Chronic stress can make you sick.I think we are at a point where most people would agree with that statement. Another way of saying that statement is; We can make ourselves sick.
Because it is not the outside events or our interactions with the world that are causing the majority of stress in our modern lives but the way we interpret and respond to them.
I am re-reading an amazing book called Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky which talks about the science behind our stress response and it goes into detail about the chemical responses and physiological actions that take place within our bodies in response to stress.
This book also talks a lot about how the systems within us that respond to stress are based on our ancestral need to survive in a more aggressive world and not so much needed to deal with our perceived stressors in our modern daily life.
The statement that we can make ourselves sick ( I think we all have heard the comment, “I worried myself sick about…”) is one that modern science has shined a large light on in the past few decades and is now widely understood and accepted.
The flip side to that coin, which has not received as much acceptance yet, is that we can also make ourselves well/keep ourselves healthy.
Before I go any further with this section let me say that this information or the work that I do is “not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.”
There has been tremendous amounts of work done in the field of Body/Mind science that has shown how this works. The work continues on and the field is always expanding as modern science catches up with and finds explanations for work that has been around for centuries.
If you looked at a large portion of the prescription medications that are prescribed you would see that they mimic chemicals that our bodies already make. When there is an imbalance in our systems then we do not make either enough of the chemical, too much of another chemical or it doesn’t “arrive” at the correct time in our systems. This is, of course, an oversimplification of a very complicated subject but it is for the sake of overview.
By relieving our stress we can remove a lot of the issues that are showing up in our systems in negative ways.
We can do that through several different modalities. We can work to change our reaction/interaction with the outside world so we do not see danger where it may not be.
We can also do things such as meditation and other processes that help calm our nervous system and allow it to operate in a way that supports our lives in a positive and safe way.
The majority of the work I do in this area is based on working with the unconscious mind and clearing patterns (negative emotions, Limiting decisions/beliefs) from the past that are causing the client to have reactions to their world that are showing up as stress and anxiety. Two of the biggest contributors to making us sick and unhealthy.
There is deeper work going on that looks into how our past significant emotional events show up in different negative ways in our bodies later in life. I will let that work speak for itself.
This article is not to speak negatively about modern allopathic medicine practices or pharmacology. They do amazing things for our world, including helping to extend our life expectancy and saving many lives every day.
My goal is to share that there are other ways for all of us to live a healthy and long life.
If you are interested in learning more about any of these processes, please reach out and I would enjoy discussing them with you.
I am including the titles of several books that I recommend reading that I have found to shine a bright light on these practices and explain how they can help all of us live happier and healthier lives. They range from the very scientific to the more esoteric so you can find what fits best with your interests.
You may notice several of the titles mention “healing”.
Healing is not curing.
Healing is about re-establishing a lost connection and I will save that discussion for another article.