Explaining Stress, Anxiety and Depression (Bears Analogy)

TLDR; stress happens, you can’t stop it (and you wouldn’t want to), anxiety is your brain trying to understand why stress happens, and depression will result if stress and anxiety aren’t understood.

• When threats are bears
• Not all threats are bears
• Waiting for a bear threat
  • Some bears are brown, some are black, some are white, some are koalas, and some are drop bears.
• When a threat becomes overwhelming
• How to talk to someone overwhelmed by bears
• Koala bears aren’t really a threat though?

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In articles on resilience that I’ve written, I mentioned the TEDTalk that changed how we think about stress. When speaking about the ‘biology of courage’ I’ve often had conversations with people about how stress often leads to anxiety, which often leads to depression.

It surprises me that people often say they’re ‘anxious’ or ‘stressed’ or ‘depressed’, yet so many seem unaware of how one leads to another, or why our brains do this.

Anxiety and depression are actually completely normal reactions to the world around us constantly providing us with reasons to be stressed out. What doesn’t have to be normal, is living with stress, anxiety and depression all the time.

If you are starting to experience difficulties at work or at home, waiting until things get worse can cost you more than money. Help is available, and you definitely aren’t alone (even if it feels that way). 💚💛 Please talk to someone, like a free crisis service. If you want to talk to Andi, book online now or contact us.

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when threats are bears

Our evolutionary ancestors were faced with many threats to their lives: starvation, dehydration, exposure to the elements, and dangerous animals like lions or bears. Something trying to eat you is naturally stressful. Parts of our brains (including the amygdala and hypothalamus) took over to help. We developed a physiological distress reaction or instinct, called the Fight/Flight/Freeze Response.

Our bodies were flooded with chemicals and hormones, including adrenaline (epinephrine), which enabled our muscles to manage feats of sudden strength and endurance. Some other effects include enhanced appetite (elevated cortisol levels) and damaged blood vessels (constant exposure to epinephrine without protective hormones like oxytocin).

Result? We were able switch from totally calm to SUDDENLY respond to a threat: run from the bear (flight) or stand against it with a spear (fight) or play dead (freeze).

The threat of the bear lasts until the bear is gone… or does it?

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not all threats are bears

When a bear is gone, we can relax, right? Threat over, the sun shines on a new day! Except, what happens though when the ‘attack’ isn’t as clear cut as bear present vs. bear absent? Hunger, thirst or possibly freezing to death from the weather are all very stressful too, and because it’s not clear when these ‘threats’ (stress) are over, our brain began to have a much broader definition of a ‘threat’.

In our modern era, our brains can now interpret almost anything as stressful.

We can view otherwise neutral events as stressful through behavioural conditioning. Examples:

• If you were bitten by a dog as a child, the sight of any dog-like animal may get your palms sweating, not matter how small or fluffy it is.
• You can feel heart-pounding dread at checking the letterbox because the only mail you ever receive are bills. 😒
• You can get a dry mouth when receiving an email from your boss, if she/he only emails when you’ve made a mistake.

If we haven’t learned to think about stress differently, we can find ourselves constantly presented with something our brain sees as a ‘threat’ and be in constant Fight/Flight/Freeze mode. This is called anxiety.

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waiting for a Bear threat

What does someone constantly encountering a ‘threat’ look like? Twitchy, tired, easily irritated, talking really fast, or always expecting the worst? Any or all of these.

The parts of our brains involved in the Fight/Flight/Freeze Response, the amygdala and hypothalamus, are considered the ‘older’ parts of our brains – they evolved long before the frontal cortex, the part of our brain that controls our ability to plan ahead, and apply critical evaluation and reasoning. Thanks to these ‘older’ parts, not only do we learn through conditioning when ‘threats’ (stress) are likely to occur, but we are able to anticipate them occurring in the future (anxiety).

“Stress is the experience of something your brain believes is a threat to your safety. Anxiety is the anticipation of that threat, based on your past experience.”

Andi Williams, Psychologist

In other words:

Your brain is responding the way it should be to what it thinks will kill you (threat). The therapy problem often is, what exactly is your brain reacting to (‘trigger’), and why does it think that’s a threat?

Working together on discovering the ‘triggers’ is hard, but necessary. Clients often tell me they find it frustrating, and say things like:

• I don’t know why I get anxious
• I don’t know why that (trigger) would stress me out
• No one else seems to stress out over that (trigger)

Short answer: because everyone’s experience is different. What is a ‘threat’ to one person, isn’t to another. In other words;

Some bears are brown, some are black, some are white, some are koalas, and some are drop bears.

(As Aussies, we often tell tourists to fear the drop bear. A terrifying Koala-like creature. Koala bears are harmless, but a drop bear will kill you.) While tourists are frightened by these animals, Aussies seem strangely relaxed. 😉 Whether you are afraid of a bear (or a koala, which technically isn’t even a bear) will depend on your past experiences with bears.

