#217 - Daily MG - This Is Your Brain On Sports - 5 of 6

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"When we encounter an emotionally turbulent event such as a death in the family, a primitive set of brain and hormonal responses is activated. We get a surge of cortisol, the stress hormone. This can be dirorienting; after a rush of cortisol, people describe a feeling akin to an altered state of consciousness, as the brain/body system kicks into emergency mode. This feeling subsides after a few hours, however, allowing us to continue with life as we know it fairly quickly.... How so? Bonanno has proposed and found evidence of four distinct trajectories of response in the wake of a potentially traumatic event. There's chronic distress, an immediately high level of dysfunction that never really goes away. There's delayed reaction, whereby an individual initially experiences only a moderate level of grief and disruption but then gets worse rather than better as time goes by. There's recovery, the gradual process of working through acute distress, in the "let nature run its course" manner. And, finally, there's resilience, the absence of major symptoms or dysfunction." My note: What they found is that people respond with resilience more than they are respond with the other three combined. So when pros go out there and perform after a traumatic event happens in their lives, it's not that they're special. You can do that too! We are all resilient. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. All it takes is for you to step into your life and get back to doing what you do on a daily basis." - Sam Sommers