Contents
What happens when you relax? This is how we emotionally regulate ourselves in the face of stress
Psychology
The psychologists Inés Santos and Elena Huguet explain how our self-regulation mechanism works that helps us relax
PM2:52Our body is an almost perfect machine, developed over thousands of years to adapt to difficulties that were found in the middle: from prehistory in which a mammoth that is four times our size struggles not to be hunted to the experience of a tsunami making its way through the streets at the beginning of this century, passing through situations like those that some people they could live in the year 1400 when they were surprised on a path by some thieves who were hiding behind some bushes … In all these situations our body activates all the mechanisms to protect ourselves. It hyperventilates to give us oxygen, so necessary to make our heart beat and that blood tense and move the muscles so that we can run fast. And even our pupils dilate allowing us to see further and focus our attention on what is important and not think about anything other than that danger that threatens us.
But then why does fearful anxiety bother us so much? Because in an exam or in a work meeting we don’t really want to run and fight against the teacher or our boss. What we want is to have anxiety levels that help us to be awake and attentive but that do not hinder us.
Luckily we are gifted with a little self-regulation mechanism that allows us to lower those anxiety levels when our reasoning detects that we do not need to defend ourselves.
Like a clock, our body works like a gear system in which if you touch one, a chain reaction occurs. When you put less oxygen into your body, breathing deeply and slowly, our heartbeats slow down and our muscles relax. Our mind opens to the creativity and new ideas flow, our attention expands and our the memory it becomes more acute.
Like everything in life, the more we train this self-regulation mechanism, the more capable we will be of calming down in stressful moments. Practice regularly with little ones relaxation exercisesLike diaphragmatic breathing, will help us to reconcile with our anxiety, which helps us so much in moments of Stress Notifying us of the important things and activating us to carry them out.
Inés Santos and Elena Huguet are part of the team of psychologists of «En equilibro mental». Santos is, in addition to being a psychologist, a master’s degree in Evidence-based Clinical Psychology with a degree in “Child and Adolescent Behavior Therapy” and “Orientation and care in crisis.” She is a supervisor at the PsiCall Telematic Psychological Care Service of the UCM and is the author of the “Guide against hate speech and radicalization”.
For her part, Elena Huguet is, in addition to being a registered psychologist, an expert in Brief Strategic Therapy and she combines her activity with research in the UCM doctoral program. He participates in numerous international conferences and in scientific publications.