Can you say stressed? Navigating stress can be hard on so many levels. Sometimes we don’t even know how stressed we are until the body literally shuts down, or you start noticing weird symptoms that don’t make sense, the brain slows down, you start feeling forgetful, you notice you can’t tolerate certain foods that you once could so easily before, your body needs much more rest, or maybe your performance athletically is lacking. So what do we do, usually we end up doing more, not less, when what we actually need to do, is less, recover, and listen. We need to find out what and how to calm our “insides” and how we can correct the stress from spinning out every further. Stress is good to a degree, it helps us pay attention, motivates us, enhances performance, in the short term, however, in the long term, it becomes damaging. Being chronically stressed can literally make you sick, and you start to feel the effects in the body with physical symptoms, chest pain, headaches, stomach upset, trouble sleeping, high blood pressure, hormones fluctuating, concentration declines, feeling completely unfocused, having uncontrollable racing thoughts, or constant worry. Getting “rid” of stress is interesting…yes we can support the body, but in my line of work I love to dig in and actually look at the cause of what making us so stressed and see if we can find the solution to bring back balance and homeostasis.
Here are some great ideas to help alleviate the stress in the body.
- Exercise, even though exercise causes stress and inflammation, it can also help reduce and level out stress by letting go of some bound-up energy.
- Meditating, we have all heard this, and I can’t tell you, as you most likely already know, who can meditate with a racing-crazy-monkey-mind popping all over the place, so we practice meditation even more. Start with a timer and shoot for 5 mins, then add more time and progress, count you breaths and repeat silently to yourself, inhale, exhale, to keep the mind focused on something other that those yo-yo thoughts.
- Getting enough sleep overnight. This doesn’t mean, oh well I’ll just nap today since I only got 5-6 hours. It means focus on getting the full nights rest (7-9 hours) each night, AND have a nap on top of that if needed.
- Journaling, I love this, and it’s my go to, I get it all down on paper, I can then crumble it all up and throw it out, burn it, or re-read it later to really emphasize what needs to be voiced.
- I want to add on here, we can also “sit” with these emotions and by writing them down we can see where our direction is going, but once you have the feeling in the body, sit with it and feel it. It will move through the body in 90 seconds and then it changes into either another emotion or completely dissipates away. However, if we don’t sit with it and feel it, it gets ignored and “pushed under the rug” only to be brought up later from the body, saying “here I am again, you ignored me but I’m still here.” Our emotions need to be addressed, felt, then loved.
We all have times of stress, feeling out of control, and most of the time the stress relaxes once the stressful situation has been addressed. But what happens when we actually don’t know how much the stress is building up in the body. This creates a whole new type of stressful situations and escalates things a lot faster. I wanted to share my story of my last year or so. Can you say stressed? Oh yes I can. AND I really didn’t realize how it effected me until these past few days, I am still working with it, letting it all come to the surface, feeling all the feelings, and allowing them to grow and then dissipate right in front of my eyes. I am sleeping when I need to, and making sure I am eating better than well, and bringing in all the stress-related techniques that I know of, infrared sauna, hot epson salt baths, journalling, breath work, massage, yoga Nidra, I’ve pulled out all the stops.
My story:
I have been living with nerve pain for over a year now, I have lived this life before many times, as I have previously have had 3 back surgeries in my life already, so I know the drill. I have experienced this pain before, but what I am not recognizing is that this type of pain, my body remembers. It’s incredible really, I feel like I am back with my previous thoughts and feelings, like I was when I was 17 (my first surgery) then again 11 years later at my second one, and then 4 years after that when they needed to fuse my L4-L5. That recovery was beyond long, emotional, and painful. So here I am now remembering it all, like it was yesterday. Getting prepared this time around has been a huge feat. When the surgery was cancelled in Nov, due to a conflict with the hospital, I have to say I was relieved. I was like, phew, I can wait a few more months to really prepare, and make sure I can go through this again. (I am having another fusion, this time of L5-S1) As it gets closer and closer to my Feb 15th date, not only do I have to prepare the house, my dogs, my bathroom (higher toilet seat, chair in the shower, everything accessible at my height) because I won’t be able to lift, twist, or bend for over a month, and knowing the first few days out of this surgery will most likely be as grueling for me as the last time. I’m on high alert, and noticing things are starting to make me cry at the drop of a hat, my emotions were escalating, feeling scared, anxious, racing thoughts, am I doing the right thing, what if it’s worse on the other end, will I enough have support at home, how will I get food, will the dogs be ok, etc, etc. Around Feb 9th I became ready. I was clear, this was my decision. (I was so nervous, I still was constantly playing games with myself, trying to see if I could just live with the nerve irritation) But what happened was I got my power back, I realized I was enough, I was “worth it” to feel less pain. I was worthy of self and to be able to go for a run again, or a walk/hike without having to rest for many days afterwards because the nerve was so inflamed. Then came the day, Feb 14th, the day before. I had the house ready, my clients all understanding I would be taking many weeks off to recover, neighbors helping for food runs, husband was getting time off for me, things were all in place, I had even given myself a few days of quarantine to stay out of any viruses way, even by sleeping in the other bedroom, to not contract anything my husband might possibly pick up. I never heard anything from my Docs office, they said the hospital would call me to tell me my scheduled time. I called throughout the day just getting the same message of, the nurse will call you and the hospital will also call you with a scheduled time. Nothing…until…
I was feeling forgotten, and I am correct. They forgot to schedule it. Disappointment, anger, rage, sadness, doubt, loss, dejection, and now numb. Trying to wrap my head around what I just heard over the phone. Wait you forgot? And yes the apology was genuine, and I understand mistakes happen, and it happened to me. These past few days I have had a front row seat to stress and what the body does…I never realized how much I was under and how I was coping, I even woke up in the middle of the night before my supposed surgery, literally throwing up in my mouth/throat, I was super asleep and shot out of bed with burning in my throat. I wasn’t nauseous, I was asleep, sound asleep. I also have recognized my hair has thinned out so much these past few months, and these past few days have been ridiculous. I literally look like I’ve had 2 inches cut off my hair…I need to reel my life back in, I now have 3 more months to do round 3 of preparation. I am grateful I am not in as much pain as I was in a few months ago. And I have forgiven, I am not angry, however, I am still numb, and tears are still flowing, and I know there was a reason, one that I may or may not ever know, but I know it’s all going to be ok. I need to reset my feelings, my ideas, my thoughts, because no one can live in this kind of a stressed state. There is no point in staying angry, it gets me no where. I have a whole new awareness for the stressed out. For the ones who just can’t get out of that stressed state, caring for a loved one, in a turmoil relationship, a job, any time in life that you feel you can’t get out of it…but, what we can do is change the way we think. We can take our power back and recognize how loving and caring we are, and it will spill out onto others, and then we find peace. We of course need to nurture ourselves in the meantime. It’s when we ignore ourselves, we put on a mask, we don’t look at our feelings, we run away from what is bubbling up.
Can you say stressed? yes. Can we stay stressed? yes. Can we change our thoughts? yes. Can we move into peace? yes. We can still have stress happening in our lives, and when we master ourselves, we can live in the calm, present moment with the chaos happening around us while still managing to be in alignment. It’s called practice. A forever practice.
