Mindfulness of Cortisol

Cortisol is your best friend and worst enemy.

It’s probably saved your life, if you’ve ever had to make quick decisions in danger. It’s your “fight or flight” hormone, secreted by your adrenal gland (just above your kidneys) when the brain tells it that peril is near. 

You know the effects. Your heartbeat increases. Your body tenses up, ready to pounce or flee. And your mind goes a mile a minute, optimized to process as much information as possible to save you from…

Oh.

To save you from that tweet. Or that email. Or that comment on Facebook.

That’s the trouble with cortisol. Evolved to save us from sabre-tooth tigers, now the body releases it whenever there’s a provocation, creating stress and anger in the short term; anxiety, depression, and heart disease over the long term.

And 2020 has really been the year of cortisol, hasn’t it.

Fortunately, 2,500 years after the invention of mindfulness, I hereby introduce a new form of it called Mindfulness of Cortisol. Here’s how it works.

1. Seeing Cortisol as Cortisol

First, suppose you’re laying in bed, having listened to one of Ten Percent’s lovely sleep meditations, and drifting off into dreamland. Then, you think of something that politician said.

Suddenly – pow! You are wide awake. (One of the things cortisol does is help jolt you awake in the morning.) Perhaps you are now thinking many thoughts: about the politician, about how afraid you are, maybe about how lousy you are at meditating because you couldn’t fall asleep.

When this happens to me lately, here’s what I do. I say, to myself, “Cortisol.”

That’s it. I don’t take the bait. I don’t believe the thought. I just notice that I am experiencing the effects of cortisol, and that they are not helpful right now, so how about I let the thought go.

By simply labeling the experience as “cortisol,” I avoid judging myself for having it, or justifying it, or feeding it. I just see it for what it is, and let go.

Because, of course, it’s not that thinking about politics is bad – it’s actually quite important. And to paraphrase a famous t-shirt, if you’re not stressed out, you’re not paying attention. 

But maybe not in bed. 

In fact, the less energy I waste on pointless rumination, the more I have for doing things that might actually make an impact. 

2. Cortisol is not “Me”

Second, labeling stressful experiences as “cortisol” reinforces the message that this is simply something happening to the mind-body system. It’s cause and effect. I think a particular thought, the adrenal gland releases cortisol, and now the body is feeling the effects of stress, anxiety, fear, or anger. 

This is the core Buddhist insight of “non-self” – that things we take to be I, me, or mine, are really just cause-and-effect phenomena, rolling on as they do. The conditions are present for anger – anger arises.

After all, what is cortisol, really? On one level, it’s just C21H30O5. It’s a chemical. For all the drama, it’s a drug. 

Now, that’s not to denigrate the pain you might be feeling these days, or the urgency of voting, getting everyone you know to vote, and donating a lot of money to help even more people vote despite efforts some are making to stop them. All of that is true too.

But seeing the “emptiness of cortisol,” as I like to call it, provides a helpful, healing reminder about what is happening, and how I can relate to it with some compassion and self-care.

3. Some Compassion for the Pathos and Tragedy of Human Existence

Which leads to my final practice of Mindfulness of Cortisol, which is about compassion.

Cortisol is often profoundly painful and deeply destructive. Yes, some people thrive on it, and sometimes, I’m one of those people. But a lot of the time, cortisol is a big pile of suffering. It hurts to be flooded by it, and nearly every human being on the planet has had that experience.

That has several consequences for how I think and act.

When I see someone – even that politician and his ardent followers – manifesting signs of cortisol overdose, I can demystify it, seeing it with both wisdom (just a chemical, cause-and-effect phenomenon) and compassion (this is suffering, and causing even more suffering in other people). I can relate to the tragedy and the pathos of it all. It’s part of the human condition, and I’ve been there.

On the other hand, when I see myself about to act under the influence of cortisol, I can be Mindful of Cortisol and Just. Not. Do. It. Not reply to the hater, not comment on the thread, not send the vituperative email.

And in so doing, not continue to perpetuate our society’s insane glorification of cortisol-intoxication and toxic masculinity as signs of strength or moral rectitude. It isn’t, dude. You’re just high on cortisol.

And again, often the dude is me.

Once again, this is not to say that rage is never justified or that anger is somehow bad. On the contrary, the experience of cortisol is to be accepted with compassion and seen clearly for what it is. As we saw in the uprisings this past summer, sometimes it is entirely appropriate, wise, and skillful, to speak and act from these emotions. To hand them the mic, so to speak.

But with Mindfulness of Cortisol, I can reassert some agency over when that happens. I don’t have to be a marionette controlled by a hormonal puppeteer. I can listen to the better angels of my nature – by which I mean, the parts of the pre-frontal cortex that aren’t under cortisol’s influence and which might help us all get along a little better. 

That seems like a good idea right now.