Why Stress Spikes Heart Rate: Exploring The Mind-Body Connection
August 2023
While writing my last blog post, “Life is Not Fair” is from What?!, I got a high heart rate alert. Actually, 3.
Let me specify. My Apple Series 6 Smart Watch, a device that sits pretty on my wrist that I paid $600 for to RUN AN EKG from the comfort of my home. (I have no heart issues but was suckered in like all the others. Who doesn’t want a random EKG?!)
Anyway, it alerted me that my heart was racing. Each alert signals that I remained unmoved for 10 minutes but my heart rate soared from my average 70 beats per minute while at rest to over 100 beats at rest. The key here is at rest. When I go for walks I expect my lil pitter patter to beat faster as it works harder to pump oxygen-rich blood to my extremities (don’t mind me, that’s fancy nurse talk for my hands and feet). When I’m exercising, my heart rate is between 130 and 170. But 105 beats per minute… While seated?!
The mind/ body connection…
…is stronger than I– we?– sometimes might think. Which is why my heart rate might soar when recounting a nerve-wracking experience on paper. I survived that experience, but I didn’t thrive in it. Thriving came a little later on after I took a semester off to live life exceptionally well, intentionally. And that’s what I did! I went to Belize, started a coaching business, rested, healed, regulated my emotions and my nervous system, did some vision planning, and returned to school even better than I started!
Our minds and bodies are deeply intertwined, and our emotions have a significant impact on our physical responses. Have you heard of the mind/ body connection?! That’s why I define being good health not as the absence of disease (which is how I used to define it!) but instead as living in alignment in mind, in body, and in spirit.
Fight or flight
When you retell/ relive a stressful experience, your brain relives the emotions associated with it, triggering your body’s fight or flight response. This is a natural reaction to stress which can lead to an increased heart rate, shallow breathing, or breathing too quickly.
The fight or flight response is our body’s way of preparing for a perceived threat. It involves the release of stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol which quicken your heart rate and send more blood to your muscles, getting you ready to take action. When we write about a stressful event, our brain often processes it as if it’s happening all over again. This tricks your body into reacting as if the threat is imminent, happening right now, in this moment. As a result, stress hormones flood your system, causing your heart rate to spike (or whatever your body’s flight or flight response of choice is!).
And you?
I imagine you made it this far for one of a few reasons: you’ve experienced some form of bias and the lingering stress associated with the event; you wanted to feel less alone in this; you wanted to learn more about how to heal from said stressors; or ya nosy (okay, so prob not the last one, amirite?!).
How can we care for ourselves after stressful, traumatic events?
My research is centered on stress management, so consider practicing relaxation techniques before and/or during reliving the event (like retelling the story or writing about it). Here are a few of my go-tos. I recommend trying something new and/ or doing what feels good to you, even if it’s just an idea and you think it won’t work. Give it a whirl. Trial and error. A scientific experiment if you will. Treating stress that lingers in your body doesn’t mean it can or will be cured overnight. It takes practice and repetition. Here are a few go tos.
- deep breathing.
- mindfulness meditation.
- progressive muscle relaxation aka a full body scan.
These methods can help calm your nervous system and lessen the physical effects of stress and anxiety. I took deep breathes and brought my heart rate down in minutes. And when I drifted too far into the past and didn’t remain tethered to the present, my heart rate rose yet again.
It’s funny. Not like haha funny, but it’s funny how I entered this almost trance like state. Time drunk almost. Lost in the past. I got so (mentally, emotionally) distant from the present that it’s not until the vibrating on my wrist, the alarm blaring, and the faint red light flashing that I catch myself and boomerang myself back into the present.
Days after another set of antics with another problematic professor (there were, unfortunately, quite a few), I decided to take a leave of absence. I remember getting home. Sitting on the couch. Weary of the ways of the world. “Leave of absence”, this thing I’ve heard of before but didn’t know much about popped into my head. I did a lil research, emailed my academic counselor, and asked her what all I needed to be done to get this leave of absence party started. Why?
I volunteered to be here, so I can volunteer to leave, too!
So I told her and so I did.
I took a semester off from school when I had 2 semesters left of my masters in nursing. And I knew, deep down, I just knew I couldn’t finish. Not like this! Well, I could but if I couldn’t finish the way God called me to it, then I wouldn’t finish it any other way. Why harm myself in the process just to say I finished? I didn’t want to crawl across the finish line on graduation day, I wanted to saunter over it (and I did!).
Faculty, staff, and even some family were worried I wouldn’t return to school. But all of my classmates and close friends, and some of my family immediately shared in my excitement and supported my decision to do what’s best for me. My decision to do what’s best for me. My decision to do what’s best for me. That, my love, is self care. Self care is a decision to practice loving yourself and empowering yourself by meeting your own needs instead of relinquishing control and waiting for someone else to do it. Because if you don’t take great care of you, sometimes the question then is, who will?!
