How do we really assess stress and threat?
The secret to undoing stress at the root lies in examining our unconscious assumptions about our identity
And how those assumptions dictate our threat response
An emerging theme in research is that what makes a thing stressful has very little to do with the external severity of the event and everything to do with how we interpret it.
Some people take this to mean that it's not the events in our lives that cause stress, but rather our thoughts about the events in our lives. If that's the case, the fix is simple: just call up the "bad" thoughts in the word doc of our mind and make a couple of edits. Voila, stress and suffering erased!
Not quite.
Our assessment of threat occurs in a split second and is generally beneath conscious awareness. Based on this assessment, we engage in an initial instinctive behavior, followed by a more thorough assessment, which then produces conscious thought and motivated behavior.
These assessments go through two filters: our sense of self and our previous experience.
For example, if we identify strongly as a Red Sox fan and we see someone wearing a Yankees cap, we may actually have a physiological threat reaction. If we have a history of violent or overwhelming experiences in our life, we're likely to interpret our internal sensation of threat as a signal of actual and impending threat in our environment. We will then form a variety of conscious thoughts to explain or justify our assessment of threat (i.e. "that guy's looking for a fight," "I don't like his tone of voice" etc)
So, trying to revise our conscious thoughts one by one as they bubble up is like playing whack a mole. If we really want to get to the root of what we experience as stressful, we need to start looking at how our thoughts are being conditioned
by how we understand our identity and
by the physiological impact of our past experiences.
This reality was well known to the ancients. The practice of yoga meditation helps us cultivate an experience of our eternal identity while the practice of yoga asanas helps us release the physiological footprint of fear.
Do you have an example of how your sense of identity and past experience has impacted your unconscious assessments, for better or for worse? Share in the comments below, I'd love to hear them!