Book Review: Widen The Window
Following strategies from both scientific research and military experience, Elizabeth Stanley discusses the damaging effects not looking after ourselves can have. From fighting back against a culture of working too much, to exploring how mindfulness practices can help to reduce our daily stresses and anxieties. It’s all looked at here in, Widen The Window.
Book Summary Notes: Widen The Window
- Being overworked and sleep deprived can have similar effects to PTSD on a body. Stress and trauma actually have some features that overlap, especially in regards to their effects on the body. Stress and trauma both provoke responses from along the same survival system within us, the autonomic nervous system.
- We have three ‘defences’ our body can use to help us when we activate that old and deep part of our brain in response to stress or trauma.
- The first is a social engagement system where we look around for others to help us.
- The second is the fight or flight response.
- The third and final is to freeze. This third option is most commonly associated with trauma and can be stored and hung onto by a body for a long time.
- There needs to be bouts of time, periods of little to no stress in between the periods of heavier stress for the brain and bodies systems to recover completely. This is why chronic stress can be such an issue, this lack of ability for your body to recover sufficiently between stressful situations starts to accumulate and isn’t given enough time to recover afterwards.
- Many workers from a USA study stated they felt self conscious about taking time off, most low income workers won’t even take time off when they are ill.
- The window we have to deal with stress and trauma is shortened if we don’t allow ourselves enough time and rest to recover from other stresses in our lives.
- Our experiences growing up as well as our genes also have an influence on how much and how well we can handle stress.
- Understanding your own tolerance to stress is incredibly important in managing it. It can help to go so far as to make a list of all the different things currently going on that cause you stress and brain storm some ways to lessen them. The activity can help in a couple of different ways, one it actively draws your attention to what is currently stressing you and it forces you to take the time to think about how to mitigate them.