When was the last time you got a high heart rate alert on your smart watch?
Before my leave of absence, I was getting them on a very regular, and perhaps even weekly but certainly monthly basis. If memory serves, I’d get at least a dozen a month.
Those aren’t just cute little alarms. They were alerting me that this environment isn’t conducive to my health and well-being. And some made sure to let me know I wasn’t welcomed. Mediocrity cowers under the weight of excellence. They didn’t hate me, but they sure hated all of what I represented. What they aren’t, and only wished they could be.
One way to mitigate my body remembering the stress of my history is by journaling.
Our past is nothing but memories, and memories are as pliable as our imagination. So by journaling and literally revising the end of the story, I can revise how I think, and consequently how I feel about an event. By doing so, with practice, love, and patience, I can change my physiological response so the PTSD of nursing school is less PTSD and more PEP (as in post-event peacefulness– I just made that up but do we like it or nah?! I think it’s ca-ute!).
I refuse to let another mediocre person steal one more moment of my life than they already have. They’ve taken enough from me. They’ve stolen enough from me. And you know what? I’ve allowed it to happen.
And truthfully, I’ve given up more than enough.
Either way you dice it, ¡no más! O mejor dicho, ¡nunca jamás! (That’s Spanish for no more! Or better stated, never ever never again!)
While I’d like to think I’m “over it”, clearly my body isn’t, as evidenced by the 3x high heart rate alerts.
What now? How do I heal from this?!
The only good option is to care for my body. To love myself until I make a full recovery. So I’m healed from even more of my past hurts.
And it’s the only good option because this is the only body I have fi mi whole life!
Trauma is not your fault, but healing is your responsibility.
Michael Swerdloff
And you know what’s wild about this?! I used to be ashamed about the discrimination and stigma done to me as if I did something wrong! As if I did something deserving of being treated like three-fifths of a human. Isn’t it interesteing how the people who actually ought to be ashamed of their behavior aren’t, and the ones who shouldn’t be, are?!
This post serves as a reminder that we’re not alone in the good fight of faith. This, too, is apparently what that looks like. Could’ve fooled me!
Reliving stressful or traumatic events– whether you’re talking about it or writing about it like I was– can lead to an unexpected increase in heart rate, tension in your body, or other physical or physiological changes due to the powerful connection between our emotions and physical responses. By understanding this phenomenon and practicing relaxation techniques, we can regain control over our body’s reactions and create a more comfortable retelling experience, and most importantly, begin to heal from it, too.
This isn’t my most eloquent post but it is one that needs to be shared, no matter how messy or disjointed (I can hear my friends now: disjointed where?! 🥹).
October 2024
It’s so awesome to return to this draft blog post, reading my words from over a year ago! Why come? Because just last week, and again this morning in my two way prayers, I wrote about how grateful I am that God keeps me tethered to the present moment. And needing to write another post, I decided to return to an old draft.
Also this morning, I wrote about how grateful I am to hear God’s voice. It’s October 28, 2024 and I just finished another journal. I wrote 150 handwritten pages since October 1 and the overwhelming majority of those words were prayers to go, and hearing from God. And divine dream interpretations, too, of course, yet another answered prayer, and how I hear from Him!
Coincidence? I know not!
A Prayer for Healing and Peace
God, thank You for helping me always come back to myself. Thank You for helping me return to myself. Thank You that healing is far more simple, and within our reach. Thank You that I have everything in me to heal myself. Not because of who I am, but because of all of who You are in your Divine Intelligence! Thank You that I know You, hear from You, and lean on Your understanding and not my own. Thank You that I have healed, and am healing, will heal. Thank You that every single thing is used together for my good because You love me. A love that protects, trusts, hopes and perseveres.
Thank You that all harm that was attempted to me used against me is always actually used for me and happens to me because in You, with You, not a single thing is wasted! Thank You that weapons form, but they won’t ever prosper!
Thank you for the people in my life who are mediocre, who teach me how I don’t want to be. Thank You that they are simply opportunities to teach me how I want to be. Thank You that they are mirrors of truth and show me who I want to be, don’t want to be, and above all, who I am!
Thank You that history repeats itself until I rewrite and revise the ending and co-create a new ending, a new outcome, with You! Thank You for carrying and loving me from trauma to transformation! Thank You for resiliency, not only physically, emotionally, financially, but most importantly and above all, spiritually!
Thank You for adversity and growth and clarity and strength and peace and understanding and every single thing coming together for my good!
