Managing stress is an important part of healing but it can be one of the most challenging steps we take to manage illness and disease. A life coach can help.
Typical scenario: You go to the doctor for some minor symptom. The doctor prescribes a treatment and advises that you decrease stress. We all know by now that stress contributes to illness and disease, right?
The problem: You’ve tried everything and you just can’t relax and de-stress.
I typically hear, "I tried meditation but I can’t turn my brain off.” "I don't have time to relax and I can't sit still anyway." "I try to get to bed on time but I can't fall asleep with racing thoughts about my to-do list."
You start saying things like, “This is just how I am,” as if your physiology is somehow different.
It’s not. All bodies want to be regulated. We’re designed for stress but we require recovery as well. This natural rhythm is called homeostasis.
The Autonomic Nervous System
When stress happens our bodies naturally go into a sympathetic response (fight or flight) to fortify our ability to deal with the stressor. Then when the stressor is removed, our bodies naturally normalize with the parasympathetic response which fortifies our ability to recover (rest, digest and heal.)
But when you’ve revved the engine so hard for so long and you're living your life in a state of worrying, overthinking, isolating, people pleasing, urgency, perfectionism, vigilance, taking on too much, lack of connection with the body, needing to figure out & fix, prioritizing other's needs, chronic busy-ness...
...and your dominant emotions include frustration, overwhelm, anxiety, fear, hopelessness, confusion, shame, not good enough, abandonment, anger, intolerance and disconnection...
you don’t give your body that necessary opportunity to adequately normalize. Your nervous system becomes sympathetic dominant and your body no longer drops into a parasympathetic state deep enough or for long enough to adequately rest, digest, repair and heal.
And oftentimes, your health begins to decline. You might experience minor symptoms at first, like indigestion, skin issues, high blood pressure, fatigue, or weight gain. These symptoms might come and go, or you might take medicine to manage them. You might join the crowd and say things like, "Well, it sucks getting old!”
But another likely truth is that you’ve developed a habit of living from this jacked up set point so your body can’t adequately take care of itself. And this is so important because minor symptoms can turn chronic and ultimately into something more serious. For me, it was cancer.
Yes, modern medicine has many incredible interventions to throw at us. But ultimately our body must respond, and no intervention is successful without the body’s immune system and natural healing ability in partnership.
So why is it so hard to reduce stress in our lives? We all want to feel good and be healthy, and it’s not hard to see how stress isn’t doing us any favors.
Well if you look around, you’ll find that the modern world is not supportive of us making healthful choices.
Our culture values productivity, speed, achievement, and sacrifice. When this pace creates stress, the world offers us a menu of quick fixes to feel better: processed food, alcohol, shopping, drugs, porn, and ways to cover up as opposed to get to the root of our issues. These fixes come with a concentrated hit of feel good chemicals like dopamine which might offer temporary relief from your stress, but over time you need more and more to feel the same pleasure and relief. Some of us create a new problem when the habit we use to buffer from our stress becomes its own health challenge, like alcoholism or obesity.
And then there’s the issue of stress chemicals. Our systems are so depleted that we actually come to rely on cortisol and adrenaline, the chemicals of stress, just to be aroused and alert. So we unwittingly perpetuate the manufacturing of more pressure, more drama, more stress, and more sacrifice to keep going.
Somewhere in this soup we start to believe, “This is just how it is,” and “This is just who I am.”
But the truth is, you’ve just practiced patterns and created habits that you now claim as your identity. These patterns and habits are reversible and you are perfectly capable of de-stressing and finding balance in your nervous system.
With awareness and some new skills your body and brain can relearn the relaxation response and finally get the rest, ease, balance, and healing that you deserve.
In the parasympathetic state you will feel calm, relaxed, rested, creative, playful, and rational. You can easily access your resourcefulness and your body's innate ability to heal. The more time you spend in a parasympathetic nervous state, the healthier you are.
So let’s do this. Let’s maximize your nervous system’s ability to support healing now.
I can show you how.