Let’s talk about your brain and stress. According to the Harvard Women’s Health Watch, stress management may reduce health problems linked to stress. It’s pretty normal to feel disorganized and forgetful when you’re under a lot of stress, but over the long term, stress may actually change your brain, affecting our moods and causing huge amounts of anxiety. So to understand why stress affects thinking and memory, it’s important to understand how our brain works.
Our brains are like a massive computer, containing all these separate working parts, all these little chips that perform different tasks. So when we’re in stressful situations, our brain thinks we’re in survival mode, so it gives us all the energy to that rather than to something like the memory. So this is why you might be more forgetful when you’re under a lot of stress. Dr. Ressler said that there is evidence that persistent stress may actually rewire our brain. The more one area is activated in our brain, the stronger it gets, leaving the other parts a hell of a lot weaker. So this is why it’s important to do things like sport, walking, meditation, as it will help switch your reaction to a response, and over time really manage your stress effectively.
