Written by: Eileen Johnson
Edited by: Caroline Harms
This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.
Stress is part of everyday life, and while some stress is healthy for growth and safety, an overstimulated stress response can cause mental and physical harm. Understanding the evolutionary pathways that organize this stress response and how to manage them can help us find a healthy balance between stress and rest.
Instincts are the summary of inherited survival knowledge an animal depends on to survive. Information is accumulated and distilled over generations until it is embedded in every member of the species. Automatic and potent, the brain responds to both internal and external stressors by flooding the body with chemicals called stress hormones. The sympathetic nervous system is responsible for producing these hormones and inducing one of three main reactions: fight, flight, and freeze. How hormones turn into instincts depends on the shared experiences of long-lost ancestors, guiding the functional changes in mind and body to improve survival chances.
Continue reading “Posterity, Perseverance, and You”
misciwriters.com 