A systems view of biological health
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Overwhelm from a biological perspective is not so desperate as it is from a psychological perspective.
Overwhelm is a normal event in the life of any organism in the living world, and as such there are well developed metabolic, physiological adaptive pathways that detect a state of overwhelm, that come into effect when overwhelm occurs, and that detect when the overwhelming conditions have ended - and that re-adapt. Overwhelm in biological terms is a temporary, transitory state.
What should first be realised is that exactly the same physiological resources and mechanisms are used regardless of the stressor that might potentially cause overwhelm - whether that is emotional/social, threat, thermal (temperature too high or too low), chemical/toxicity, infection, immunological, or anything else.
Overwhelm responses were mapped for very simple organisms by Russian biologist AA Ukhtomsky, and his findings apply to life at all scales (see Figure below) [1] .
There are essentially three kinds of biological overwhelm:
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acute overhwelm - an immediate situation that exceeds the adaptive capacity here and now (as mentioned perviously - this may be (external) physical threat/danger, but may also be (internal) infections, metabolic emergencies, etc. Here most of the bodymind adapts to surviving the situation. But a substantial proportion also carries on with its vital task of maintaining homeostasis within the adaptive milieu.
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chronic overwhelm - where a manageable but significantly high stressor just doesn't go away. The body-mind adapts but then after a while (on a timescale from hours to weeks) recognises that the adaptation is not resolving the issue. A fragmentation then takes place where a small section of the whole body-mind complex is tasked with continuing the adaptation, while the rest gets back to getting on with the rest of life - which is to all intents and purposes the same as...
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chronic retained overwhelm - where an acute relatively (short-lived) high-intensity overwhelm is retained as an adaptive fragment - because the information that it ended never reached deeply enough into the body-mind to de-adapt all of the consequent adaptations. So a fragmentation occurs in which some of the adaptive capacity continues like a Japanese soldier on a desert isand, still fighting, and the rest returns to normal business-as-usual life.
Retained overwhelm imprints
Overwhelm begins with Plan A+, which them collapses to Plan B+, and then most of the body reverts to the window of normal adaptation, leaving this pair of survival adaptations behind. All overwhelm imprints are of this form - there is a high-energy part and a low-energy part. Often people are aware of neither - they just have "personality quirks" and intolerances of people or situations. Some are aware of just one. But many people they are aware of both - some numbness, some hyperarousal.
These imprints remain active, trying to save your life, sometimes for decades, until the body-mind receives information in a form it recognises that the situation has ended. You could accurately think of these as being fragments of yourself, stuck in a time-warp, living a never-ending overwhelming moment.
1
The figure (Ukhtomskys Dominant) shows the organic response to a single step change in "stress" - such as, the effect of a slightly distant war on a civilian population, or a lack of food or water or salt, or a bullying boss, or a lack of safety in the home as someone grows up, or a long-term tooth infection (to give just a few examples).
Working through the various stages of the three response curves:
A: the organism rallys and diverts as much of its resources as possible as it adapts to deal with the stressor (first response is always to throw energy at the problem)
B: after a while some of these resources have to be diverted back just to get on with the rest of life's demands, there is now (i) adaptedness to the chronic stressor, and (ii) adaptedness to the normal demands of life. Available adaptive capacity (Lability) = Total - {whatever is being used}. So adapted-ness always reduces long-term adaptive capacity.
C: the organism normalises to the stress demand, and so now has less available Lability (adaptive capacity) for everything.
D: First of all the senses are directed to the stressor, so there is less sensory availability for anything else
E: Then the organism (metaphorically or actually) panics, looking for the stressor to try to escape it. This is a phase of hypersensitivity, leading to hyper-sensitisation.
F: This eventually (i) creates sensory overwhelm, and (ii) the organism saves some energy by learning to ignore the thing it cannot escape from. e.g. traffic noise in a city is "normal&q, but is the same level of noise (measured decibels) in a quiet country lane equivalent to standing a few yards away from a tractor.
G: Firstly the new stressor has priority, and so there is a general initial reduction in response to all other stimuli.
H: We then enter adreno-cortical dominance, hyper-reactivity (and hyper-activity), similar to (E), but externally directed as behaviour.
K: At some point the organism is overwhelmed by a combination of total demands, and reduces its total reactivity to everything by submitting and entering a trajectory that goes a smaller or lesser degree towards hibernation.
