Why you go into sympathetic mindset which can lead to anxiety or depression

In the first post of this series, we learned that many people who suffer from anxiety and depression have something in common.  They are stuck in a sympathetic mindset.  In the last post we we into why the sympathetic mindset was so important but may be being used inappropriately.  In this post we go into why the sympathetic mindset is being triggered with no immediate major threat.

The sympathetic mindset is one of the big reasons humans survived in caveman days.  And just because there aren’t any wild lions or other dangerous animals roaming the streets anymore doesn’t mean we can just turn that off.

History of Sympathetic Mindset

The sympathetic mindset is what our brain goes into when there is a life threatening event happening.  The way our brain works changes from stepping back and taking in the big picture, to immediately analyzing the current environment for avenues of escape or items that can be used as weapons to fend off the threat.

This sympathetic mindset was designed to be triggered on when you are facing a life threatening event.  However, one important thing has changed since the caveman days. This is why so many people are dealing with anxiety and depression.  That change is the advent of the smart phone.  Before that, we would know about things going on with relatives and friends but really not that much.  But now, we have immediate access to social media, text messages, email, news, and so much more.

What is Happening !

Now, what is happening is that instead of 1 major stress in your life, you have 5 or 10 or more relatively minor stresses all happening at the same time.  Each one is not that big of deal but because they are happening at the same time they start to add up and for far too many people, they add up to a stress level that pushes them over the threshold and the sympathetic mindset kicks in.  This creates a mind that reacts to events in a way that can cause symptoms of anxiety and depression.

The next post we will go over how the symptoms of anxiety and depression are triggered by the sympathetic mindset.

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