4 Physical symptoms
When you’re faced with a difficult and stressful situation with maths, you may respond in a number of different ways. You may experience physical symptoms such as increased heart rate, feeling flushed, headaches, among many others.
Why do some people feel this way?
Stressful situations can trigger a ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response. Fight-or-flight reactions are particularly useful responses to physical danger as they prepare the body to either fight back or run away from a threat, but sometimes we experience a freeze response. This is when a person finds themselves frozen to the spot, unable to move. The freeze response has an evolutionary history, being deeply hardwired into us to help keep us safe around predators – when we freeze and blend into the background, a wild animal may not see us and will instead keep walking by.
In order to get the body ready to fight or run away, one of the responses of the brain is to trigger an increase in adrenaline levels, via activation of the sympathetic nervous system (the arousing part of the nervous system). This response is triggered by a region of the brain known as the limbic system. This results in a number of physical effects, including increased heart rate, opening up of airways in the lungs and a faster breathing rate. It also causes sweating and a dry mouth. As a consequence of the activation of the sympathetic nervous system, there is increased blood flow and more oxygen supplied to muscles, enabling them to work harder, and hence helping the person to take action. Cortisol and other stress hormones are then released, which can result in increased blood glucose levels, providing energy for fighting or fleeing. One other consequence of the stress response is a disruption of normal activity in an area of the brain known as the prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain is essential for thinking and problem-solving. When its activity is disrupted, it can result in the mind going blank. When the threat has passed, adrenaline, cortisol and other stress hormone levels will fall, and the parasympathetic nervous system (the calming part of the nervous system) will be activated to help continue to calm the body down.
These responses are effective for action in a dangerous situation, but they can be counterproductive in other circumstances. When we experience emotional stress (such as maths anxiety) that our body perceives as a threat, we experience the physical symptoms as described above, such as increased heart rate and sweating. We may also experience the feeling that our mind goes blank at times, and that we can’t access information that we have repeatedly practised. In more extreme cases, we may even experience a freeze response where we are unable to move at all.
Different parts of the brain were mentioned in the processes described here – let’s look at these in a little more detail.