Dealing with Stress: Anxiety Makes Everyday Social Situations Difficult

Stress can have a huge effect on how you handle you certain situations during your daily life.

In fact, a new study shows that the amount of stress in our everyday life greatly affects how we deal with social situations. 

According to a recent finding, certain therapies help to teach people how to better regulate their emotions, including the treatment of social anxiety and other psychiatric conditions.

"We have long suspected that stress can impair our ability to control our emotions, but this is the first study to document how even mild stress can undercut therapies designed to keep our emotions in check," said study researcher Elizabeth Phelps, a neuroscience professor at New York University, via Live Science. "In other words, what you learn in the clinic may not be as relevant in the real world when you're stressed."

The study looked at 78 participants that viewed pictures of snakes and spiders. When viewing the pictures, some were paired with an electric shock and developed a fear when seeing the images.

The participants were then taught therapeutic strategies in order to reduce their fears when viewing the pictures in which shocks had been induced.

The study shows that the next day, they were randomly assigned to either place their hands in icy water for three minutes (which is known as a technique used to induce mild stress) or to place their hands in warm water.

Those who put their hands in warm water showed a reduced response to fear when viewing the photos but those who put their hands in the cold water fared the same as before.

It's these and other therapeutic techniques (including medication and therapy) that can help individuals deal with real-world, stressful situations during their day-to-day activities. 

More information regarding the study can be found in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 

As the brain senses danger, it sends nerve signals down the spinal cord to the adrenal glands telling the body to release the hormone adrenaline. Once released, adrenaline increases the amount of sugar in the blood and raises the heart rate and blood pressure.

The hypothalamus also sends signals to the pituitary gland near the bottom of the brain, telling it to release factors that within minutes travel to the blood stream and stimulate the adrenal cortex, releasing a hormone known as cortisol. This keeps the bodies' blood sugar and blood pressure high, telling it to escape danger.