Healthy stress is a natural part of our everyday lives, even children experience it; regardless if the person experiencing it is a child or adult, people have to be challenged from time to time in order to grow and develop. Sadly, the education system in the world today facilitate toxic stress instead of healthy stress; toxic stress happens when the demands of life or tasks in general frequently outpace the person's overall ability to cope.
What Toxic Stress Can Do
Toxic stress can do a number on the body and the person might not even realize it at first; effects include, but are not limited to, impairment in mood and emotion regulation, capacity to pay attention, sleep and the readiness to learn inside classroom. Prolonged periods of exposure to toxic stress, especially at an early age have negative impacts on a person's physical and mental health. Decreased creativity and productivity are usually where toxic stress begins and it could very well escalate to more serious symptoms like frustration, anxiety, dissociation and burnout. Because of toxic stress, and other defining factors, around half a million teachers in the United States leave their profession on a yearly basis.
Of course parents are also highly prone to toxic stress, it could affect parenting styles to a point that it feels more like a to-do list instead of a present-centered, empathic relationship with a child. Considerable exposure to parental stress in childhood has been proven to greatly impact gene expression even when the child has grown into adulthood. Because of the fact that everyone's stress response involves the survival hardware in their individual bodies, toxic stress can be a challenge to work with.
Solving the Problem with Mindfulness forskning
The roots of toxic stress lie deep in a person's nervous system, special tools are needed to go further than the conceptual mind and target that system directly. In transforming a person's habitual responses, constant skill practice has to be implements when the situation does not call for a fight, flight or freeze mode. It is the development and improvement of a person's mindfulness, a constant awareness of one's surrounding environment, emotions, thoughts and sensation.
Benefits of MBSR Mindfulness Education
Proven scientific research suggest that mindfulness education and interventions aid with a person's emotional resilience, memory and immune system response, attention span, recovery from addiction and self-control. Below is the summary of benefits relevant for educators:
1. Attention Span - enhances the mental muscle so it will be easier to bring back focus or direct it where and when the person wants it to be.
2. Improving Emotional Regulation - when a person is acutely aware of their emotions, it's quick to recognize when they occur and see their transient nature as well as adjust the way they respond.
3. Resilience - being objective in the way things occur in the narrative of the world's ups and downs being forth greater balance in a person's life. Discover more facts about health at http://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/05/health/pizza-healthy-food-drayer/.