It's a common experience that when we're stressed, we don't think clearly. We forget things because we're rushing or make impulsive decisions because we're anxious. After someone says something upsetting, we either say something we regret later on, or afterward we think of what we wished we'd said. If only we'd had the presence of mind in the moment, but we didn't, because we were stressed.

Brain scrambled
The technical term for how stress impairs our thinking is "cortical inhibition." Stress interferes with the brain's ability to synchronize sensory input and distribute it to the cortex, the area of the brain that controls the functions of conscious deliberation. In a real sense, when we are stressed, our brain gets scrambled.

Foresight
The part of the brain most affected is the frontal cortex, where we get our ability to exercise foresight. This is the home of what are called our executive function skills, things like:

• Self-reflection
• Problem resolution
• Planning
• Goal setting
• Abstract reasoning
• Impulse control

Because these mental functions are complex, they require a greater degree of neural synchronization. It's just not available when we're stressed.

Fight, Flight, or Freeze
Negative emotions that underlie our stress response put our system into a Fight, Flight, or Freeze response. Survival mode, it's put up your fists or run. Either way, evolution decided long ago that we don't need to think when something bad threatens us. Either use teeth and fists or run away.

If neither of those is a good response (your boss said something harsh to you and is waiting for a reply), nature provided another protective reaction: we freeze. This also made sense in evolutionary terms. If a predator threatens, and you can't fight it or run away, you can sometimes survive by playing dead. You may live to think about what to do next time. In the case of your boss, you probably have just enough brain cells left to mutter something sheepish and slink away to stew over the injustice or rework the conversation. Not pleasant, but maybe it means your job survives.

Who's in charge here?
The cortex, the conscious, rational part of the brain that comes back online after we calm down is a thin layer on the outside of the brain. It's an evolutionary newcomer, not always well-connected with the established old-timers in the neighborhood: the emotional and instinctive centers. They're the ones with clout. The circuits going from the emotional centers to the thinking centers are much stronger and more numerous than the circuits going the other way.

It has been a harmful delusion for hundreds of years that we can control unpleasant emotions by just being rational. Reason dances to their tune. They win this struggle, every time.

The Way We Work
So work with the emotions. When we are feeling positive emotions, we experience "cortical facilitation". It feels good, our body likes it (boosts the immune system and balances the hormonal system) and now the emotional centers synchronize the brain as they're designed to do, and the cortex functions smoothly. The result: we think more clearly.

Sounds great, but how do you handle those moments when negative emotions shut down your brain? Army training has a saying, "Under stress, we do not rise to the level of our aspiration. We revert to the level of our training." You have to train yourself in a way of handling stress, so that when you're under stress, you have something to revert to other than Fight, Flight, or Freeze.

Create a positive feedback loop
I like the HeartMath system because it is designed to be used in the moment to stop Fight, Flight, or Freeze, to change your physiological stress response. A quick way to take the edge off stress is to find something to appreciate. Then watch how your thinking starts to light up, and then appreciate that. And then watch more good things happening inside...

Next up: Stress, "Smarts". and the Heart.