Do you describe yourself as smart, responsible and strategic in most circumstances? How to know when stress becomes a problem you must address. Stress can cause your mind to shut down, your emotions to trigger easily, your body fatigues and you lack passion for the things that once gave you satisfaction and joy. Often times the subtle signs of stress are ignored as you power through your day. Your stomach’s warning that you are not digesting your food properly is not heeded. You know you need to do something to manage stress when you do stupid things, become careless or clumsy, too.
A Big Stress or a Little Stress.
The human body doesn’t discriminate between a BIG stress or a little one. Regardless of the significance, stress affects the body in predictable ways. A typical stress reaction, which most of us experience dozens of times each day, begins with a cascade of 1,400 biochemical events in your body. If you ignore these reactions you age prematurely, your cognitive function is impaired, your energy is drained, and you are robbed of your effectiveness and clarity. Understanding where you hide stress in your body is the key to releasing it before it builds up and causes physical disease.
Stress Can Affect Good Decision Making.
Stress causes hormones in the brain to be released that limit your ability to think clearly. In essence, you cannot think clearly when your mind is in a fog of hormones. Energetic coherence is a state where your mind, heart, and emotions are in sync with each other. In this balanced state, you have optimal functioning of your mind to solve problems, respond versus react and communicate clearly to others.
How To Know When Stress Becomes a Problem You Need To Address.
We can be physiologically experiencing stress yet mentally numb to it because we’ve become so accustomed to it. Some have become so adapted to the daily pressures, irritations, and annoyances of life that it starts to seem normal. Yet the small stresses accumulate quickly and we may not realize how much they’re impairing our mental and emotional clarity and our overall health until it shows up as a bad decision, an overreaction or an unwanted diagnosis at the doctor’s office. https://www.heartmath.com/infographics/how-stress-affects-the-body/
Additional Habits That Lead to More Stress.
Indirectly, some of the less-than-healthy habits that come with stress such as smoking, drinking, poor diet, less sleep, and little-to-no exercise can also lower your resistance to stress. Our bodies are designed to walk, run, jump, sit and stand. Stress paired with the lack of purposeful movement to stretch and strengthen your body can lead to tension, inflammation, aches, pains, and tightness. And so, the cycle of less movement just adds to the discomfort in your body. In other words, more stress imbeds a cycle that is more difficult to get out of, the longer you endure stress the harder it gets. The key is to release stress at the moment and reset during your busy day. How to know when stress becomes a problem you must address. Your body will tell you, just listen.
You Can You Control How You Respond to stress.
In your quiet moments, you may feel like a victim in your own life and life choices. You wonder how did I get here, I love my life. The answer is built in pauses during the day to reflect and be aware of your body, emotions, and mind. We can control how we respond to stress and we can become more sensitive to stressful situations and how they are affecting us before it manifests as a physical, mental or emotional complaint. There are simple, scientifically validated solutions to stress that empower people to rewire their own stress response.
The best strategy is to handle stress is at the moment.
The best way to manage stress is to deal with it the very moment you feel it come up. Millions of people put off dealing with their stress until the weekend or when it is time to go to bed. Unfortunately, the stress response has built up all day and is now a monster to quiet. And the physical body has already suffered the result of the stress response and hormones released in the body. The physical body may feel achy, tight, fatigued and the mind cannot seem to find a neutral setting. The stillness of the body, mind, and emotions is required to flush out the charges from the stress.
How To Prepare For a Potentially Stressful Situation.
Another way to ward off a stress response is to prepare in advance for those potentially triggering situations. For example, weddings, births, and celebrations can carry stress as well as an unscheduled meeting with your boss, paying your bills, planning a vacation or attending a large family gathering. Preparing for an event or situation can affect how easily you shift from or avoid a stress response.
For example, every year cousin Vinnie shows up loudly boasting about his accomplishments. He never lets you get a word in edgewise or inquire about how you are doing. In your mind he is rude. In the past, you would respond with annoyance and tell him so. He is the one being a jerk. And everyone is looking at you for being annoyed. This disrupts your mood not to mention the guests at the gathering. No one wants to be tense.
And here is how.
Today you decide, there is nobody, no way, going to ruin my day. You become Teflon or invisible and allow the charges to move through you. In other words, you set a clear intention to yourself. It can be easy to break a promise to yourself but try to keep this one.
- Imagine your cousin Vinnie is doing his thing. Imagine your cool response and relaxed body language.
- Set your intention. Maybe carry a crystal in your pocket that is infused with your intention. You can hold it with your hand, and no one will ever know.
- You see how easily you respond and how the gathering flows more easily.
- Consciously release the events from the past and any charge associated with them. Clean the slate. This year he may surprise you. Do not expect he will be the same, you can smile to yourself when he does the same thing. Smile an inner smile that says, “I got this.”
- Clear your energy field with the above exercise before going to the gathering.
Create a New Response to Stress Can Lead To Better Relationships.
The priceless look at his face when you do not respond is valuable. You flow more easily and enjoy the event. Remember it is just an electromagnetic charge, do you wonder why it bothers you. Deep inside you want to be recognized, too. We all do. Let this one go. And spend your time with those who do appreciate you. It is not personal he is on his journey learning about who he is. If possible, within your heart, send him light and love. And bless the gathering for the highest possibility and best good for all. Do you really need the appreciation of a blow heart? Think about it. Identify where you lose your energy and prepare and protect. Invite your angels to remind you, too.
Chronic Stress Can Leave Harmful Effects In Your Body.
Stress can hide beneath the surface of your body and built until it gets your attention. Unfortunately, when we are exposed to a chronic stressor, the central nervous system (CNS) continues releasing stress-related hormones. At the first sign of stress which can be a tightening of your throat, shortness of breath, shallow breathing, clumsiness, heart beating fast, nausea, muscle tension, dizziness or cloudy thinking—do something consciously to release it. Breathe in a deep breath and breathe out slowly to release the charge.
Increased awareness of and sensitive to your own level of stress and knowing when and how to take proactive steps to help you to better care for your family, friends, and colleagues.An energy healing practitioner can sense the disruption in your energy field to release stress from your body. This process resets your field. Daily practice to release stress as soon as possible before it either builds up or becomes embedded in your body is important.
The good news is that I work to make sure you are getting the most out of life as stress-free as you can be! Contact me to schedule an energy healing session to release from your body and to learn techniques to prevent stress from hiding in your body. Kathi Pickett, RN CHTP