Stress
Stress is all around us every day; it bombards us from all directions. Maybe you feel stressed when sitting in the midst of a traffic jam on the motorway, when you are already late for an important appointment or when you realize you forgot to pay a bill. It could be any annoying little stress trigger that we have to handle every day.
What about the larger issues? Relationship problems, reaching retirement age, moving house, divorce or the death of a loved one or friend. These things can cause a great deal of stress and sometimes come when we least expect it, launching you into the depths of despair one more time.
The impression is that the feelings of stress come from outside sources when, in reality, it happens inside of us.
When we feel as though we are under pressure, our blood pressure rises, our muscles tighten and our breathing accelerates. These physical symptoms are generally referred to as “fight or flight” responses. This is a term left over from prehistoric times when the caveman had to decide whether to stand and fight the woolly mammoth that was chasing him or just run away.
Unfortunately, today we don’t have those options. Each situation must be dealt with and that’s where the stress comes in. Some stress is unavoidable and is actually good for you as we will discuss further on. But too much stress leads to troubles that can range from upset stomach to anxiety attacks and even physiological problems as we will learn.
What are the different types of Stress?
There are many different types of stress – some good and some bad.
An example of good stress would be the adrenaline rush before a presentation or job interview, before taking part in a sporting event, or an actor waiting in the wings to come onto the stage. This adrenaline rush gives you the edge.
But there are some bad signs of stress such as fear of something dangerous – if it’s a genuine danger its good because that’s our protection mechanism. However, if it’s only a perceived danger or an irrational fear then it is not like a phobia and that is bad stress.
Internal Stress is when you’re constantly worrying about things such as your family or your job even though you can do nothing about or there is no real reason, in other words you’re making yourself stressed.
Survival Stress is when your body reacts to stress by releasing chemicals into your blood. These chemicals cause your body to go into ‘fight or flight’ mode that we discussed earlier and have the result of giving you more energy and strength. Cortisol is the stress hormone that is released.
Environmental Stress – when you are constantly surrounded by noise, being over crowded, or having pressure at work or at home.
Fatigue and overwork – This kind of stress can build up over a period of time and takes a hard toll on your body.
One of the main threads through people suffering from stress and anxiety is time demand by other people. Perhaps you struggle to be assertive and say no to other people’s demands.
What is Stress?
Stress is a condition that your body enters as the result of a message received from your brain telling it to prepare to run or fight, which we learned about earlier. The brain tells the adrenal glands to send a rush of two hormones (adrenaline and noradrenalin) to the muscles in preparation for them to respond to a fear or a threat.
It is the job of the brain to protect the body. It accomplishes this by telling the noradrenalin to redirect blood flow from lower priority areas of your body (like skin or your abdomen) to the muscles to give you a “power boost.”
At the same time, the brain is also telling the adrenaline to speed up you’re breathing to take in more oxygen to feed the work being done on the muscles with the noradrenalin.
Unfortunately, when you can’t make a decision about how to react (either fight or run away), these two hormones are caught in limbo, rushing around madly waiting for you to decide what you want them to do. Since you aren’t doing that, the only choice they have is to cause physical problems – possibly vomiting, make you tremble, panic or maybe you might even pass out.
What is needed is the ability to change our programmed responses. We need to discern the difference between real threats and our own internalized perceptions of danger.
That may sound pretty simple until you’re sitting in that motorway traffic jam, half an hour late for the most important career busting appointment of your life, knowing full well that your boss will turn the account over to that idiot in the office and you’ll never get the salary increase you were counting on when your son starts college in. … whew!
Here come the chemicals adrenaline and noradrenalin ready to do battle with no battle to go to. They’re rushing through your body and have got to attack something. Your muscles aren’t responding by running or fighting so they’ll just pick any old organ to attack instead.
A good one is the heart.
So, here is the paradox. You need the chemical to protect you from real danger but you don’t need them to cause illness, unhappiness and stress. Continuous releasing of Cortisol into our bodily systems has an impact on all over hormones, which can be a disaster for
Peri Menopausal and Menopausal women.
Physical and Mental signs of stress
What happens to us when we are stressed?
Unfortunately, if we are under stress, we tend to ignore warning signs like aches and pains in our bodies. Although if a warning light came on in your car you would take it in to get it checked out, or you would even take your car in for a service when there’s nothing wrong with it. But very often we can override these sign and signals especially if we are juggling busy lives.
If left untreated or unmanaged these symptoms can lead to many physiological issues such as IBS, skin complaints, fibromyalgia, MS, heart disease, high blood pressure, strokes to name but a few, and you’re more likely to catch illnesses like colds and flu etc. (because fight and flights has an adverse effect on the immune system)
Stress is one of the main causes of death today. You might think that it is cancer, or heart disease, but how do you think they start? Stress is present in all areas of your life, and you have probably become so used to it that you’re unaware of its constant presence.
How can Hypnotherapy help manage stress?
As a hypnotherapist I can teach you self-hypnosis so that you can use this on a daily basis to slow down you’re breathing and severely reduce the flight and fight response, thus reducing Cortisol levels. Cortisol is needed to help us get up in the morning but if we are too stressed you may ‘feel wired’ and not be unable to sleep. It is so crucial to our help to really support our emotional and psychological health in order to positively impact our physical well-being.
You book yourself into one of the relaxation packages or work with me on a one-to-one basis.
Hypnosis works on lowering your brain waves to alter your focus, so away from the stresses of everyday life. But it takes much further, much deeper, it works at the core level of your subconscious mind where all your memories are stored like a huge library. I will work with you to identify triggers, reduce and possibly even eliminate stress and these triggers along with new positive intentions.
Stress and Menopause
It is absolutely crucial for hormonal balancing to manage stress, it only takes one to be out of line and it impacts everything else.
