.
How do I Regulate Myself?
Ultimately, identifying your window of tolerance and when you’re outside of it, or dysregulated, can help you determine what toolbox to reach into. Building that toolbox is another article entirely, or series of articles. For example, one approach is to use the spoon theory to work with your window of tolerance and work on DBT-informed skills.
There are many others that you can explore both on your own and with a therapist, so if you’re seeking support on this next step, please reach out to us.
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