Jake Burhans argues that stress and worry actually impair your brain's ability to solve problems. When you're anxious, blood flow diverts from your prefrontal cortex, the part that handles thinking and creativity. Regulating your emotions restores that blood flow and lets you see solutions you couldn't before.
The problem is, is that we think holding onto our stress and our worries and our anxieties is doing something. It's not doing anything. We think by holding onto it and toiling about it in our head and running it over that we're like controlling it or we're solving it or we're doing something. Or if we let go of that stress and the worry and the anxiety and the fear that things are gonna collapse. It is actually your responsibility to let go of it because when you're in a dysregulated state, and blood flows away from your prefrontal cortex where all of your thinking and problem solving and nuance is handled, you are not even in the best state to make a decision. So no matter how bad things get, no matter how bad it is, your best chance to get out of the situation is to be regulated because you have blood flow to the prefrontal cortex. You can think clearly, you can see all the options on the field. Your perception has widened. You can think creatively and you can execute at a much higher level. So next time you catch yourself just reeling in your head about this and that and worrying and anxiety, remind yourself that if you are in a dysregulated state, you are stacking the chips against you to be able to solve any problem that you need to solve.
