Video Transcript

Your faulty smoke alarm

Your stress response is a lot like the smoke alarm in your house.

It’s meant to go off when there’s a genuine threat to you in order to keep you safe. The alarm puts you into action mode – to either fight the fire or flee from the house. It’s this basic response that has helped us survive as humans.

In modern life, we don’t face real threats to our safety that often. But we’ve survived by looking out for threats, so we keep doing it.

Except these days what we’re usually doing is reacting to imagined threats to things we value – like our lifestyle, livelihood or reputation – rather than to real threats to our physical safety. Our big, evolved brains are able to imagine what might potentially harm us in the future, even if it’s pretty unlikely, and just the thought you’re under threat may set your alarm off.

So, your alarm is constantly going off over all sorts of things – whether your boss likes you, whether you made a fool of yourself in that situation, what will happen if you don’t get all this work done, what if something goes wrong tomorrow? These constant false alarms make you feel tense, overwhelmed and exhausted.

The good news is that you can learn to turn off your alarm when you don’t need it on.

The two simple techniques you’re about to learn will help your brain and body understand that there’s no real threat right now. You’re safe and going to be OK. The calming techniques you’re going to look at will: One, help you control your breathing to dial down your stress levels, And two, help you to ground yourself in the present moment where you’re safe

When it comes to mental health, we all have our own unique stories to tell. But no matter what we are going through, there are other people experiencing it too.

Read, watch and listen to stories from everyday Australians about the signs and symptoms they experienced, how they got support, and what they do to stay well now.

Hearing their stories of recovery can help you imagine your own journey.