When you have a panic episode, adrenaline floods the system in a way that was biologically developed to help our survival. As chronic anxiety sufferers know, this adrenal flood happens when there is no tangible threat around us, so it feels like a biological response that is "out of control". Cortisol is another hormone that makes us feel stressed, but it operates differently. Cortisol flows in the morning, which helps regulate our sleep schedule, but it is also a hormone scientists believe serves a greater self-regulatory purpose: it reduces the amount of adrenaline we need to produce in order to survive. It’s a stress response that helps us to guide our attention to potential threats around us. If this served a purpose in our primitive days as humans, it might have been the hormone which helped to remind us that the bears come out to eat at dusk, so we need to do our berry-picking and hunting beforehand, lest we become their food.
Now that you know cortisol’s role, you have the opportunity to use it in a way that feels balanced for you!
Note on the audio: Thank you listeners for putting up with the steady beeping that was coming from Ella’s side of the recording. New recording space caused some issues! We apologise if it annoyed you throughout the episode, but we have resolved the issue for episode 25 and onwards!
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