What does your body do when you’re stressed?

The fight or flight response is the body’s response to danger — it prepares you to either fight or flee from the situation. It made sense during the evolutionary period when it developed — there were plenty of sabre-toothed tigers, wooly mammoths and other big scary things to put us in danger.

These days, danger normally takes a different form. Many of the threats we perceive day-to-day are social — we’re afraid of what people will think or what they will say about us. We worry about love, money and fame (plus plenty of other things). It’s rare for us to actually need to fight or flee.

But our body still reacts in the same way. When you feel stressed about work or a relationship, the same physiological changes occur. This infographic gives an overview of what happens in your body — maybe it’ll help you spot when stress is starting to kick in.

“The Fight or Flight Response” by Jvnkfood on Wikipedia is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Click / press on the image for the full-size version.