Stress - The Final Frontier
With the increasing external pressures in the world – wars, COVID, uncertain economy and skyrocketing costs of living (to name just a few) – stress has become an epidemic in its own right, insidiously embedding itself in our mind and body. Fear, anxiety, inability to cope with challenging situations and disconnection from spiritual guidance have a firm grip on our being, pointing to the bogyman waiting for us in every corner.
Due to its nature and impact, stress creates a vicious cycle detrimental to our health: more issues – more stress which creates more issues - creating more stress - and so it goes.
We must find a circuit breaker, or we won’t live very long.
Stress is an important part of our biology. It serves a purpose when we are faced with a life threatening situation; the sympathetic nervous system kicks in, taking control of all body functions preparing us to fight, flight or freeze in a blink of an eye. Once the threat is gone, the parasympathetic system is activated, counteracting the effects of stress and restoring the body back to its normal state.
When our stress response becomes frequent, almost regular to many false alarms - situations that don’t threaten our life in that very instant - the body doesn’t have the time to recover from one stress response before the next one is triggered, and soon we develop chronic stress – which transforms from our key survival mechanism to an insidious, deadly, self-sabotaging machine.
The title of this post is not incidental, by the way. Stress can kill – either quickly and directly through a heart attack or stroke, or slowly and indirectly by affecting our organs and systems creating illness, aging and disease, all of which can lead to premature death.
So let’s have look at the three main types of stress and their triggers:
Physical stress - caused by injury, illness, infection, surgery; exhaustion; extreme temperatures, sound, light and sun overexposure; lack of sleep; starvation; dehydration; poor oxygenation; obesity.
Chemical stress – caused by malnutrition, lack of essential vitamins and minerals; toxins from food, water and the environment; hormonal imbalance; drugs (legal and illicit); alcohol, smoking, vaping; vaccinations, excessive acidity in the body.
Emotional stress – caused by negative thoughts and emotions both expressed and bottled up.
These main types of stress are closely related and intersect with each other, affecting our whole being. It’s also worth noting that these stresses manifest at different levels.
Physical stress is the easiest to spot and deal with – we know when we are injured, got hypothermia or didn’t get enough sleep.
Chemical stress is less obvious, often developing over time - unless you get food poisoning or drug overdose and end up in hospital.
Emotional stress is a double edge sword; a coin you are playing the Russian Roulette with as you never know what the outcome will be. It creates both the physical and chemical stress, and so it is effectively a Master Stress.
Put simply - emotional stress is your kryptonite - so let’s focus on this one.
I propose that there are three main categories of emotional stress linked to the passage of time:
Firstly – worry, fear and anxiety about the FUTURE.
Secondly - negative emotional attachment to the PAST - with guilt, shame, anger, blame, hatred, depression and grief.
And finally, negative emotional reactions in the NOW which show our inability to effectively deal with PRESENT situations such as:
People pushing our ego buttons (traffic, conflicts, delays, undesired outcomes)
Challenging situations with long term effect arising unexpectedly in relation to health, family, relationship, finances or career
Short term challenges such as an overwhelm, pressure, deadlines and being stuck on the problem with no solution in sight
Negative self-talk, poor self-confidence and self-esteem
These emotion include: impatience, frustration, anger, rage, anxiety, worry, depression, self-deprecation and fear.
It is important to understand that except for life-threatening situations when our nervous system is in charge, our emotional stress response to life is conditional - which means that we are in control. By changing the meaning of the triggers we can stop those false alarms.
So, how can we keep emotional stress under control?
Do not dwell on your past negative experiences - the past is gone and your can’t change it. You are wasting your time and energy.
Do not worry about the future - you don’t know what will happen so it’s pointless.
To increase your stress resilience in face of the current challenges, I will give you five very useful hacks:
Take time out (me time) regularly. Don’t skip your vacation!
Take care of any unresolved negative emotions and traumas. Seek professional help if needed.
Adopt a positive, kind and accepting attitude towards life (and people). Sadly, not everything will go your way and not everyone is on the same page with you - learn to live with it (as hard as it may be).
Breathe. Deeply and slowly. The more stressful the situation, the deeper and slower your breathing should be. Learn mindfulness and meditation. It’s not rocket science.
Connect with your spiritual guidance. Listen to your intuition (meaning hear it and then follow through) and ask for help.
While short stress response is normal and necessary as a survival mechanism, keeping chronic stress to the bare minimum is of paramount importance, given its ill long-term effects on our mind and body. I call stress The Final Frontier. Why?
Stress has been long recognised as a contributing factor in many health problems that people suffer from. I would like to radically expand on this view and propose that stress is the cause of ALL imbalance in the body. That’s right – the very cause, direct or indirect, due to the impact on the body of stress hormones (adrenaline, cortisol and others) secreted during stress and their flow-on effects afterwards.
I recommend that if you have any health issues other than a physical injury - examine and closely monitor your stress level for about four weeks or so, and do everything you can to bring it down.
You may be familiar with the colloquial phrase used to calm down an anxious person - Don’t fret! or Stop fretting!. Well, this is literally true. Stress hormones shorten the very important DNA–protein structures called telomeres, found at both ends of each chromosome protecting it from degradation, which determines the life span of the cells hence our physical body. They are like the plastic ends on your shoelaces. Once they are gone, the shoelaces will fret and soon disintegrate.
Finally, it is not a well-known fact that chronic stress creates an addiction to stress hormones in the body, which then craves those hormones pushing us to create more stress - thus continuing the vicious cycle. Emotional addictions (including to stress) is a whole new subject I teach and help people with in my Quantum Coaching programs.
This case study will illustrate my point:
Half way through the Program addressing her anxiety issues, my client admitted bravely: Now that my problems are gone and things have improved in my life, I worry, I really worry that I have nothing to worry about!
True story.
Needless to say, we knew what to focus on for the remainder of her Program.
This is an excerpt from my Quantum Living podcast episode Stress - The Final Frontier. You can listen to the full episode on my podcast website.
If you enjoy my writing and would like to reward it, please use my secure Tip Jar below. Thank you!