Marian Rojas-Estapé: «The human being is not designed to live in alert mode»

Marian Rojas-Estapé is the author of one of the books of the year: a title that speaks for itself and invites you to live life in a positive way.

For some time, this well-known psychiatrist, daughter of Enrique Rojas, is particularly concerned with the union between body and mind and study both fields to understand the human behavior and its diseases.

Recognizes that it is essential to know how to manage our emotions, and in his first solo book he wants to help us all understand our brain, manage our emotions and, ultimately, improve our lives.

MAPFRE has been able to share confidences with Mariam Rojas-Estapé and discuss matters as interesting as the personality of each and how it influences our day to day, happiness or alert mode where most of us find ourselves.

Alert mode

Humans are not designed to live in alert mode, threat mode, or survival mode for their entire lives. It is designed to connect and pay attention to the good things or the bad things that happen in our day to day. It is designed to connect with your interior, let's call it meditation, transcendence, reflection or introspection, but the human being has to do that, because it is healthy.

How does it influence the nervous system?

There are two nervous systems that function in the body: the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. The first is the alert mode, the cortisol mode; the second is introspection, meditation,, rest, vacations (when one rests).

What we need is to have a functioning sympathetic nervous system to deal with a threat and when that happens, regain calm mode so that all my immune system and my whole organism recovers and returns to the sympathetic nervous system.

If I constantly live in a nice way, I get sick. We are not designed to be this way.

What is chronopathy?

Chronopathy is the way we have to manage time: chronos time and ducks, disease. It occurs when one constantly needs to do things and it is very difficult for us to brake ... there are people who have trouble braking on weekends or on vacations and feel more comfortable in a hectic pace of work.

 Does the digital world affect chronopathy?

It has many positive things, but what constantly reaches us are alerts, that is, I am calmly at my work and alerts begin to arrive that may be that something has happened to a child of mine at school or from a completely tertiary group in which they send me a video, but my alert system kicks in and then I don't relax.

What we have to teach our brain today is to slow down and stop so that we don't get so sick.

The personality

There are people who are more depressed, they are more anxious, they are much more sensitive, everything affects them more, they cry more, there are people who are colder… and the personality can be molded and it can be worked on, but you have to try to be aware of it. Try to work that there are things that can be improved or that can help me.

There are very nervous people who have to learn to live with anxiety because it may never disappear, there are people who come from very dramatic stories, who have suffered a lot and have that tinge of sadness always in their life or bitterness and that what they have to do is fight or in some moments stick their heads out a little more so that this bitterness does not invade your entire life, your entire organism, and your entire health.

The happiness

I think we have to learn to remove that obsession with happiness, because what we have to learn is to, suffering and stress to be able to enjoy the good things in life.