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When a threat becomes overwhelming

The enhanced Fight/Flight/Freeze Response doesn’t last forever, and when our bodies pump out these chemicals consistently over a period of time, we then describe it as chronic stress. (From the effects described earlier, it won’t surprise you that chronic stress is related obesity and heart disease.)

If you are constantly running away or fighting (stress), or waiting in ‘ready’ stance twitching at every sound expecting an attack to come (anxiety), watching for signs that an attack is imminent (vigilance), it becomes very obvious what is going to happen after a long period of time…

Fighting, waiting, running, watching, fighting, waiting, running, watching, fighting, waiting, running, watching, fighting, waiting, running, watching…

You become too tired to keep going. Anyone would. At some point, we decide we don’t even care anymore if we get eaten by a bear; anything is preferable to the constant waiting, fleeing, fighting. This is called depression. Dying seems like a preferable alternative to the constant ‘fighting, waiting, running, watching’ cycle. The good news is, you can break that cycle without dying (promise!)

If you are starting to experience difficulties at work or at home, waiting until things get worse can cost you more than money. Help is available, and you definitely aren’t alone (even if it feels that way). 💚💛 Please talk to someone, like a free crisis service. If you want to talk to Andi, book online now or contact us.

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how to Talk to someone Overwhelmed by bears

It can be hard to talk to others with mental health concerns, especially as a manager. Even when we want to help, we have no idea what to say. There’s some good advice regarding how to talk to friends and co-workers with depression, here and also here.

My advice? Before you attempt that, take a minute to try and understand what they’re going through. Remember a time in your life when you were physically and/or emotionally exhausted and ready to give up e.g. births, deaths, marriage, divorce, post graduate study… completely to the bone, tired. Maybe you moved house, and it took all weekend, and by Monday you couldn’t get out of bed. Maybe you were grieving a loved one and there didn’t seem to be any sunshine or happiness in the world for weeks.

Depressed people live with that, every, single, day.

Depressed people have been fighting off ‘threats’ for months or years. Not days.

You don’t know what the threat is or how long they’ve been fighting or running. You only know that they no longer have energy to fight it, and they’re ready to lie down and give up because there isn’t enough to motivate them to get to tomorrow’s sunshine (because it’s been so long since they’ve seen it they’re not even certain it exists anymore anyway).

That’s why depressed people can sleep 16 hours a day. The brain and body are desperately trying to recover. They’re exhausted. They feel like they’ve tried everything and nothing works, and they’re too tired to care, and they are afraid nothing will help anyway.

Sometimes depressed people feel it will always be like this, and it will never end, and they don’t want to live a life always fighting and running and scared of their ‘bears’ – and that’s when people die by suicide….

So, remember that time in your life when you were that bone tired…

and then imagine you’re also expected to find the strength to get to work or school that day… and every day after that.

Hold that memory in your mind, and then talk to them.

• Remind them that they don’t have to fight or run alone.
• Remind them that no one would try to fight a bear alone in the wild; no one expects them to fight depression alone either. Encourage them to seek help, and remind them needing help is normal.
• Remember, the person experiencing stress/anxiety/depression, is really fighting/fleeing scary bears. Don’t comment on their feelings based on whether you see their ‘bears’.
• Let them know that you believe them, that the bears are real to them. In other words, the threat may not seem real to you right now, but their fear is.
• Remind them that while it feels like bears are always attacking, that won’t be true forever, can’t be true forever. Many have survived depression and they can too. ❤

In my opinion, the most important thing we can do is understand that experiencing stress/anxiety/depression, is a normal experience for someone trying to survive threats. We don’t get to define for someone else what a threat is. Life already did that for them.

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Koala bears aren’t really A threat though?

I can hear some of you saying, ‘but don’t people get anxious and worry over things that aren’t really going to kill them?’ Yes, of course.

Unfortunately, Australian children aren’t taught in schools how to understand ‘threats’ and what stresses us out and why, and parents aren’t perfect. It’s one of many things that frustrate Australian psychologists, because prevention is both possible and the most effective.

I spend a lot of time with my clients, helping them to understand that our brains are trying to help, but brains often get confused, and we need to help our brain understand what’s helpful and what’s not.

Our brains are amazing; they help us survive, even in the darkest places, and/or when we’re small and scared. This means that sometimes people hold onto threats that don’t exist anymore, because it’s not clear that they can stop running/fighting/freezing (Post-Traumatic Stress). Sometimes people become anxious over a possible threat (might happen), that’s not a probable threat (unlikely to happen), but it still makes them afraid enough not to leave the house.

If you want to learn to understand your ‘bears’ better, book a session with a psychologist. Remember: if you change nothing, nothing changes.

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The first draft of this article was published on LinkedIn on 11 May, 2018

^{© Copyright Everyone Psychology. All Rights Reserved. Do Not Publish or Reprint without Permission. © Everyone Psychology, Online Psychologists Telehealth Counselling and Coaching Australia .}

If you are starting to experience difficulties at work or at home, waiting until things get worse can cost you more than money. Help is available, and you definitely aren’t alone (even if it feels that way). 💚💛 Please talk to someone, like a free crisis service. If you want to talk to Andi, book online now or contact us.

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