Understanding and Managing Stress Responses

You must manage your stress response before you can manage your self-talk, emotions, pain, or fatigue. The process that controls our stress response occurs automatically and outside conscious control. 

Even though many stress responses are automatic, we can learn to identify, manage, and shape them. To do that, we first need a mental model of the physical and mental cues accompanying different types of stress responses and an understanding of how our autonomic nervous system works.