How Nature Deals with Stress - A lesson of nature mirroring human capacity

How Nature Deals with Stress

A lesson of nature mirroring human capacity

Nature has many lessons that we humans can surely benefit from, especially today. One of the more critical lessons that can help us manage these times is to understand how stress is a natural process in nature as well as a natural emotion for humans to experience. How does stress exist in nature? And how can humans apply these lessons to our own navigation through life?

Let’s take plants as a great example…

In the science world, plants are often referred to as sessile. Meaning, they are “planted” in one place for their entire lives. They aren’t mobile. So how do they survive the phases of growth, survival, and reproduction? Well, we all know the process of pollination and yes, that is a process in nature where plants can still reproduce and be sessile. In essence, what is happening is that they’ve adapted ways to live through all of the phases of the cycle of life because they are sessile.

For example, in the tropics you might see large green leaves with huge gaping holes in the middle. This is the plant’s adaptation to avoid water logging that causes rot and breakage from heavy rain. Succulents have water filled, thick leaves to store water in their dry arid environments. When you examine seeds, different seeds have adapted different needs in order to germinate. One seed might need to freeze before it germinates, another might need fire to crack open its hard shell because those are common ecosystems in their environment. How does this relate to us humans and our behaviors?

Tropical leaf naturally grows with holes

A flowering stone plant where leaves look like stones

A closed pine cone will open up, exposing seeds after a fire

Now, the adaptations in plants form after thousands and thousands of years and many, many generations. But that’s not to say that we, as humans (who often think about how to adapt to life’s challenges as something that needs to happen NOW, or within one single lifetime) can’t use this process of adaptation to our own lives. How so?

“We create our belief systems, we are influenced by our life stories, our mindsets become those things and we hold onto them. But when the world around us starts changing our mindsets can often leave us feeling stuck. And the work of getting “unstuck” often means that we need to change something about our mindsets, or adapt to the situation. ”

Well, take the elements that cause these adaptations in the plants above. In the tropics the threat to the leaf is water logging that can lead to rot and death, the stone plant is threatened by lack of water, and the pine cone can’t reproduce if there isn’t fire. All of these elements; too much water, not enough water, fire suppression are all STRESSORS in the environment that are needed in order to get to the next phase of growth and development.

In Ecology all of these adaptations are actually a result of those plants having environmental stressors imposed on them. In plants, over a long period of time, if the plant species goes through the same stressors over many generations, an adaptation is born which is then passed down to the next generation.

Now lets pause and think about how this can apply to our, single lifetime experience, as humans when it comes to the stressors in our lives…

If you think about our mind, or even better...our mindsets. It can often feel pretty sessile, or stuck in one place or state of mind when we’re stressed out. Usually it’s the negative thoughts or anxiety that stifles us and makes us “sessile”. These situations may not be a matter of life and death (or can it?), but they are definitely situations where a “stressor” is presented to us and we have to figure out a way to either adapt to it or flee the situation.

I believe this a mirroring of the experience of stress in plants to the stressors we humans experience in order to survive our daily environments:

Many of the STRESSORS in our social environment are those in which we can’t immediately run away from so we end up having to figure out how to live with them or resolve our position in them. We adapt. And some of these adaptations can change our environment over time; think the resilience from trauma.

So, what in your environment is a stressor?

How are you managing being around these stressors to survive the day?

What ‘way of being’ will you have to adapt into that will support you in growing from the situation?

The stressors can have an accumulative effects from social pressures, racism, challenges in relationships, difficult financial situations, all of that. We tend to focus on the bad stuff that is happening to us, which can leave us stifled and ‘sessile’. And we can also look back to the ecological, nature’s view of stress to know how to move through the stressors and feeling of being stuck.

Stress (or stressors) are actually those signs we have in life that something is happening and is calling us to adapt. Something is happening that needs some attention because a change is about to happen, or needs to happen. And only then, when the stressors make themselves known is when we can find and name what’s happening in our experience to find the next step towards evolving.

Our ABILITY to adapt is what makes us RESILIENT beings. We can get through the challenges, we can learn how to manage the situation, we CAN adapt. But in order to reach resilience we must understand the FUNCTION of stress in our lives.

So, circling back I hope you’re able to see clear similarities between plant ecology and human behavior. It’s a lesson that’s helped me sit better with the stressful times in life, to remind myself that I am adaptable and resilient that keep me grounded.

What tools do you use to tap into your ability to adapt to challenging situations or situations where stressors are present?

Let me know by leaving a comment below!

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