Your body cant tell the difference between social stress and physical threat, it responds to all different types of anxiety-producing things with the same thing, and that’s your fight-or-flight response. This response evolved as a way to prepare for a physical attack, so your body is getting ready (to fight or flee) even if the stressor isnt a physical thing you could run from.
When your nervous system is activated, your body redistributes its energy to make it the most efficient it can be to deal with the threat. Since your body has limited energy, it distributes a lot of energy to certain systems (heart, muscles, lungs, eyes, the automatic decision-making part of your brain) by depleting it from other systems it doesn’t need to focus on in the moment (digestive, reproductive, more complex decision making and thinking)
Your body stops digesting food properly because its not a priority when youre actively in threat, and a lo of times your body will evacuate what’s in it so you’re not carrying it around with you in that critical time.
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